This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Akashic Books

©2004, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012 Akashic Books

Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

City maps by Sohrab Habibion by Aaron Petrovich

eISBN: 978-1-61775-146-2

eISBN: 978-1-61775-183-7

All rights reserved

Akashic Books

PO Box 1456

New York, NY 10009

info@akashicbooks.com

www.akashicbooks.com

Table of Contents

___________________

Cover page

Foreword by Tim McLoughlin

Brooklyn Noir

Introduction by Tim McLoughlin

PART I: OLD SCHOOL BROOKLYN

Pete Hamill, “The Book Signing” (Park Slope)

Pearl Abraham, “Hasidic Noir” (Williamsburg)

Sidney Offit, “No Time for Senior’s” (Downtown)

Tim McLoughlin, “When All This Was Bay Ridge” (Sunset Park)

Ellen Miller, “Practicing” (Canarsie)

PART II: NEW SCHOOL BROOKLYN

Adam Mansbach, “Crown Heist” (Crown Heights)

Arthur Nersesian, “Hunter/Trapper” (Brooklyn Heights)

Nelson George, “New Lots Avenue” (Brownsville)

Neal Pollack, “Scavenger Hunt” (Coney Island)

Norman Kelley, “The Code” (Prospect Heights)

PART III: COPS & ROBBERS

Thomas Morrissey, “Can’t Catch Me” (Bay Ridge)

Lou Manfredo, “Case Closed” (Bensonhurst)

Luciano Guerriero, “Eating Italian” (Red Hook)

Kenji Jasper, “Thursday” (Bedford-Stuyvesant)

Robert Knightly, “One More for the Road” (Greenpoint)

PART IV: BACKWATER BROOKLYN

Maggie Estep, “Triple Harrison” (East New York)

Ken Bruen, “Fade to . . . Brooklyn” (Galway, Ireland)

Nicole Blackman, “Dumped” (Fort Greene)

C.J. Sullivan, “Slipping into Darkness” (Bushwick)

Chris Niles , “Ladies’ Man” (Brighton Beach)

Manhattan Noir

Introduction by Lawrence Block

Charles Ardai, “The Good Samaritan” (Midtown)

Carol Lea Benjamin, “The Last Supper” (Greenwich Village)

Lawrence Block, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat” (Clinton)

Thomas H. Cook, “Rain” (Battery Park)

Jeffery Deaver, “A Nice Place to Visit” (Hell’s Kitchen)

Jim Fusilli, “The Next Best Thing” (George Washington Bridge)

Robert Knightly, “Take the Man’s Pay” (Garment District)

John Lutz, “The Laundry Room” (Upper West Side)

Liz Martínez, “Freddie Prinze Is My Guardian Angel” (Washington Heights)

Maan Meyers, “The Organ Grinder” (Lower East Side)

Martin Meyers, “Why Do They Have to Hit?” (Yorkville)

S.J. Rozan, “Building” (Harlem)

Justin Scott, “The Most Beautiful Apartment in New York” (Chelsea)

C.J. Sullivan, “The Last Round” (Inwood)

Xu Xi, “Crying with Audrey Hepburn” (Times Square)

Bronx Noir

Introduction by S.J. Rozan

PART I: BRING IT ON HOME

Jerome Charyn, “White Trash” (Claremont/Concourse)

Terrence Cheng, “Gold Mountain” (Lehman College)

Joanne Dobson, “Hey, Girlie” (Sedgwick Avenue)

Rita Lakin, “The Woman Who Hated the Bronx” (Elder Avenue)

PART II: IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT

Lawrence Block, “Rude Awakening” (Riverdale)

Suzanne Chazin, “Burnout” (Jerome Avenue)

Kevin Baker, “The Cheers Like Waves” (Yankee Stadium)

Abraham Rodriguez Jr., “Jaguar” (South Bronx)

PART III: ANOTHER SATURDAY NIGHT

Steven Torres, “Early Fall” (Hunts Point)

S.J. Rozan, “Hothouse” (Botanical Garden)

Thomas Bentil, “Lost and Found” (Rikers Island)

Marlon James, “Look What Love Is Doing to Me” (Williamsbridge)

PART IV: THE WANDERER

Sandra Kitt, “Home Sweet Home” (City Island)

Robert J. Hughes, “A Visit to St. Nick’s” (Fordham Road)

Miles Marshall Lewis, “Numbers Up” (Baychester)

Joseph Wallace, “The Big Five” (Bronx Zoo)

Part V: All shook up

Ed Dee, “Ernie K.’s Gelding” (Van Cortlandt Park)

Patrick W. Picciarelli, “The Prince of Arthur Avenue” (Arthur Avenue)

Thomas Adcock, “You Want I Should Whack Monkey Boy?” (Courthouse)

Queens Noir

“Introduction by Robert Knightly”

PART I: QUEENS ON THE FLY: BY SEA, HORSE, TRAIN, PLANE, AND SILVER SCREEN

Maggie Estep, “Alice Fantastic” (Aqueduct Racetrack)

Denis Hamill, “Under the Throgs Neck Bridge” (Bayside)

Jill Eisenstadt, “Golden Venture” (The Rockaways)

Joseph Guglielmelli, “Buckner’s Error” (Shea Stadium)

Patricia King, “Baggage Claim” (JFK Airport)

Kim Sykes, “Arrivederci, Aldo” (Long Island City)

PART II: OLD QUEENS

Megan Abbott, “Hollywood Lanes” (Forest Hills)

Mary Byrne, “Only the Strong Survive” (Astoria)

Robert Knightly, “First Calvary” (Blissville)

Alan Gordon, “Bottom of the Sixth” (Rego Park)

Victoria Eng, “The Flower of Flushing” (Flushing)

Stephen Solomita, “Crazy Jill Saves the Slinky” (College Point)

Tori Carrington, “Last Stop, Ditmars” (Ditmars)

PART III: FOREIGN SHORES

Shailly Agnihotri, “Avoid Agony” (Jackson Heights)

K.j.a. Wishnia, “Viernes Loco” (Corona)

Glenville Lovell, “Out of Body” (South Jamaica)

Liz Martínez, “Lights Out for Frankie” (Woodside)

Jillian Abbott, “Jihad Sucks; or, The Conversion of the Jews” (Richmond Hill)

Belinda Farley, “The Investigation” (Jamaica)

Staten Island Noir

Introduction by Patricia Smith

PART I: FAMILY AFFAIR

Bill Loehfelm, “Snake Hill” (Eltingville)

Louisa Ermelino, “Sister-in-Law” (Great Kills)

Patricia Smith, “When They Are Done with Us “ (Port Richmond)

Ted Anthony, “A User’s Guide to Keeping Your Kills Fresh” (Fresh Kills)

Shay Youngblood, “Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” (South Beach)

PART II: FIGHT OR FLIGHT

Michael Penncavage, “Mistakes” (The Ferry)

Bruce DeSilva, “Abating a Nuisance” (Tompkinsville)

Michael Largo, “Paying the Tab” (Four Corners)

Binnie Kirshenbaum, “Assistant Professor Lodge” (Grymes Hill)

PART III: BOROUGH OF BROKEN DREAMS

Todd Craig, “ . . . spy verse spy . . . “ (Park Hill)

Eddie Joyce, “Before It Hardens” (Annadale)

Linda Nieves-Powell, “The Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl from the Stapleton Projects “ (Stapleton)

Ashley Dawson, “Teenage Wasteland” (Tottenville)

S.J. Rozan, “Lighthouse” (St. George)

FOREWORD

LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION

This ebook is neither the first nor the last title in the Akashic Noir Series, but it represents some pretty weighty full-circle karma.

At the time Akashic publisher Johnny Temple and I were establishing just what kind of book Brooklyn Noir was going to be, we were sometimes daunted by the scope of the project, resulting in ideas that veered wildly between, among other things, the broadest and most narrow geographic focus. Some of the concepts we discussed were whether to give each Brooklyn neighborhood its own volume (Bushwick Noir?), or to try and cover the whole of New York City in one book.

It became quickly obvious that the way to go was to focus on the borough of Brooklyn and do our best to represent as many communities and voices as we could. Even before Brooklyn Noir was published, though, we were scoping out the other boroughs.

Life intrudes, however, and plans change in publishing much the same as in the real world. After Brooklyn, Chicago was the next locale featured in the series. San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Dublin, Ireland were covered before Manhattan Noir came on board. Lawrence Block writes in his introduction to that volume that Manhattan is the city, and he’s right. Manhattan is the sun around which the outer boroughs rotate, but it is the very nature of the vast difference between Manhattan and its neighbors, and the symbiotic relationship of energy and labor moving back and forth, that prevented us from encompassing all of New York in one volume.

It has taken eight years, and the publication of nearly sixty titles in the series, to complete this project, to tell the tale of a town that contains Wall Street and the Upper East Side, the slums of the South Bronx and the beauty of its botanical garden, the dizzying changes of Brooklyn’s gentrification, the weekly ethnic shifts of neighborhoods in Queens, and the inexorable transformation of Staten Island from quasi-rural suburb to the new old-Brooklyn, a package complete with traffic jams and racial violence. Eighty-seven stories ranging from art theft to horse theft, from random serial killings to good old-fashioned crimes of passion.

As editors, Lawrence Block, S.J. Rozan, Robert Knightly, and Patricia Smith have done a remarkable job, uniformly keeping the tone of each book authentic to its borough. And their work has been critically rewarded. A number of these stories are Edgar, Anthony, and Shamus award winners or nominees. Three have been included in annual Best American Mystery Stories collections, and two were adapted as short films. Lou Manfredo, Maggie Estep, and Robert Knightly expanded stories presented here into novels.

It first occurred to me that this book is a road map or an underground travel guide, then I realized that, collectively, the stories are more than that.

When I was seventeen years old, I went to Europe for the first time, and traveled with a friend who had family in what was then Yugoslavia. We spent much of the summer hitchhiking or taking buses along the Adriatic coast. We began by staying with some of my friend’s relatives, but after the first night, they gave us a letter of introduction to acquaintances a few towns away, and upon presenting that, these strangers welcomed us into their home, fed us, and showed us around their village. They then gave us a letter of introduction to their friends down the road. The tradition continued, and night after night we found ourselves hosted by people with whom we had absolutely no prior connection, who took us behind the curtains of their villages and families, and who then made certain we had a contact for the next leg of our journey.

Consider these stories letters of introduction. Each is a cautionary tale describing the dangers of a specific part of the city. Each story is presented to you as a gift, by a stranger.

From the largest mistake to the most insignificant slight, the price for not knowing your territory in this town can be brutal. New York City is the capital of the world, and everybody knows you don’t stay on top by being a nice guy.

Heed the warnings.

Tim McLoughlin

“Dere’s no guy livin’ dat knows Brooklyn t’roo an’ t’roo, because it’d take a guy a lifetime just to find his way aroun’ duh f——town.”

—from “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” by Thomas Wolfe

INTRODUCTION

LOVE & CRIME

I recently received a phone call from one of my father’s old friends. He’s an interesting man who has led a dangerous life, and since my father’s death I only hear from him every year or two. He was calling to tell me that his kid brother’s daughter, fourteen years old, had gone missing. Thankfully, he called again the next day to say she’d been found safe at a friend’s house. It had merely been a case of teenage angst acted out by briefly running away. I expressed my relief, and told him I’d take down the homemade flyers I’d posted. We talked for another few minutes, then signed off.

“Take care, you know I love you,” he said as he hung up.

He is six-feet four-inches tall, and is a pretty formidable guy still, at age sixty-three, with a face full of scar tissue and a triple bypass behind him. You know I love you. I thought about the fact that the only men I’ve known, other than my father, who are comfortable telling me that they love me, are also men capable of extreme violence. Is it a personality trait? Are these men just so much more emotional that they are capable of greater feeling? Love and hate, compassion and violence.

No. It’s a code; an example of the language of inclusion. It has been used to the point of tedium in novels and films depicting organized crime families, but in the real world, membership in social alliances forged in the street can be between two people or twenty. And can stand for generations or dissolve the same evening. But the first thing that will emerge in such associations is a commonality of language, or pattern of speech, that suggests acceptance and loyalty, even if the individuals are from vastly different backgrounds.

The communities across Brooklyn depicted in this book are for the most part not representative of the popular image of the borough today. Most stories from Brooklyn don’t focus on places like Canarsie, as Ellen Miller’s moody, disturbing tale does, or East New York, as in Maggie Estep’s clever, evocative story. And when the places are familiar, the enclave within often isn’t. The Park Slope of Pete Hamill’s “The Book Signing” is not a latte-drenched smoke-free zone celebrating its latest grassroots civic victory over some perceived evil, but the neighborhood of those left behind—the handful of old-timers living over the stores on Seventh Avenue and in the few remaining rent-controlled apartments, having to walk further every day to find a real bar or grocery store. The Williamsburg of Pearl Abraham isn’t the hipster hang, but the Hasidic stronghold. What these underground communities share, though, and these writers capture brilliantly, is the language.

With the exception of a few characters, like Arthur Nersesian’s predatory protagonist, all of the actors in these pieces belong to some sort of community, and it is their membership that defines, and saves or dooms them.

Some of these neighborhoods overlap and some are from opposite ends of the borough, and it doesn’t mean a thing in terms of language. Two or three of these stories could take place within a half-dozen blocks of each other, and the players would barely know where they were if their places were shifted. Ken Bruen’s “Fade to … Brooklyn” is actually set in Ireland, and though I know a number of people who consider Ireland just another part of the neighborhood, I like to think of it as our virtual Brooklyn story.

The tales presented here are as diverse as the borough itself, from the over-the-top violent world of gangster rap, to a Damon Runyonesque crew of hardboiled old men. There are sexual predators, dirty cops, killers, and a horse thief. So the stories are different, but as I read them again, preparing to let this book go—reluctantly, because I don’t want it to end—I’m also struck by the way that they are similar. And that is in the most important way; because as any scholar sitting at the bar in a Flatbush gin mill knows, it’s about telling a good story. It is my privilege to share ours with you.

Tim McLoughlin

Brooklyn, January 2004

PART I

Old School Brooklyn

THE BOOK SIGNING

BY PETE HAMILL

Park Slope

Carmody came up from the subway before dusk, and his eyeglasses fogged in the sudden cold. He lifted them off his nose, holding them while they cooled, and saw his own face smiling from a pale green leaflet taped to the wall. There he was, in a six-year-old photograph, and the words Reading and Book Signin and the date and place, and he paused for a moment, shivering in the hard wind. The subway was his idea. The publisher could have sent him to Brooklyn in a limousine, but he wanted to go to the old neighborhood the way he always did, long ago. He might, after all, never come this way again.

The subway stairs seemed steeper than he remembered and he felt twinges in his knees that he never felt in California. Sharp little needles of pain, like rumors of mortality. He didn’t feel these pains after tennis, or even after speed-walking along the Malibu roads. But the pain was there now, and was not eased by the weather. The wind was blowing fiercely from the harbor, which lay off in the darkness to his right, and he donned his glasses again and used both gloved hands to pull his brown fedora more securely to his brow. His watch told him that he had more than a half hour to get to the bookstore. Just as he had hoped. He’d have some time for a visit, but not too much time. He crossed the street with his back to the place where the bookstore awaited him, and passed along the avenue where he once was young.

His own aging face peered at him from the leaflets as he passed, some pasted on walls, others taped inside the windows of shops. In a way, he thought, they looked like Wanted posters. He felt a sudden … what was the word? Not fear. Certainly not panic. Unease That was the word. An uneasiness in the stomach. A flexing and then relaxing of muscles, an unwilled release of liquids or acids, all those secret wordless messages that in California were cured by the beach and the surf or a quick hit of Maalox. He told himself to stop. This was no drama. It was just a trip through a few streets where once he had lived but had not seen for decades. After seventeen novels, this would be his first signing in the borough that had formed him. But the leaflets made clear that here, in this neighborhood, his appearance might be some kind of big deal. It might draw many people. And Carmody felt apprehensive, nervous, wormy with unease.

“How does it feel, going back to Brooklyn?” Charlie Rose had asked him the night before, in a small dark television studio on Park Avenue.

“I don’t know,” Carmody said, and chuckled. “I just hope they don’t throw books at me. Particularly my own books.”

And wanted to add: I’ve never really left. Or to be more exact Those streets have never left me.

* * *

The buildings themselves were as Carmody remembered them. They were old-law tenements, with fire escapes on the facades, but they seemed oddly comforting to Carmody. This was not one of those New York neighborhoods desolated by time and arson and decay. On the coast of California, he had seen photographs of the enrubbled lots of Brownsville and East New York. There were no lots here in the old neighborhood. If anything, the buildings looked better now, with fresh paint and clear glass on the street level doors instead of hammered tin painted gray. He knew from reading the New York Times that the neighborhood had been gentrified, that most of the old families had moved away, to be replaced by younger people who paid higher rents. There was some unhappiness to all of that, the paper said, but still, the place looked better. As a boy he had walked these streets many times on nights like this, when most people retreated swiftly from the bitter cold to the uncertain warmth of the flats. Nights of piled snow and stranded streetcars. Now he noticed lights coming on in many of those old apartments, and shadows moving like ghosts behind drawn shades and curtains. He peered down a street toward the harbor, noticed some stubborn scabs of old snow, black between parked cars, and in the distance saw a thin scarlet band where the sun was setting in New Jersey. On this high slope, the harbor wind turned old snow into iron. But the sliver of sun was the same too. The day was dying. It would soon be night.

If the buildings were the same, the shops along the avenue were all different. Fitzgerald’s bar was gone, where his father did most of his drinking, and so was Sussman’s Hardware and Fischetti’s Fruit and Vegetable and the Freedom Meats store and the pharmacy. What was the name of that drugstore? Right there. On that corner. An art supply store now. An art supply store! Moloff’s. The drugstore was called Moloff’s, and next door was a bakery. “Our Own” they called it. And now there was a computer store where a TV repair shop once stood. And a dry cleaners where men once stood at the bar of Rattigan’s, singing the old songs. All gone. Even the old clock factory had been converted into a condominium.

None of this surprised Carmody. He knew they’d all be gone. Nothing lasts. Marriages don’t last. Ball clubs don’t last. Why should shops last? Wasn’t that the point of each one of his seventeen books? The critics never saw that point, but he didn’t care. Those novels were not literature, even to Carmody. He would say in interviews that he wrote for readers, not for critics. And said to himself: I’m not Stendhal, or Hemingway, or Faulkner. He knew that from the beginning. Those novels were the work he did after turning forty, when he reached the age limit for screen-writing. He worked at the top of his talent, to be sure, and used his knowledge of movies to create plots that kept readers turning the pages. But he knew they were commercial products, novels about industries and how they worked, his characters woven from gossip and profiles in Fortune or Business Week. He had started with the automobile industry, and then moved to the television industry, and the sugar industry, and the weapons industry. In each of them the old was destroyed by the new, the old ruling families decayed and collapsed and newer, more ruthless men and women took their places. The new one was about the food industry, from the farms of California to the dinner plates of New York and Los Angeles. Like the others, it had no aspirations to be seen as art. That would be pretentious. But they were good examples of craft, as honest as well-made chairs. In each of them, he knew, research served as a substitute for imagination and art and memory. Three different researchers had filed memos on this last one, the new one, the novel he would sign here tonight, in the Barnes & Noble store five blocks behind him. He hoped nobody in the audience would ask why he had never once written about Brooklyn.

To be sure, he had never denied his origins. There was a profile in People magazine in 1984, when his novel about the gambling industry went to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and stayed there for seventeen weeks. He was photographed on the terrace of the house in Malibu with the Pacific stretched out beyond him, and they used an old high school newspaper photograph showing him in pegged pants and a t-shirt, looking like an apprentice gangster or some variation on the persona of James Dean. The article mentioned his two ex-wives (there was now a third woman receiving his alimony checks), but the reporter was also from Brooklyn and was more intrigued by the Brooklyn mug who had become a bestselling author.

“You went west in 1957,” the reporter said. “Just like the Dodgers.”

“When they left, I left too, because that was the end of Brooklyn as I knew it,” Carmody said. “I figured I’d have my revenge on Los Angeles by forcing it to pay me a decent living.”

That was a lie, of course. One among many. He didn’t leave Brooklyn because of the Dodgers. He left because of Molly Mulrane.

* * *

Now he was standing across the street from the building where both of them had lived. The entrance then was between a meat market and a fruit store, converted now into a toy store and a cellphone shop. Molly lived on the first floor left. Carmody on the top floor right. She was three years younger than Carmody and he didn’t pay her much attention until he returned from the Army in 1954. An old story: She had blossomed. And one thing had led to another.

He remembered her father’s rough, unhappy, threatening face when he first came calling to take her to the movies. Patty Mulrane, the cop. And the way he looked when he went out in his police uniform for a 4-to-12 shift, his gun on his hip, his usual slouch shifting as he walked taller and assumed a kind of swagger. And how appalled Patty Mulrane was when Carmody told him he was using the GI Bill to become a writer. “A writer? What the hell is that? I’m a writer too. I write tickets. Ha ha. A writer … How do you make a living with that? What about being a lawyer? A doctor? What about, what do they call it now, criminology? At least you’d have a shot at becoming a lieutenant …” The father liked his Fleischman’s and beer and used the Dodgers as a substitute for conversation. The mother was a dim, shadowy woman, who did very little talking. That summer, Molly was the youngest of the three children, and the only one still at home. Her brother, Frankie, was a fireman and lived with his wife in Bay Ridge. There was another brother: What was his name? Sean. Seanie. Flat face, hooded eyes, a hard tank-like body. Carmody didn’t remember much about him. There had been some kind of trouble, something about a robbery, which meant he could never follow his father into the police department, and Seanie had moved to Florida where he was said to be a fisherman in the Keys. Every Sunday morning, father, mother, and daughter went to mass together.

Now, on this frozen night, decades later, Carmody’s unease rushed back. Ah, Molly, my Molly-O … The fire escapes still climbed three stories to the top floor where the Carmodys lived. But the building looked better, like all the others on the avenue. On the top floor right on this frozen night, the shades were up and Carmody could see ochre-colored walls, and a warm light cast by table lamps. This startled him. In memory, the Carmody flat was always cold, the windows rimmed with frost in winter, he and his sisters making drawings with their fingernails in the cold bluish light cast from a fluorescent ceiling lamp. His father was cold too, a withdrawn bitter man who resented the world, and the youth of his children. His mother was a drinker, and her own chilly remorse was relieved only by occasional bursts of rage. They nodded or grunted when Carmody told them about his ambitions, and his mother once said, in a slurred voice, “Who do you think you are, anyway?”

One Saturday afternoon in the Mulrane flat, he and Molly were alone, her parents gone off to see Frankie and his small child. Molly proudly showed him her father’s winter uniform, encased in plastic from Kent’s dry cleaners, and the medals he had won, and the extra gun, a nickel-plated .38 caliber Smith and Wesson, oiled and ready in a felt box. She talked to him about a book she was reading by A.J. Cronin and he told her she should read F. Scott Fitzgerald. She made him a ham-and-swiss-cheese sandwich for lunch. They sipped tea with milk, thick with sugar. And then, for the first time, they went to bed together in her tiny room with its window leading to the fire escape. She was in an agony, murmuring prayers, her hands and arms moving in a jittery way to cover breasts and hair, trembling with fear and desire. “Hold me tight,” she whispered. “Don’t ever leave me.”

He had never written any of that, or how at the end of his first year of college, at the same time that she graduated from St. Joseph’s, he rented the room near New York University, to get away from his parents and hers, and how she would come to him after work as a file clerk at Metropolitan Life and they would vanish into each other. He still went back to Brooklyn. He still visited the ice house of his parents. He still called formally in the Mulrane apartment to take Molly to the Sanders or the RKO Prospect. He was learning how to perform. But the tiny room had become their place, their gangster’s hideout, the secret place to which they went for sin.

Now on this frozen night he stared at the dark windows of the first floor left, wondering who lived there now, and whether Molly’s bones were lying in some frozen piece of the Brooklyn earth. He could still hear her voice, trembling and tentative: “We’re sinners, aren’t we?” He could hear her saying: “What’s to become of us?” He could hear the common sense in her words and the curl of Brooklyn in her accent. “Where are we going?” she said. “Please don’t ever leave me.” He could see the mole inside her left thigh. He could see the fine hair at the top of her neck.

“Well, will ya lookit this,” a hoarse male voice said from behind him. “If it ain’t Buddy Carmody.”

* * *

Carmody turned and saw a burly man smoking a cigarette in the doorway of a tenement. He was wearing a thick ski jacket and jeans, but his head was bare. The face was not clear in the obscure light but the voice told Carmody it was definitely someone from back then. Nobody had called him Buddy in forty-six years.

“How are ya?” Carmody said, peering at the man as he stepped out of the doorway. The man’s face was puffy and seamed, and Carmody tried to peel away the flesh to see who had lived in it when they both were young.

“Couldn’t stay away from the old neighborhood, could ya, Buddy?”

The unease was seething, but now Carmody felt a small stream of fear make its move in his stomach.

“It’s been a long time,” Carmody said. “Remind me, what’s your name?”

“You shittin’ me, Buddy? How could you figget my name?”

“I told you, man, it’s been a long time.”

“Yeah. It’s easy to figget, for some people.”

“Advanced age, and all that,” Carmody said, performing a grin, glancing to his left, to the darkening shop windows, the empty street. Imagining himself running.

“But not everybody figgets,” the man said.

He flipped his cigarette under a parked car.

“My sister didn’t figget.”

Oh.

Oh God.

“You must be Seanie,” Carmody said quietly. “Am I right? Seanie Mulrane?”

“Ah, you remembered.”

“How are you, Seanie?”

He could see Seanie’s hooded eyes now, so like the eyes of his policeman father: still, unimpressed. He moved close enough so that Carmody could smell the whiskey on his breath.

“How am I? Huh. How am I … Not as good as you, Buddy boy. We keep up, ya know. The books, that mini-series, or whatever it was on NBC. Pretty good, you’re doing.”

Carmody stepped back a foot, as subtly as possible, trying to decide how to leave. He wished a police car would turn the corner. He trembled, feeling a black wind of negation pushing at him, backing him up, a small focused wind that seemed to come from the furled brow of Seanie Mulrane. He tried to look casual, turned and glanced at the building where he was young, at the dark first floor left, the warm top floor right.

“She never got over you, you prick.”

Carmody shrugged. “It’s a long time ago, Seanie,” he said, trying to avoid being dismissive.

“I remember that first month after you split,” Seanie said. “She cried all the time. She cried all day. She cried all night. She quit her job, ’cause she couldn’t do it and cry at the same time. She’d start to eat, then, oof, she’d break up again. A million fuckin’ tears, Buddy. I seen it. I was there, just back from the Keys, and my father wanted to find you and put a bullet in your head. And Molly, poor Molly … You broke her fuckin’ heart, Buddy.”

Carmody said nothing. Other emotions were flowing now. Little rivers of regret. Remorse. Unforgivable mistakes. His stomach rose and fell and rose again.

“And that first month? Hey, that was just the start. The end of the second month after you cut out, she tells my mother she’s knocked up.”

“No …”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know that, Seanie. I swear—”

“Don’t lie, Buddy. My old man told your old man. He pulled a gun on him, for Chrissakes, tryin’ to find out where you was.”

“I never heard any of this.”

“Don’t lie, Buddy. You lie for a livin’, right? All those books, they’re lies, ain’t they? Don’t lie to me.”

“I didn’t know, Seanie.”

“Tell the truth: You ran because she was pregnant.”

No: That wasn’t why. He truly didn’t know. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes until the book signing. He felt an ache rising in his back.

“She had the baby, some place in New Jersey,” Seanie said. “Catholic nuns or something. And gave it up. A boy it was. A son. Then she came home and went in her room. She went to mass every morning, I guess prayin’ to God to forgive her. But she never went to another movie with a guy, never went on a date. She stood in her room, like another goddamned nun. She saw my mother die, and buried her, and saw my father die, and buried him, and saw me get married and move here wit’ my Mary, right across the street, to live upstairs. I’d come see her every day, and try talkin’ to her, but it was like, ‘You want tea, Seanie, or coffee?’”

Seanie moved slightly, placing his bulk between Carmody and the path to Barnes & Noble.

“Once I said to her, I said, ‘How about you come with me an’ Mary to Florida? You like it, we could all move there. It’s beautiful,’ I said to her. ‘Palm trees and the ocean. You’d love it.’ Figuring I had to get her out of that fuckin’ room. She looked at me like I said, ‘Hey, let’s move to Mars.’” Seanie paused, trembling with anger and memory, and lit another cigarette. “Just once, she talked a blue streak, drinkin’ gin, I guess it was. And said to me, real mad, ‘I don’t want to see anyone, you understand me, Seanie? I don’t want to see people holdin’ hands. I don’t want to see little boys playin’ ball. You understand me?’” He took a deep drag on the Camel. “‘I want to be here,’ she says to me, ‘when Buddy comes back.’”

Carmody stared at the sidewalk, at Seanie’s scuffed black shoes, and heard her voice: When Buddy comes back. Saw the fine hair at the top of her neck. Thinking: Here I am, I’m back.

“So she waited for you, Buddy. Year after year in that dark goddamned flat. Everything was like it was when you split. My mother’s room, my father’s room, her room. All the same clothes. It wasn’t right what you done to her, Buddy. She was a beautiful girl.”

“That she was.”

“And a sweet girl.”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t right. You had the sweet life and she shoulda had it with you.”

Carmody turned. “And how did she … When did she …”

“Die? She didn’t die, Buddy. She’s still there. Right across the street. Waitin’ for you, you prick.”

* * *

Carmody turned then, lurching toward the corner, heading to the bookstore. He did not run, but his legs carried him in flight. Thinking: She’s alive. Molly Mulrane is alive. He was certain she had gone off, married someone, a cop or a fireman or car salesman, had settled in the safety of Bay Ridge or some far-off green suburb. A place without memory. Without ghosts. He was certain that she had lived a long while, married, had children, and then died. The way everybody did. And now he knew the only child she ever had was his, a son, and he was in flight, afraid to look back.

He could sense the feral pack behind him, filling the silent streets with howls. He had heard them often in the past few years, on beaches at dusk, in too many dreams. The voices of women, wordless but full of accusation: wives, and girlfriends, and one-night stands in college towns; women his own age and women not yet women; women discarded, women used, women injured, coming after him on a foggy moor, from groves of leafless trees, their eyes yellow, their clothing mere patchy rags. If they could speak, the words would be about lies, treacheries, theft, broken vows. He could see many of their faces as he moved, remembering some of their names, and knew that in front, leading the pack, was Molly Mulrane.

Crossing a street, he slipped on a ridge of black ice and banged against the hood of a parked car. Then he looked back. Nobody was there.

He paused, breathing hard and deep.

Not even Seanie had come after him.

And now the book signing filled him with another kind of fear. Who else might come there tonight, knowing the truth? Hauling up the ashes of the past? What other sin would someone dredge up? Who else might come for an accounting?

He hurried on, the feral visions erased. He was breathing heavily, as he always did when waking from bad dreams. A taxi cruised along the avenue, its rooftop light on, as if pleading for a fare to Manhattan. Carmody thought: I could just go. Just jump in this cab. Call the store. Plead sudden illness. Just go. But someone was sure to call Rush & Malloy at the Daily News or Page Six at the Post and report the no-show. Brooklyn Boy Calls It In. All that shit. No.

And then a rosy-cheeked woman was smiling at him. The manager of the bookstore.

“Oh, Mister Carmody, we thought you got lost.”

“Not in this neighborhood,” he said. And smiled, as required by the performance.

“You’ve got a great crowd waiting.”

“Let’s do it.”

“We have water on the lectern, and lots of pens, everything you need.”

* * *

As they climbed to the second floor, Carmody took off his hat and gloves and overcoat and the manager passed them to an assistant. He glanced at himself in a mirror, at his tweed jacket and black crew-collared sweater. He looked like a writer all right. Not a cop or a fireman or even a professor. A writer. He saw an area with about a hundred people sitting on folding chairs, penned in by walls of books, and more people in the aisles beyond the shelves, and another large group standing at the rear. Yes: a great crowd.

He stood modestly beside the lectern as he was introduced by the manager. He heard the words, “one of Brooklyn’s own …” and they sounded strange. He didn’t often think of himself that way, and in signings all over the country that fact was seldom mentioned. This store itself was a sign of a different Brooklyn. Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. There were no bookstores in his Brooklyn. He found his first books in the public library branch near where he lived, or in the great main branch at Grand Army Plaza. On rainy summer days he spent hours among their stacks. But the bookstores—where you could buy and own a book—they were down on Pearl Street under the El, or across the river on Fourth Avenue. His mind flashed on Bomba the Jungle Boy at the Giant Cataract The first book he’d ever finished. How old was I? Eleven. Yes. Eleven. It cost a nickel on Pearl Street. That year, I had no bad dreams.

During the introduction, he peered out at the faces, examining them for hostility. But the faces were different too. Most were in their thirties, lean and intense, or prepared to be critical, or wearing the competitive masks of apprentice writers. He had seen such faces in a thousand other bookstores, out in America. About a dozen African-Americans were scattered through the seats, with a few standing on the sides. He saw a few paunchy men with six or seven copies of his books: collectors, looking for autographs to sell on eBay or some fan website. He didn’t see any of the older faces. Those faces still marked by Galway or Sicily or the Ukraine. He didn’t see the pouchy, hooded masks that were worn by men like Seanie Mulrane.

His new novel and five of the older paperbacks were stacked on a table to the left of the lectern, ready for signing, and Carmody began to relax. Thinking: It’s another signing. Thinking: I could be in Denver or Houston or Berkeley.

Finally, he began to read, removing his glasses because he was near-sighted, focusing on words printed on pages. His words. His pages. He read from the first chapter, which was always fashioned as a hook. He described his hero being drawn into the mysteries of a grand Manhattan restaurant by an old college pal, who was one of the owners, all the while glancing up at the crowd, so that he didn’t sound like Professor Carmody. The manager was right: It was a great crowd. They listened. They laughed at the hero’s wisecracks. Carmody enjoyed the feedback. He enjoyed the applause too, when he had finished. And then he was done, the hook cast. The manager explained that Carmody would take some questions, and then sign books.

He felt himself tense again. And thought: Why did I run, all those years ago? Why did I do what I did to Molly Mulrane?

I ran to escape, he thought.

That’s why everybody runs. That’s why women run from men. Women have run from me too. To escape.

People moved in the folding chairs, but Carmody was still. I ran because I felt a rope tightening on my life. Because Molly Mulrane was too nice. Too ordinary. Too safe. I ran because she gave me no choice. She had a script and I didn’t. They would get engaged and he’d get his B.A. and maybe a teaching job and they’d get married and have kids and maybe move out to Long Island or over to Jersey and then—I ran because I wanted something else. I wanted to be Hemingway in Pamplona or in a café on the Left Bank. I wanted to make a lot of money in the movies, the way Faulkner did or Irwin Shaw, and then retreat to Italy or the south of France. I wanted risk. I didn’t want safety. So I ran. Like a heartless frightened prick.

* * *

The first question came from a bearded man in his forties, the type who wrote nasty book reviews that guaranteed him enure.

“Do you think if you’d stayed in Brooklyn,” the bearded man asked, “you’d have been a better writer?”

Carmody smiled at the implied insult, the patronizing one.

“Probably,” he answered. “But you never know these things with any certainty. I might never have become a writer at all. There’s nothing in the Brooklyn air or the Brooklyn water that makes writers, or we’d have a couple of million writers here …”

A woman in her twenties stood up. “Do you write on a word processor, or longhand, or a typewriter?”

This was the way it was everywhere, and Carmody relaxed into the familiar. Soon he’d be asked how to get an agent or how he got his ideas and how do I protect my own ideas when I send a manuscript around? Could you read the manuscript of my novel and tell me what’s wrong? The questions came and he answered as politely as possible. He drew people like that, and he knew why: He was a success, and there were thousands of would-be writers who thought there were secret arrangements, private keys, special codes that would open the doors to the alpine slopes of the bestseller lists. He tried to tell them that, like life, it was all a lottery. Most didn’t believe him.

Then the manager stepped to the microphone and smiled and said that Mr. Carmody would now be signing books. “Because of the large turnout,” the manager said, “Mr. Carmody will not be able to personalize each book. Otherwise many of you would have a long wait.” Carmody thanked everybody for coming on such a frigid night and there was warm, loud applause. He sat down at the table, and sipped from a bottle of Poland Spring water.

He signed the first three books on the frontispiece, and then a woman named Peggy Williams smiled and said, “Could you make an exception? We didn’t go to school together, but we went to the same school twenty years apart. Could you mention that?”

He did, and the line slowed. Someone wanted him to mention the Dodgers. Another, Coney Island. One man wanted a stickball reference, although he was too young to ever have played that summer game. “It’s for my father,” he explained. There was affection in these people, for this place, this neighborhood, which was now their neighborhood. But Carmody began to feel something else in the room, something he could not see.

“You must think you’re hot shit,” said a woman in her fifties. She had daubed rouge on her pale cheeks. “I’ve been in this line almost an hour.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and tried to be light. “It’s almost as bad as the Motor Vehicle Bureau.”

She didn’t laugh.

“You could just sign the books,” she said. “Leave off the fancy stuff.”

“That’s what some people want,” he said. “The fancy stuff.”

“And you gotta give it to them? Come on.”

He signed his name on the title page and handed it to her, still smiling.

“Wait a minute,” she said, holding the book before him like a summons. “I waited a long time. Put in, ‘For Gerry’—with a G—‘who waited on line for more than an hour.’”

She laughed then too, and he did what she asked. The next three just wanted signatures, and two just wanted “Merry Christmas” and then a collector arrived and Carmody signed six first editions. He was weary now, his mind filling with images of Molly Mulrane and Seanie’s face and injuries he had caused so long ago. All out there somewhere. And still the line trailed away from the table, into a crowd that, without his glasses, had become a multicolored smear, like a bookcase.

* * *

The woman came around from the side aisle, easing toward the front of the line in a distracted way. Carmody saw her whisper to someone on the line, a young man who made room for her with the deference reserved for the old. She was hatless, her white hair cut in girlish bangs across her furrowed brow. She was wearing a short down coat, black skirt, black stockings, mannish shoes. The coat was open, showing a dark rose sweater. Her eyes were pale.

Holy God.

She was six feet away from him, behind two young men and a collector. A worn leather bag hung from her shoulder. A bag so old that Carmody remembered buying it in a shop in the Village, next door to the Eighth Street Bookshop. He remembered it when it was new, and so was he.

He glanced past the others and saw that she was not looking at him. She stared at bookshelves, or the ceiling, or the floor. Her face had an indoor whiteness. The color of ghosts. He signed a book, then another. And the girl he once loved began to come to him, the sweet pretty girl who asked nothing of him except that he love her back. And he felt then a great rush of sorrow. For her. For himself. For their lost child. He felt as if tears would soon leak from every pore in his body. He heard a whisper of someone howling. The books in front of him were now as meaningless as bricks.

Then she was there. And Carmody rose slowly and leaned forward to embrace her across the table.

“Oh, Molly,” he whispered. “Oh, Molly, I’m so, so sorry.”

She smiled then, and the brackets that framed her mouth seemed to vanish, and for a moment Carmody imagined taking her away with him, repairing her in the sun of California, making it up, writing a new ending. Rewriting his own life. He started to come around the table.

“Molly,” he said. “Molly, my love.”

Then her hand reached into the leather bag and he knew what it now must hold. Passed down from her father. A souvenir of long ago.

Yes, he thought. Release me, Molly. Yes. Bring me your nickel-plated gift. Do it.

Her hand came out of the bag, holding what he expected.

HASIDIC NOIR

BY PEARL ABRAHAM

Williamsburg

It was a day no different from other days, a not unusual day in which I was doing not unusual things in my own slow way, what my wife who is quick in everything refers to, not always appreciatively, as my meditative manner. I’ve tried to explain that slowness is my method, the way I work, that this is how I solve my cases and earn a living.

Yes, she says, that’s all right while you’re working, but a meditative mind doesn’t serve such tasks as feeding a child or stopping for a quart of milk on the way home.

She doesn’t know that she’s asking for the impossible. At the end of the day when I close and lock the door to my office, she wants me to turn the lock on my thinking mind, along with my desk and files, and arrive home free and clear, prepared to give her and the children my full attention. And probably she has a right to such a husband, but the habit of brooding can’t be turned on and off at will.

On this not unusual day, doing my not unusual things, stopping before morning service at the mikvah for the immersion that all Hasidic men take once a day, twice on Fridays in honor of the Sabbath, the word my brooding mind picked out of the male rumble was MURDER.

Murdered in cold blood, I overheard a man say.

The delayed response—the speaker was probably under water—when it came, was a Talmudic citation, not unexpected in a world in which the Talmud makes up a large part of every young man’s curriculum. More was said, there were details, some of which I’d previously heard and dismissed as talk, and names—the victim’s, the victim’s rival, and also for some reason the victim’s brother-in-law—and I was all ears.

I waited my turn for immersion with murder on my mind. After all, such violence isn’t a daily occurrence in our world. And the victim, a man belonging to Hasidic aristocracy—a nephew of the Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum—known as the Dobrover rebbe, one of two relatives in line to inherit the Grand Rabbinic throne, wasn’t just anyone. The rivalry between Dobrov and Szebed had been part of the Hasidic scene for as long as I could remember, dating back to the old rebbe’s first stroke. For years there’d been volley after volley of insults and injuries between the two congregations, and the tales of these insults grew long beards. Along with others in the community, I’d grown a thick skin and generally remained unruffled by even the tallest of such tales. But murder! That was unheard of. And where did the Dobrover’s brother-in-law, Reb Shloimele, administrator of Szebed’s boys’ school, enter into this story?

I spent the rest of the morning at my desk, closing the files of the usual, petty white-collar crimes, my regular paying cases, but my mind was preoccupied with this murder, which had arrived without a client, no one to pay for time or expenses. After so many years of hoping for the opportunity to stand the detective’s real test, praying even, God protect us from evil, for a case replete with gun, body, widow, the complete grim pattern, here it appeared, a Hasidic murder, a rarity in this community, and I couldn’t pass it up.

I’d had a modicum of experience working homicide, on the fringes really, assisting the New York Police Department on several cases in the nearby Italian and Spanish neighborhoods. The police chief still calls occasionally with questions about this part of the city that an insider could answer easily. And now, after so many years, it was as an insider that I’d come across this murder, and it was also as an insider that I knew to judge it a politically motivated crime with perpetrators from the top brass. With the Dobrover rebbe out of the way, Szebed could take the Grand Rabbinic throne without a struggle. If I seem to be jumping to conclusions, note that I grew up in this community and continue to live here; I am one of them.

Anywhere else, murder, even when it occurs with some frequency, is front-page news; in the Hasidic world, it’s kept out of the papers—another sign that this was an inside job. Our insular world, may it long survive, transported from Eastern Europe and rebuilt in Williamsburg, New York, an American shtetl, has made a point of knowing and keeping politicians, judges, and members of the press in our pockets. I knew too well how this worked.

I also knew that asking questions was not an option. One question in the wrong place, one word even, could alert those who didn’t want talk. When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified. It was quickly becoming clear to me that this murder had been handed me for a reason, that it was for this case that I, a Hasidic detective, the first one in the history of Hasidism, had been bestowed upon a community that usually eschewed new things. I owed it to the higher powers that created me to pursue the murderers, but I would have to watch my step.

* * *

At noon, I walked the ten blocks to Landau’s on Lee, my regular lunch counter, selected not necessarily for its excellence in food but for its distance from my office, because my wife insisted on some daily exercise, though I was partial to their sweet and sour pickles and their warm sauerkraut, having grown up on them, and would have walked twenty blocks for a Landau frankfurter with all the trimmings. On this day, I hoped to overhear something useful. It was late November, a cool stimulating day. I buttoned my black coat, pulled my black hat forward, and wrapped the ivory silk muffler twice around my neck, a gift from my wife when we were bride and groom.

The windows of Landau’s were already steamy with cooking. I took the three steps down, entered, was greeted by the elderly Reb Motl Landau, who has known me, as he likes to say, ever since I was this high, indicating a place above his own head. I’m tall, 5’11”, which is considered especially tall in these parts, populated as it is by mostly small-boned Jews of Hungarian descent, modyeros, the Romanian Jews like to call them, intending a bit of harmless deprecation since the word is also the name of a particular nut eaten there.

Without waiting for my order, Reb Motl set a loaded tray down in front of me, as if he’d seen me leave the office ten minutes earlier. My lunch: a frankfurter as starter, beefburger as entree, along with two sour pickles, a glass of water, and an ice-cream soda, nondairy of course.

I took my first bite, a third of the dog, noted the three-person huddle at the far end of the lunch counter, and raised an eyebrow in question.

Reb Motl nodded, drew five fingers of one hand together, meaning patience please, and went to serve another customer. He never played dumb and deaf with me. And we didn’t waste words.

When Reb Motl returned, he picked up my crumpled wrappers as if this is what he had returned for, and grumbled, What don’t you already know?

The word on the street? I asked.

You mean word at the mikvah, he corrected.

I nodded.

Guilty, he said.

I raised my eyebrows in question, meaning, Guilty of what?

Read the book, Reb Motl said.

What book? I asked, using only my shoulders and eyebrows.

Published to make the sins of Dobrov known, Reb Motl said, and moved on. This was a busy lunch counter and he couldn’t afford to pause long enough to forfeit the momentum that kept him efficient.

* * *

I stopped at the bookstore on my way back to the office, wended my way past the leaning towers of yarmulkes at the entrance, the piles of ritual fringes, stacks of aleph-bet primers. As always, Reb Yidel was behind the counter, and when I asked for the book, which turned out to be a pamphlet, really, he pointed to a stack beside the register. I looked at the title page to see who had undersigned this bit of slander, and found no name, no individual taking responsibility for it. The printer, however, was a company known as the printing house for Szebed, and I said to myself, of course it would be Szebed, who else, but I was also disappointed. The motivation behind Szebed’s publication of such a pamphlet was too obvious, too facile to be interesting, and I wished for a more complicated community with more difficult cases, obscure motivations, a case that required mental agility, intricacies I could take pride in unraveling. It was use of the mind that had attracted me to detective work in the first place.

Reb Yidel rang up my copy but remained unusually silent.

Know what this is all about? I asked casually, as if my interest were entirely benign.

He shrugged, a careful man with a business and family to protect, and an example to me, who was also a business and family man, who could also benefit from caution. But it was precisely such caution that the perpetrators counted on to help them get away with their crime. They knew that few, if any, among us would risk antagonizing a powerful congregation with fat fingers that reached everywhere.

Any truths? I pressed on.

Who knows? he shrugged. I was pretty sure he knew, and waited.

There’s a kernel of truth in every lie, he quoted.

And who is credited with writing the pamphlet? I asked as harmlessly as I could manage.

It is believed to be the work of Reb Shloimele, Szebed’s school administrator, Reb Yidel answered neutrally.

The same Reb Shloimele who is also brother-in-law to the Dobrover? I asked, knowing the answer.

Reb Yidel nodded, but declined to say more. I slapped a five-dollar bill down on the counter and left without waiting for the change. Here finally was a detail to ponder, a motivation to unravel.

* * *

At my desk I thumbed through the cheaply printed pamphlet. There were accusations of corruption in the Dobrover kosher seal. Discrepancies were cited. A box of nonkosher gelatin, pure pig treife, was discovered in the kitchen at Reismann’s bakery. The egg powder used in Horowitz-Margareten matzohs came in unmarked industrial-size boxes. And the pizzafalafel stores in Borough Park, also known to be under the Dobrover seal, were inspected no more than once a month. How much could go wrong in the twenty-nine days between inspections? the writer asked rhetorically, then concluded that for a kosher seal, Dobrov’s stamp stank of non-kosher.

I turned to the next chapter. So far, this was the kind of gossip you hear and dismiss regularly. What wouldn’t Szebed do to annex Dobrov’s lucrative kosher-seal business?

The next chapter attacked the Dobrover’s intimate way with his disciples, their secretive, late-night gatherings and celebrations, accused him of messianic aspirations, and ended with the warning that the dangerous makings of the next false messiah were right here in our midst. This too I’d heard previously and considered hearsay. Besides, the days of messianic upheaval and dangers, dependent as they were on seventeenth-century superstitions and ignorance, were long past. We were living in a world in which every yekel and shmekel could read the news, had Internet access. The information super-highway, to use the words of a smart but foolish president, has arrived in our little community in Williamsburg too.

These allegations were followed by an interview with a former disciple in which a discerning reader would quickly recognize that the words had been placed in the mouth of the unwary young man. There were incriminating quotes from a Dobrover son and daughter, who, the pamphleteer pointed out as further evidence of criminality, had turned against their own father. The final chapter featured the court arguments that led to excommunication. From this, a facile argument for divorce followed, since the wife of an excommunicated man would suffer unnecessarily from her husband’s exclusion.

I closed the book in wonder. In the standard course, such a series of events—going from initial suspicions to allegations to accusations to excommunication by the court—would span a lifetime. For all of it to have gone off in a couple of years and without much of a hitch, a well-planned program must have been in place. But who had planned so well, who had known the ins and outs of Dobrov, and who had so much private access to family members? I needed to find the children, talk to the sons, the eldest daughter too. Did they understand that they’d been used—abused, rather?

* * *

At 5, when Hasidim gather in the synagogues for the afternoon service, I turned the lock on my office door and walked to the Szebed synagogue, congregation of the murdered man’s cousin and rival for the Grand Rabbinic throne. Inside I noted the recent interior renovations to the brownstone. Exterior work was still in progress. And was it jubilation I sensed in certain members of the congregation, jubilation at the Dobrover’s death?

I took a place at the back of the room, where I would have a good view of all who came and went. During the service, I noticed an earnest young man dressed in the style of a Litvak, an outsider, his face thin and pale, an unhappy face. What was he doing here mid-week? It happened now and then that someone’s Litvak relative visited for a Sabbath and attended services in a Hasidic shtibel, but this was mid-week, when young men were at yeshiva; furthermore, this wasn’t any shtibel, it was Szebed.

After the service, a birth was announced, the name pro-claimed: Udel, daughter of Sarah. Wine, plum brandy, egg kichel, and herring were brought in, and I watched as the cup of wine was passed from relative to relative. The young man appeared to be one of them, because he too received the cup. I eyed him as he went through the motion of sipping and passed it on. Not an outsider. Definitely related. Probably a brother to the young wife, though why would a Szebeder marry into a Litvak family? I wondered.

I went up to the table, poured myself a thimble of brandy in friendly gesture, and casually asked another family man beside me, And who is the young man?

Why, Dobrov’s youngest son, brother-in-law of the new father, the man said.

Oh, I said, I didn’t recognize him now that he’s grown up—the usual nonsense adults speak, mere filler. Beneath the filler, I was beside myself. A Dobrov son dressed in the short coat and hat of a Litvak, peyos tucked behind his ears. His father and grandfathers must be churning in their graves. And where were the signs of mourning, the ripped lapel on the jacket, the loose flap on the shirt under it? There was none of that. And during the service no prayer for the soul of the deceased had been recited either. Clearly, the son wasn’t mourning the father, not openly anyway.

I mingled among the men, made my way up to the young man as smoothly as I could manage, put my hand out to wish him a mazel tov. He extended a limp, unwilling hand, responded with the merest nod. His eyes, however, scanned my face, didn’t seem to find what they wanted, and moved on. An unhappy soul, I thought, a very disturbed young man. I attempted to squeeze some reassurance into the pale thin hand, clapped it with my other hand before letting go, then taking a roundabout path made my way to the door, slipped out unnoticed, I hoped, and walked up and down the block, with an eye on the comings and goings at this house, a brownstone whose upper floors served as the Szebeder residence. The new mother, I guessed, was staying here with her newborn, and I wanted to see and know what might be going on among the women.

It was over half an hour before my stakeout was rewarded. The door opened, the Dobrover widow came to the door buttoned up in her long black fur and carrying her purse. Attending the widow to the door was her daughter, the young mother, and behind her, the Szebeder rebbetzin. Without warning, the daughter threw her arms around her mother and sobbed noisily. I’m quite certain there were wet trails on the mother’s cheeks too. They remained this way, the daughter clinging to her mother, for some moments, then the mother disentangled herself and walked down the wide brownstone stairs.

Here finally were signs of mourning. I was quite certain this is what the tears were for, since giving birth is not normally, that is if the child emerges healthy, an occasion for ears.

Not knowing what else to do, I followed the older woman at a distance. As widow of the Dobrover, she should be mourning, sitting out the seven days of shiva. Instead, here she was, walking in the streets, leading me to an address I didn’t know, not the residence of Dobrov, and it was then I remembered the divorce. Having divorced the Dobrover she couldn’t mourn him. Imagine her feelings. I wondered at the torment every member of this family must be experiencing. The death of a husband and father one had disowned in life on what were surely false accusations; this was a tragedy.

* * *

It was a deep blue evening with a moon and stars brighter than the street lights, and the shadows of men on their way home grew long and lean. I wrapped my silk muffler tight against the wind. At home it would be past the children’s dinner hour, they would be in bed by now, and I turned in that direction, up Ross toward Marcy Avenue, to tuck them in for the night, reflecting on the vulnerability of a wife and children, the ease with which an entire family can be destroyed.

I was in time to read several pages about the current favorite, the miracle-performing BeSHT and his disciples, and remained bedside long enough to see willpower lose out to fatigue. One by one, from the youngest to my eldest, who to prove her superiority to her younger siblings made a valiant effort every night to be the last one to fall asleep, their eyes closed.

In the kitchen my wife was washing up, putting things away. I joined her at the sink with a dishtowel, and told her about following the rebbetzin to a strange address.

Don’t you know anything? my fine rebbetzin asked rhetorically. The poor woman remarried about a year ago, to a widower about fifteen years older than her. People say she was led by the nose for a long walk, to the end of the block and back again. By a scheming brother-in-law who convinced the world, the wife, and the children of the Dobrover’s sins.

And what happened to the younger children? I asked.

Taken in by the brother-in-law, Reb Shloimele. The younger daughter, barely seventeen, was palmed off to her first cousin, Reb Shloimele’s son, a bum, rumor has it, who would have had difficulty finding a father willing to hand over his daughter. The younger son, still a cheder boy at the time, was raised in Reb Shloimele’s home, and at the age of thirteen, sent off to a Litvak yeshiva, with the intention, it was said, to further hurt the father.

That explained the strangeness of a Dobrov son in Litvak garb. And again Reb Shloimele made himself felt in this sordid story. I shook my head. So much evil under the noses of the most pious men, and in their names. I felt an obligation to bring this murder to light, to clear the innocent and accuse the guilty, but how to go about it? And whom to name? This brother-in-law was a mover and shaker, a makher in Yiddish, but he couldn’t have acted alone. There were powerful men behind him but I couldn’t accuse all of Szebed. And who would risk the congregation’s ire, help point the finger, and haul the shameless sinners into Jewish court? None of the rabbis appointed to our house of judgment would risk political suicide. Since I couldn’t expect assistance on the inside, I would have to go outside.

I attended my evening study session, then started walking toward home, but found myself instead on Keap Street again, in front of the Szebed residence, looking for something, I wasn’t sure what. The door opened, I stepped into a nearby doorway and watched the young Dobrover son in his short coat and hat emerge alone, hurry down the stairs, and turn right on Lee. I followed at a distance, curious, wondering where he would go. He led me to 446 Ross, to the Dobrover home, dark and shuttered, and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up. Would he go up the stairs and enter his old home, which the angel of death had invaded? He didn’t. After long minutes, he turned away and walked back. What struck me as exceptionally cruel was his inability to mourn publicly, a ritual intended as an aid to grief and recovery. Standing in the way of mourning were the laws of excommunication. An excommunicated man, considered dead, was denied living mourners; there would be no one to say kaddish for the Dobrover’s soul. His enemies had succeeded in cutting him off both in life and in death.

It was my turn to walk the streets and think.

The perpetrators had used public opinion to help make their case to the judges. I too would have to take my case to the public. And since I couldn’t afford print—even the cheapest pamphlet costs a goodly sum—I would have to use the poor man’s version: the Internet.

At my desk the next morning I found a chat room with organized religion as its topic, soon steered the conversation to religious politics, and posted my story as an example of corruption, proclaiming the Dobrover’s innocence. I didn’t have to wait long for the important questions to come up, the who and why of every whodunit, and I pointed my finger to the brother-in-law as prime perp, offered as explanation the oldest motivation, envy, the reason Cain raised his hand against his brother Abel. I was convinced and was able to convince others that without the green worm of jealousy, the Dobrover rebbe and his family would have remained untouched.

* * *

Consider this brother-in-law: a promising yeshiva boy who in maturity proved to be a minor scholar with an impatient mind incapable of complex argument. Marrying the sister of the Dobrover rebbetzin, herself a woman of fine rabbinical stock, was his undoing. He would have sat at the table, listened to the deeply scholarly talk, and squirmed in ignorance. The first years of his marriage, he sat pressing the yeshiva bench unwillingly, because the husband of the Dobrover’s rebbetzin’s sister had to be a scholar, then seized the first opportunity that came his way and became the director of the newly founded Szebeder boys’ school. The position fulfilled his need to move about and accomplish things, but at the Sabbath table the sense of his own inferiority would have deepened. And without scholarship to occupy his mind, he became a plotting busybody. The rivalry between the two congregations presented him with an opportunity. Knowing he would never be a significant player in Dobrov, he determined to curry favor at Szebed. Indeed, his reward for interfering in the life and marriage of Dobrov was proof enough of his motivation: He had recently been appointed administrative overseer of the entire Szebed congregation, not a scholarly position, but respectable enough to protect him from his detractors. In taking him on, in other words, I was taking on the whole of Szebed. The anonymity of the Internet, I hoped—I hadn’t used my name—would protect me.

And that’s where I miscalculated. I didn’t count on the Internet’s long and wide reach, nor its speed. Religious corruption, whether among priests or rabbis, has a captive audience in America. Well-meaning, sympathy-riddled letters came pouring in, as if I was the one who had suffered the heavy hand of the court. The chat room conversations went on for hours and days, and when I was too exhausted, continued without me, spilled over into new chat rooms. I spent hours online, returned to my office after services and dinner, and remained until midnight typing.

Who were the people chatting? A mixed group—the word crowd would be more correct—it turned out. There were both knowing and unknowing participants, meaning Hasidic and not. Also a good number who asked questions that revealed they knew nothing at all about Judaism. Within days, a reporter from the Village Voice asked for an interview, then a staff writer writing for the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.” I agreed to give the interviews as long as I remained anonymous. I didn’t meet them in person.

Is it necessary to say that I wasn’t making my wife happy? She argued that I would remain anonymous only to outsiders. Anyone on the inside who wanted to know who was behind this would soon figure it out. Once known, my name would be mud, and our lives would be shattered. And of course she had a point. Good women are often prescient.

First an anonymous threat to cease and desist or suffer consequences was posted in what I was by now thinking of as my chat room, named Hasidic Noir by a participant, a wise-guy. I was accused of lying. Where were the mourners? this faceless voice asked. No one had performed keria (the ripping of the lapels), no one was sitting shiva (seven days of mourning), and no one had recited the mourner’s kaddish (the prayer for the soul of the dead). He concluded with a declaration that there was no Dobrover rebbe or Dobrover congregation, that I was a careerist who had fabricated a murder for the sake of publicity.

Clearly this was coming from an insider with knowledge of the vocabulary and customs, someone who knew that excommunication rendered a man nonexistent to the community, hence his argument that there was no Dobrover rebbe.

The chat room became a divisive hive, with people taking sides, demanding to know what the words meant, who was the liar in this story, how to find out. One cynical participant raised the irrelevant question of my, not the murderer’s, motivation. If the brother-in-law is jealous Cain, he asked, who is this snitch, and what’s he going for? The next morning the Village Voice published the interview, and late that evening, when my wife and I were already in bed, there was a knock at the door.

I drew on my flannel dressing gown, removed the Glock I keep in the locked drawer of our night table, and instructed my wife to remain in bed. I opened the door, loaded gun in hand, pointing. These men should know what there is to know. Three Szebeder bums stood red-faced, mouths open, breathing hard. They must have used the stairs. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they’d been imbibing. But I knew that if there’d been any excess, it had been verbal not alcoholic. To achieve a tough’s appearance they’d had to talk themselves into a frenzy.

The barrel end of the gun quickly quieted them, as it often does those who want to live. The middle one in the group produced a letter. I opened it in front of them, keeping the gun aimed, keeping them fearful and rooted in place. At a glance, the letter appeared to be a court summons. The Jewish court, made up of the same rabbis who’d helped bury the Dobrover, was now calling me in.

I congratulated myself on achieving something of a goal. Two weeks ago these men wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Now they were all ears. But if I didn’t want to lose all that was precious to me—my wife, my children, and my livelihood—I would have to plan well. I would tell my story, but I would tell it publicly.

I looked at the quivering men at my door and felt sorry for them, mere messengers. We were told to bring you in, one mumbled.

Tell the court I’ll see them tomorrow, at 9 a.m. sharp, in the revealing light of day. There will be no nighttime shenanigans. Good evening.

I shut the door and waited for the sounds of their steps, first shuffling, then sprinting to get away. I bolted the door, inserted the police lock, looked in on the children who had slept through it all, assured my wife that everything was under control, and got to work on the small laptop I keep at home.

When I finally returned to bed at 3 in the morning, my wife hugged me silently and did her best to remind me that I am only a man, of flesh and blood, not iron. I knew that even though she was against what I was doing—for reasons of safety rather than principle—she couldn’t help but be proud of the way I was handling it.

* * *

I slept well, and in the morning dressed as usual, in my charcoal gray suit, white shirt, black overcoat, and silk muffler. I pocketed the Glock as protection against the court’s manhandling, their method of intimidation. This was a non-jurisdictional court, therefore without metal detectors, and without the routine of body searches, both unnecessary. A handful of appointed rabbis, intrinsically honest, would act as judges, but they owed their livelihoods to their patrons, the men who nominated, appointed, and paid for their services. There would be some younger scholars available to act as mediators. Also present would be the man who was bringing the case against me. Who would it be? I expected to see the man I’d fingered, the jealous brother-in-law, or if he didn’t want to show his face, a representative.

I followed my regular routine, stopped first at the mikvah which was buzzing. It was a perfect setting for murder, an underground hell, where locker room odors envelop you on entrance through the unassuming side door. Hurrying down the stone stairs and long tiled hallways, the curl and drip of the waterlogged vapors take over and then the low rumble of bass and tenor voices. At the entrance to the lockers, the bath attendant hands you your towel, one per person, and you move along toward your designated locker and the bench in front of it. You undo your shoes, remove your socks, left foot first, then the left leg of your pants, and so on, in the order in which you were taught to undress. Dressing, you reversed it, right foot first, insuring against the possibility of getting the day off on the wrong foot. And still the act of undressing provokes other indiscretions. While your hands are at work, your ears don’t remain idle. They tune into the nearest conversation in the aisle, then onto the next nearest, and so on, staying with each one long enough to hear whether it’s of interest. And of course there always is something of interest, a bit of information, gossip someone heard at home the night before, husbands picking up at the mikvah where their house-bound, child-bound, telephone-addicted wives left off the night before.

I didn’t have to wait long to hear my own name, and then the name of the man I’d fingered, Reb Shloimele, the chief administrator of Szebed, though to hear the talk, not for much longer. A well-respected man of the community the day before, today his name was mud. With the generous helping of hyperbole typical of mikvah gossip, someone equated Reb Shloimele’s crime with that of the biblical Amelek’s, Israel’s oldest enemy. In other words, Reb Shloimele was a sentenced man.

* * *

This time I expected the crowds, and the journalists with cameras. And I knew how much Szebed would hate it. The rabbis wouldn’t approve. No one would like it, but the publicity would serve to protect me. I pulled the brim of my hat down to conceal my face and made my way through the throng. Questions, microphones, and cameras were pressed on me. I walked straight through, succumbing to none. The Internet had done the work, the chat rooms had been devilishly successful; it was enough. I had no reason to add fuel to the fire and further enrage the sitting judges.

Inside, without much of a greeting and none of the usual friendly handshakes, two men attempted to lead me, strongarm style, to my place at the table, completely unnecessary since on my own I’d shown up at the courtroom. I shook them off and walked alone, pulled out the chair, sat. The judges frowned, but said nothing. They were pretending at busyness, each taking a turn at thumbing through a pile of continuous-feed paper in front of them, the tabs and holes that fit a dot matrix printer’s sprockets still attached. Someone had provided them with a complete printout of the chat room conversations, a fat manuscript titled “Hasidic Noir.” I suppressed a smile.

Throat-clearing and short grunts indicated the start of proceedings. One judge asked whether the defendant knew what he was accused of.

No, I said. As everyone here knows, I am a God-fearing, law-abiding Hasid whose livelihood is detective work. I solve petty crimes, attempt to bring to justice those who break the law, my small effort at world repair.

There was a long pause. Read this then, the judge said, and handed me a sheet of paper.

The complaint against me: libel, for attempting to besmirch a man’s name, to ruin a reputation.

The rabbi sitting directly across the table waited for me to finish reading, then said, You know as well as we do that a man guilty of libel must be judged, according to Jewish law, as a murderer. Destroying a man’s reputation is a serious crime.

I nodded and said, I’m well aware of that law because it is precisely what I believe Reb Shloimele guilty of.

I made a long show of extracting the cheap pamphlet from my briefcase, pushed it across the table, and announced, as if this were a courtroom complete with stenographers, Let the record show that this slanderous pamphlet was submitted by the defendant as evidence of Reb Shloimele’s guilt. Murder via slander, false slander, moreover, since not one of the accusations have been proven true without doubt.

I paused, looked from face to face, then continued slowly: And this court is guilty of acting as an accomplice to this murder. Even if Reb Shloimele managed to gather enough signatures to support the excommunication, and all the signatories were surely his Szebeder friends, by what right, I ask on behalf of Dobrov, did it grant the Dobrover rebbetzin a divorce and break up an entire family. Since you’re citing Jewish law, you also know that breaking up a marriage unnecessarily is equal to taking life.

The rabbi’s fist came down on the table with a thump. Enough, he said. Neither Reb Shloimele nor this court are on trial. Our sins are beside the point right now. You, however, have a lot to answer for. If you thought or knew that someone had been wronged, you ought to have come directly to us, and quietly. Instead, you took the story to the public, and not just the Jewish public. You are guilty of besmirching not only the name of a respectable man among us, but also the name of God, and worse, in front of the eyes of other nations. Retribution for befouling the name of God, as you well know, arrives directly from heaven, but this court will also do its part. You will be as a limb cut away from a body. Your wife and children will share your fate.

I took stock of the situation, decided that I was willing to take my chances with God, and since in the eyes of these men I was already judged guilty, I couldn’t make my case worse. I took a deep breath and went all the way.

Which of you here would have been willing to listen to my story? Which of you here isn’t paid, one way or another, by the Szebeder congregation. According to the law of this nation in which we live, you qualify as collaborators, and therefore ought to recuse yourself from this case. I exhaled and stood. And if, as further proof of your guilt, you require a body, here it is.

I took long strides to the door, opened it. As planned, an EMS technician wheeled into the room the Dobrover rebbe himself, frail and wraithlike, a man of fifty-three years with an early heart condition, attended by his young son in the Litvak frock.

The Dobrover appeared before us all as the Job-like figure that sooner or later every mortal becomes, but in his case the suffering had come at the hand of man rather than God, and that made all the difference.

The room remained silent for long minutes. An excommunicated man shows himself in the courtroom for only one purpose: to have the excommunication nullified, to be reborn to the community. This court had difficult days, weeks, probably, of work ahead.

I’d done my part for Dobrov. Now it remained to be seen what Dobrov would do for me. In the meantime, no one took notice when I snapped my briefcase closed loudly, adjusted the brim of my hat, and left. I had become a dead man, unseen and unheard.

* * *

©2004 Pearl Abraham

NO TIME FOR SENIOR’S

BY SIDNEY OFFIT

Downtown Brooklyn

I’m talking murder. Murder!” she says.

It’s past noon. I’m sitting in my office near DeKalb and Flatbush, knocking off a corned-beef-lean bathed in cole slaw on seeded rye from Junior’s. And there stands Sylvia Berkowitz O’Neil, not looking her age, in high heels, short skirt, and enough makeup to drown Esther Williams and Mark Spitz on a bad day.

Before I can crack wise, Sylvia takes her first shot. “Yer eating at Junior’s? I’m working day and night, night and day, with an economy deli for the neighborhood, and you’re supporting the competition? And don’t tell me you never heard of Senior’s!”

Senior’s? She’s got to be pulling of my legs. But not Sylvia. A kid with an old baseball cap on backwards is standing by her side, the spitting image of Seamus “Scoop” O’Neil, my former pal, who run off to City Hall with Sylvia back when we were an item.

“So what’s up? Why me? Why today after—has it been thirty, forty years?”

Sylvia doesn’t miss a beat. “I need you, Pistol Pete,” she says. “The cops have got Scoop in for murder. Murder. They say he done in Front Page Shamburger and Sherlock Iconoflip.” Then, “Don’t you ask a lady to sit down? What’s happened to your manners? And this gentleman, about whom you don’t seem to have the presence to ask, is our nephew I.F., named, of course, after the famous Izzy Stone, who you know was Scoop’s hero all these many years.”

So, I pull up two old bridges that I haven’t unfolded in—gotta stop counting the years. Sylvia keeps yammering, reminding me I’m the only private eye she’s ever really known, recalling the days when I was feeding Scoop leads, checking out scumbags for him, so he could blow the lid off the hustlers at Borough Hall—who made the deals with sewer, highway, and bridge contractors. I unwrap a White Owl, pull out the old Zippo, and am ready to light up.

“You are not going to smoke,” Sylvia tells me. “I don’t believe it. You still haven’t caught on.”

That’s Sylvia. Hasn’t skipped a beat, still telling me what to do. I bury the Zippo and start chewing the stogie.

“It happened at their weekly poker game,” Sylvia says.

“What useta be their gang of six, what with the smoking and the drinking, what it done to their lungs and livers and kidneys, not to say their marriages and longevity. Well, now it’s down to the three of them. Was three until Front Page and Sherlock—may their souls rest in a City Room—got knocked off.”

Sylvia is not keen on interruptions, but I cut in. “Gotta play it straight with you for old time’s sake, Sylv,” I say. “Haven’t hustled a case in must be five years. Been sittin’ up here in the office on a long-term lease just passin’ the time. Doin’ a little this and that.”

She knows I never been hitched, and I can tell by the way she kinda half smiles at me she suspects I’m still carrying the torch for her.

“Sanchez over at the precinct says it was poison—arsenic mixed with mustard—that done them in,” Sylvia goes on. “The cops found splotches of mustard on Scoop’s cuff, his shirt, the zipper of his fly. Would you believe it?”

I’m studying the kid’s cap. The mellow blue has me wondering if it’s an old Brooklyn Dodger lid. “Hey, kid, you ever hear of Carl Furillo, Sandy Amoros? Duke Snider? I know you heard of Jackie Robinson. Everybody heard of Jackie Robinson.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Sylvia says in a huff. “I’m talking about my husband, held for murder. I’m giving you the facts, nothing but the facts, and you come up with a walk down Memory Lane. Who you think you are—Joe Franklin?”

But the kid is hooked. “Carl Anthony Furillo hit .296 for the 1955 World Champions. Edwin Donald ‘Duke’ Snider hit four home runs, batted in seven, BA .320 in the Series. ‘Sandy’ Edmund Isasi Amoros led the team with .333 …”

“Enough,” Sylvia says, like she’s letting the dentist know one more drill and she’s outa there. “We didn’t come here to talk baseball.”

But the kid has cleared the fences. When Scoop and I seen the last of each other, we had this pact, at least I thought we had a deal, only talk, talk only, about Dodgers, once O’Malley had packed up the gang including the great Sandy Koufax himself and hauled kit and caboodle off to L.A. I’m touched that the kid—did Sylvia say he was her nephew?—has got it all down pat. The memories, my memories of our church that was Ebbets Field.

“Everything isn’t picture perfect between Scoop and me,” Sylvia goes on. “I’m not gonna tell you it is. Like Senior’s. Me opening the restaurant, a deli. I’m ordering my pastramis from Langers. You never taste a smokier, saltier, peppery flavor in your life. ‘Yer ordering pastramis from L.A.,’ Scoop says. ‘I won’t hear of it. First they steal our Dodgers. Now you’re goin’ head to head with Junior’s with an L.A. pastrami.’ That’s what he says. No head for business.”

“Say, kid,” I say. “They call you I.F.? What you know about Izzy Stone?”

“He published an independent newsletter, received a Special George Polk Journalism Award in 1970, the same award the Brooklyn Eagle won for Community Service in 1948 and 1949. Stone thanked the Brooklyn Center of L.I.U. for what he called a great honor.”

The kid gets no further than that when Sylv is back again.

“What is this? First down Memory Lane, now it’s Old Home Week. The Brooklyn Eagle is dead and so are Front Page and Sherlock. Scoop is facing the hot seat and you’re cutting up about Brooklyn bygones. You taking the case or I gotta fly a shammes in from L.A.?”

“Sanchez, you say?” I say. “Pablo Sanchez. He still around? Must be a sergeant since I seen him last. I’ll give him a call.” Sylvia is pumping her heels, the kid is flipping his lid, brim forward now. I can see the fading white monogrammed B. The number comes to me easy, 84th Precinct, 718-875-6811. I’m still chomping the stogie when I’m on the line with Pablo. “Socorro! Socorro!” I say by way of openers. “I gotta talk to you, amigo. I hear you got Scoop O’Neil in for asesinato. His wife Sylvia put me on the case. I gotta talk to him. No puedo esperar.”

“Come on over,” Pablo says, “Esperaré aquí.”

“I’m on,” I tell Sylvia and the kid. “You might as well come along for the ride.”

* * *

“Sure I know my way around Brooklyn,” the kid tells me as we’re ambling toward Gold Street. “I got a map.” Then he says, “You ever hear of Only the Dead Know Brooklyn?”

“Not now,” says Sylvia, wobbling on her high heels. “I’m in the dumps without more bad news.”

I say, “Yeah. A story by Thomas Wolfe, the elder. I never knew kids your age even knew who he was.”

“Izzy knows all about books and batting averages,” Sylvia squawks. “But ask him to slice a corned beef and it comes out like he’s working the Blarney Stone.”

When we reach the old brown brick precinct house where they’re holding Scoop, Pablo greets Sylv, “Mucho gusto en conocerla, señorita.” Then, he makes it clear, only one visitor at a time in the detective’s office. He’s arranged for me to have a confab with Scoop.

I’m sittin’ on one of those hard-back chairs that must’ve been designed by a chiropractor to increase business when Scoop comes in looking like it’s ten seconds after Bobby Thomson’s home run that done us in in ’51.

“Pete. Pistol Pete,” he says, shaking his head from side to side, the flaps of his graying mustache twitching in the breeze. “It’s been so long, so long ago and far away.” For a second there I think Scoop is gonna break into a song. Scoop useta be like that, a walkin’, talkin’ Broadway musical with subtitles. I understand why Sylv scratched me for him. All that freebee entertainment. Scoop plunks in the chair across the desk from me. “Can you get me outa here? I done nothing wrong. We’re playing deuces wild and I’m drawing to an ace and two twos when they cave in—Sherlock and Front Page, two of the greatest beat reporters who never won a Polk Award.”

“Hey, you win a Polk Award?” I’m checking out Scoop’s memory.

“Nominated twice,” Scoop says with a long sigh. “I had Al Landa and David Medina pitching for me, but couldn’t get past that flack Hershey they brought in from Newsday.”

The marbles are there, so I ask him for the story. “No song and dance, Scoop,” I say. “We only got so long. Sanchez is doing us a favor. Just a run through, not twice around.”

Scoop confirms pretty much what Sylvia has told me—the history of the poker game, the poisoned mustard, the clues on his cuff, pants, fly. I’m taking notes, scratching times, names, the menu. Seems the scene of the crime is a small office off the main drag of Senior’s, the deli Sylvia has opened less than a month ago.

“I never wanted her to do it,” Scoop says. “What we need a business for at our age? We should be rolling in the clover or at least the sands of Miami Beach. But you know Sylvia, once she got it in her head to make pastrami on rye with a slice of cheesecake for McDonald’s prices, there was no stopping her. She’s talking franchises coast to coast, going public on the big board, and we’re lucky if we can pay the bills even with my kid—” Scoop breaks off, shrugs, collects himself. “I mean our nephew I.F. Izzy. Ain’t he an egg cream with a dash of cinnamon if you ever seen one?”

Egg creams with cinnamon? That’s a new one on me, but I let it pass. I’m hearing “my kid” before “our nephew.” I say, “Tell me something, Scoop. This nephew of yourn, he’s your sister’s kid? Molly who I remember lived in Sea Gate before she run off with a retired cutter from the garment district and moved to South Fallsburg?”

“Naw. Naw,” Scoop says. “The cutter—may his creases rest in peace—is long since gone. Molly married again, an artist. She’s got a place in Brooklyn Heights, right there looking over the southern tip of Manhattan.”

I know Scoop has no other sisters or brothers and this “nephew” definitely does not run in Sylvia’s family. I put it to him: “This kid, I.F. Izzy. He is or is no Molly’s son?”

Scoop shrugs, comes as close as I’ve ever seen him to blushing, starts fumbling for a butt. I’d stake him to a White Owl, but it is definitely not a good idea to light up a fat stogie in a precinct house when you’re being held for murder.

“He’s no nephew,” Scoop says like he’s breaking the Lindbergh case. “The kid is my son. Not by Sylvia. Sylvia and I couldn’t have kids—not in the cards for us.”

I’m sitting cool as a cucumber, no how do you do, it’s all news to me It’s a confession, right out of Bernard Macfadden’s True Story, Truer Romance, Truest Experience. A marriage gone lightly sour, a career diving for cover, not much happening except for poker with the boys and a chippy who likes to sing duets. Scoop tells me he picked up I.F.’s mother in a journalism class he was teaching part-time at L.I.U. twenty years ago.

“A good kid. I really liked her, had a lot of respect for that babe. Would have broken up with Sylvia for her, but she—Martha Gellhorn Washington—would you believe it, named for one of the great foreign correspondents of her time, who also never won a Polk Award. Anyway, Martha said it was just a fling. I was too old for her, not really her type. But she wanted to have the kid. When Martha’s number was up, got hit by an external fuel tank jettisoned from a F14 Tomcat, something like that, there was our kid hanging in there, out in L.A. He thinks I done her wrong, set his mamalochen up for disaster. He drops the line to Sylvia. The rest of the story you can write for yourself.”

Pablo is flashing a signal. I lip read: Son las dos en punto. I got to wrap it up now that it’s 2 o’clock.

I say, “So your kid, I.F., winds up living with you and Sylvia. And the day of the poker game—was I.F. there for the Last Lunch?”

Scoop raises his hands and slaps them on the desk. “Turns out Sylvia is crazy about the kid. Moves I.F. right in with us, signs him on for Senior’s full time. He’s with her, day and night. Night and day. You are the one. Only you beneath the moon and under the sun. Whether near to me or far …” Scoop cuts out for the solo, but I got no time for musical interludes.

“Answer the question, Scoop,” I say. “Where was I.F. when the mustard hit the fan?”

Scoop tells me I.F. was right there. “Matter of fact …” Scoop lowers his voice. I got no idea who he thinks is listening to us, but I register that this is prime cut information. “I’m not sure I.F. picked up those sandwiches from Junior’s for us. Sylvia would hit the ceiling if she knew my guys and me were not even considering Senior’s mini-stuffed. We are strictly Junior’s disciples until—pardon the expression—until the day we die. We always order the same,” Scoop says. “Sherlock and Front Page go halves on a pastrami and corned beef. For me it’s white meat turkey, lettuce and tomato, with Russian on the side. The first week of each month we split a hunk of cheesecake.”

“And the mustard?”

“I noticed a little blob on my jacket when James L., the old man who works part-time for Sylv, handed it back to me as I was coming out of the crapper after lunch. I may have took a swipe at it and smeared it on my cuff and fly. Who knows? I was deep into the game. I don’t even remember unwrapping my sandwich. Once we upped the stakes to one and five and I’m down big bucks, what do I know from mustard? I’m thinking about losing C notes and lots of ’em. Last I remember before the guys caved in was pouring the tea for Front Page, the decaf for Sherlock, the straight java for me,” says Scoop, and breaks into song. “I like java. I like tea. I like the java jive. It likes me …”

He’s into the soft shoe as Pablo Sanchez escorts him back to the holding cell.

* * *

As soon as we check out of the precinct house, Sylvia is all over me. “I knew you could solve it, Pistol Pete. So tell us, who done it?”

I say, “Slow and easy, sweetheart. Like I told you, I’m a little out of shape, been sitting on the bench too many years.” Then I tell her I got to get a look at the scene of the crime.

We’re in the neighborhood. A hop, skip, and jump and I’m sitting at a big table loaded with bowls of sauerkraut, pickles, jars of ketchup—mustard! There’s not a customer in the joint. But the walls are plastered with pictures—all shots of the great Dodgers of our past—Hodges, Reese, Stanky, Roy Campanella, and a blowup the size of a billboard on Times Square of Scoop interviewing the immortal Jackie Robinson.

Sylvia ducks back into the kitchen to get us some eats. Never mind that I just come off half a late lunch. That’s her cover. She wants me to cut it up with I.F., so he can tell me what an Auntie-Mame-stepmother she’s turned out to be.

Only it doesn’t break according to Sylvia’s script.

I’m asking the questions and I.F., true to his name, talks straight. He’s known his father was a Brooklyn newspaper hack since he was five years old.

“My mother told me his name, left me a number to call if anything happened to her when she ran off on foreign assignments. The Balkans, Middle East, Afghanistan, anywhere someone was taking a shot, dropping a bomb, throwing a stone, was Mama’s beat. I lived mostly in L.A. with grandparents and eventually foster homes. No complaints. When I heard my mother died, I checked in with the number she gave me. Sylvia answered the phone. She asked me who I was. I told her. I didn’t know Scoop never told her about me. I guess I blew it. Less than a day later Scoop calls. He’s wiring me money to come to Brooklyn. He and Sylvia have talked it over, he said. They want to meet me, get to know me, make up for all the lost years.”

The kid is telling me all this without a blink, a snicker, or a tear.

“So you come to Brooklyn,” I say, going for the extra base. “What happens next?”

“I did a little preparation, beefing up.” For the first time I.F. half smiles. “When I want to know about a place I read the poets and study the baseball teams. Are you familiar with Marianne Moore’s ‘Keeping Their World Large’?”

Before I can apologize or fake it, the kid is into a verse: “They fought the enemy,/we fight fat living and self-pity/ Shine, 0 shine/unfalsifying sun on this sick scene.”

I say, “I’m gonna think about that.”

The kid is on a run. “Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but lived for a long time on Cumberland Street in Brooklyn.”

“Hey, that’s real interesting,” I say. “Marianne Moore. Soon as I reread Boys of Summer I’m gonna look into Marianne Moore.” Then, I send my fastball down the middle. “So tell me, you know any reason Scoop would have to do in Front Page and Sherlock?”

I.F. shrugs, gives his Dodger cap a twist and twirl. “How many reasons you want?” he says. “Would about ten thousand dollars in debt from the poker games be a reason? Or the fact that he discovered soon as Sylvia heard about me she had a romp in the hay with each of them?” As he’s circling the bases, I.F. goes on with a dose of Walt Whitman. “I do not press my fingers across my mouth,/ I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,/ Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.”

I’m getting that same uneasy feeling I get when his old man breaks into song. Songs, poetry, batting averages. Maybe I’m on to something. Call it the prayer gene.

I’m thinking over my next pitch when Sylvia’s voice comes from the kitchen. “You boys ready for a little snack? This corned beef is right out of the brine. You never tasted nothing like it in your life.” I hear the slicer and then Sylvia comes to the door with this kitchen saw. I never seen a chef in high heels and an apron color coordinated with her hair dye.

“So?” she says, pointing the slicer at me. “I can’t wait any longer, Pistol Pete. Who done it?”

“Well, Sylv,” I say. “We got five possibilities here.”

“Solving a murder is that logical, an exercise in Kant’s pure reason?” I.F. pulls the cap around so the Dodger logo is facing me.

“Starting back to front there is always the possibility of suicide, but a double suicide over a pastrami and corned beef?” I get an immediate waiver on number one. “So we have two, three, and four. Number two is Scoop with the mustard stains, who has motive and clues.”

“I didn’t hire you for that,” Sylvia reminds me. “Not Scoop. My Scoop may be a good-for-nothing—but he’d never spoil perfectly good corned beef and pastrami sandwiches with poisoned mustard.”

“Scoop is the patsy,” I go on. “He’s set up. Try it this way—someone with a motive to knock him off frames him for a double murder.”

Sylvia calls into the kitchen, “James Lamar, we need coffee. Black with those sandwiches.”

“That could be you, Sylvia,” I say quietly. “You’re number three on our suspect list.”

“Me?” Sylvia stamps her foot and switches on the slicer.

Her eyes are shifting fast as Koufax’s curveball. “You got to be out of your mind. I put up with that son of a bitch lying, cheating all these years, and you can’t see I love him?”

“The motives are there for you, Sylv,” I say again. “And you had the opportunity. How tough would it be for you to smear the mustard and plant the clues on Scoop’s shirt, cuff, fly? Knock ’em all off with one big splash of doctored Gold’s Own, or was it French’s?”

I.F. has been sitting cool and easy but now he stands up, starts smacking a fist into a palm. “We don’t use Gold’s mustard,” he says. “That’s Junior’s special blend. But when Junior’s delivers, it’s packets—no pre-smeared.”

“You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, sonny boy,” I say to I.F. “So, you’re telling me the sandwiches were made at Senior’s? You got your old man and his two cronies squatting right there in your step-mamalochen’s deli and it’s your call on what to do about them ordering out.”

“This is too much. You’re insulting me.” Sylvia switches off the slicer and plunks into a chair. She’s sitting under a shot of Sandy Amoros’s spectacular running catch of Berra’s fly ball in the seventh game of the ’55 Series.

“Let’s assume the sandwiches were made here that fatal day. Nothing to do with Junior’s. That suggests our killer is a home team spoiler.”

“James Lamar, where are you when I need you?” Sylvia says again. “I want that coffee black.”

“You’re saying my father has been framed, and the killer, the person who smeared the mustard, works right here at Senior’s?” The kid breaks off and, with a wry smile right out of the L.A. handbook, We Own the Dodgers Now says, “Why not me? Abandoned son. Oedipus knocks off King Laius, also known as Seamus ‘Scoop’ O’Neil, and in the next act, according to your script, I marry Iocasta, also known as Mama Sylvia, and I inherit the Kingdom of Senior’s.”

“Marries his mother?” Sylvia repeats. “That is the most disgusting story I ever heard. I’ve had enough of you, Pistol Pete. I shoulda known better …”

“Let him talk,” I.F. says, as the door from the kitchen swings open and a guy must be my age comes limping in carrying a tray of mini-deli sandwiches and a decanter of java.

“Tea time,” I say, trying to change the mood. “Don’t mind if I do.” I move to the tray like Robinson feinting off third base. Then I sit back and say, “I’m not saying it is, just could be.”

“So?” I.F. says. The Dodger cap is rotated so the logo no longer faces me. “Sylvia or me—who’s your pleasure?”

“Youse want skimmed or regular with the coffee?” James Lamar is wearing a baseball cap, too, with the logo facing the wall. “Wese outa half an’ half.”

“Excuse me, James Lamar,” I say. “Anybody ever call you Dusty?”

The smile is big as Willie Mays’s glove making the basket catch. “For shure. For shure. And how’d you know dat?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say like Walter Alston calling Clem Labine in from the bullpen, “we got our deus ex machina.”

James Lamar—Dusty!—plunks the tray down and makes a move for the mustard jar.

I’m on my feet, pull out the ole Smith and Wesson for which I plunked down 250 smackeroos for the permit just last year without any thought of ever using it again. “Not so fast, Dusty,” I say. “And if you don’t mind, would you be so kind as to pull the visor of that cap around?”

Sylvia is still not convinced. “What’s that got to do with anything? What is going on here? And that Day Ox you was talking about …”

“Deus ex machina,” I.F. corrects her. “God from the machine. Introduced at the last minute often by a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to resolve an insoluble dilemma.”

“On the button,” I say to I.F. “And if you will be so kind as to take a gander at Dusty’s cap, you can appreciate the motive for murder.”

“I don’t see nothing,” Sylvia says, “only a crummy old baseball cap with an SF logo.”

“The logo of the San Francisco, formerly New York, Giants,” says I.F. as the light is beginning to dawn. “We have here a former New York Giants fan who has never forgiven the Dodgers.”

“You got it right, kid,” Dusty snarls. “And I’m up to my keester with all this Dodger talk, all them pictures and not one shot of Master Melvin Ott, King Carl Hubbell, Sal Maglie, the Greatest Willie Mays …”

Before he can run down all the rosters from ’35 through ’57, I throw him the spitter: “And we might add James Lamar ‘Dusty’ Rhodes, who come from nowhere to run off with the 1954 World Series.”

“You better believe it,” Dusty says. “.667, two home runs, seben, I said seben runs batted in and dat was a four-game series. So where is Dusty on dis wall? Do I hear a woid, one stinkin’ woid from any of them wiseguys pitchin’ cards, talkin’ Dodgers, Dodgers, Dodgers. Dem Bums. And youse. Youse got the noive to talk Deus? Deus Latin prayers in this joint?”

Dusty goes quietly after that.

We spring Scoop the next afternoon. Sylvia wants to celebrate with a steak at Gage and Tollner’s. She’s had enough of the deli business—“Bad memories”—and declares this her farewell party.

I.F. invites us to join him for a stroll through the Brooklyn Museum. “I’d like to take a look at Bierstadt’s Storm in the Rockies, Mt. Rosalie. A guy I met on the plane, flying in from L.A. last week, told me he’s a friend of Robert Levinson who was the chairman of the board and could recommend me for a job there. Then we can amble over to the lobby of the former Paramount Theater. It’s the Eugene & Beverly Luntey Commons of the Brooklyn Center, L.I.U. now. We could sit and read poems by Robert Donald Spector and maybe be lucky enough to run into JoAnn Allen or Mike Bush, all stars of their faculty.”

Scoop breaks into a chorus of “Thanks for the Memories” and Sylvia takes his hand like two kids on their way to the boardwalk at Coney Island.

Out of the blue, I.F. says to me, “Harold Patrick Reiser, 1941 through 1948, a Dodgers’ Dodger until he ran into a fence.” Then he gently nudges my holster. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Pistol Pete.”

WHEN ALL THIS WAS BAY RIDGE

BY TIM MCLOUGHLIN

Sunset Park

Standing in church at my father’s funeral, I thought about being arrested on the night of my seventeenth birthday. It had occurred in the trainyard at Avenue X, in Coney Island. Me and Pancho and a kid named Freddie were working a three-car piece, the most ambitious I’d tried to that point, and more time-consuming than was judicious to spend trespassing on city property. Two Transit cops with German shepherds caught us in the middle of the second car. I dropped my aerosol can and took off, and was perhaps two hundred feet along the beginning of the trench that becomes the IRT line to the Bronx, when I saw the hand. It was human, adult, and severed neatly, seemingly surgically, at the wrist. My first thought was that it looked bare without a watch. Then I made a whooping sound, trying to take in air, and turned and ran back toward the cops and their dogs.

At the 60th Precinct, we three were ushered into a small cell. We sat for several hours, then the door opened and I was led out. My father was waiting in the main room, in front of the counter.

The desk sergeant, middle-aged, black, and noticeably bored, looked up briefly. “Him?”

“Him,” my father echoed, sounding defeated.

“Goodnight,” the sergeant said.

My father took my arm and led me out of the precinct. As we cleared the door and stepped into the humid night he turned to me and said, “This was it. Your one free ride. It doesn’t happen again.”

“What did it cost?” I asked. My father had retired from the Police Department years earlier, and I knew this had been expensive.

He shook his head. “This once, that’s all.”

I followed him to his car. “I have two friends in there.”

“Fuck’em. Spics. That’s half your problem.”

“What’s the other half?”

“You have no common sense,” he said, his voice rising in scale as it did in volume. By the time he reached a scream he sounded like a boy going through puberty. “What do you think you’re doing out here? Crawling ’round in the dark with the niggers and the spics. Writing on trains like a hoodlum. Is this all you’ll do?”

“It’s not writing. It’s drawing. Pictures.”

“Same shit, defacing property, behaving like a punk. Where do you suppose it will lead?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. You had your aimless time, when you got out of the service. You told me so. You bummed around for two years.”

“I always worked.”

“Part-time. Beer money. You were a roofer.”

“Beer money was all I needed.”

“Maybe it’s all I need.”

He shook his head slowly, and squinted, as though peering through the dirty windshield for an answer. “It was different. That was a long time ago. Back when all this was Bay Ridge. You could live like that then.”

When all this was Bay Ridge. He was masterful, my father. He didn’t say when it was white, when it was Irish, even the relatively tame when it was safer. No. When all this was Bay Ridge. As though it were an issue of geography. As though, somehow, the tectonic plate beneath Sunset Park had shifted, moving it physically to some other place.

I told him about seeing the hand.

“Did you tell the officers?”

“No.”

“The people you were with?”

“No.”

“Then don’t worry about it. There’s body parts all over this town. Saw enough in my day to put together a baseball team.” He drove in silence for a few minutes, then nodded his head a couple of times, as though agreeing with a point made by some voice I could not hear. “You’re going to college, you know,” he said.

* * *

That was what I remembered at the funeral. Returning from the altar rail after receiving communion, Pancho walked passed me. He’d lost a great deal of weight since I’d last seen him, and I couldn’t tell if he was sick or if it was just the drugs. His black suit hung on him in a way that emphasized his gaunt frame. He winked at me as he came around the casket in front of my pew, and flashed the mischievous smile that—when we were sixteen—got all the girls in his bed and all the guys agreeing to the stupidest and most dangerous tunts.

In my shirt pocket was a photograph of my father with a woman who was not my mother. The date on the back was five years ago. Their arms were around each other’s waists and they smiled for the photographer. When we arrived at the cemetery I took the picture out of my pocket, and looked at it for perhaps the fiftieth time since I’d first discovered it. There were no clues. The woman was young to be with my father, but not a girl. Forty, give or take a few years. I looked for any evidence in his expression that I was misreading their embrace, but even I couldn’t summon the required naïveté. My father’s countenance was not what would commonly be regarded as a poker face. He wasn’t holding her as a friend, a friend’s girl, or the prize at some retirement or bachelor party; he held her like a possession. Like he held his tools. Like he held my mother. The photo had been taken before my mother’s death. I put it back.

I’d always found his plodding predictability and meticulous planning of insignificant events maddening. For the first time that I could recall, I was experiencing curiosity about some part of my father’s life.

I walked from Greenwood Cemetery directly to Olsen’s bar, my father’s watering hole, feeling that I needed to talk to the men that nearly lived there, but not looking forward to it. Aside from my father’s wake the previous night, I hadn’t seen them in years. They were all Irish. The Irish among them were perhaps the most Irish, but the Norwegians and the Danes were Irish too, as were the older Puerto Ricans. They had developed, over time, the stereotypical hooded gaze, the squared jaws set in grim defiance of whatever waited in the sobering daylight. To a man they had that odd trait of the Gaelic heavy-hitter, that—as they attained middle age—their faces increasingly began to resemble a woman’s nipple.

The door to the bar was propped open, and the cool damp odor of stale beer washed over me before I entered. That smell has always reminded me of the Boy Scouts. Meetings were Thursday nights in the basement of Bethany Lutheran Church. When they were over, I would have to pass Olsen’s on my way home, and I usually stopped in to see my father. He would buy me a couple of glasses of beer—about all I could handle at thirteen—and leave with me after about an hour so we could walk home together.

From the inside looking out: Picture an embassy in a foreign country. A truly foreign country. Not a Western European ally, but a fundamentalist state perennially on the precipice of war. A fill-the-sandbags-and-wait-for-the-airstrike enclave. That was Olsen’s, home to the last of the donkeys, the white dinosaurs of Sunset Park. A jukebox filled with Kristy McColl and the Clancy Brothers, and flyers tacked to the flaking walls advertising step-dancing classes, Gaelic lessons, and the memorial run to raise money for a scholarship in the name of a recently slain cop. Within three blocks of the front door you could attend a cockfight, buy crack, or pick up a streetwalker, but in Olsen’s, it was always 1965.

Upon entering the bar for the first time in several years, I found its pinched dimensions and dim lighting more oppressive, and less mysterious, than I had remembered. The row of ascetic faces, and the way all conversation trailed off at my entrance, put me in mind of the legendary blue wall of silence in the police department. It is no coincidence that the force has historically been predominantly Irish. The men in Olsen’s would be pained to reveal their zip code to a stranger, and I wasn’t sure if even they knew why.

The bar surface itself was more warped than I’d recalled. The mirrors had oxidized and the white tile floor had been torn up in spots and replaced with odd-shaped pieces of green linoleum. It was a neighborhood bar in a neighborhood where such establishments are not yet celebrated. If it had been located in my part of the East Village, it would have long since achieved cultural-landmark status. I’d been living in Manhattan for five years and still had not adjusted to the large number of people who moved here from other parts of the country, and overlooked the spectacle of the city only to revere the mundane. One of my coworkers, herself a transplant, remarked that the coffee shop on my corner was authentic. In that they served coffee, I suppose she was correct.

I sat on an empty stool in the middle of the wavy bar and ordered a beer. I felt strangely nervous there without my father, like a child about to be caught doing something bad. Everyone knew me. Marty, the round-shouldered bartender, approached first, breaking the ice. He spoke around an enormous, soggy stub of a cigar, as he always did. And, as always, he seemed constantly annoyed by its presence in his mouth; as though he’d never smoked one before, and was surprised to discover himself chewing on it.

“Daniel. It’s good to see you. I’m sorry for your loss.”

He extended one hand, and when I did the same, he grasped mine in both of his and held it for a moment. It had to have been some sort of signal, because the rest of the relics in the place lurched toward me then, like some nursing-home theater guild performing Night of the Living Dead. They shook hands, engaged in awkward stiff hugs, and offered unintelligible condolences. Frank Sanchez, one of my father’s closest friends, squeezed the back of my neck absently until I winced. I thanked them as best I could, and accepted the offers of free drinks.

Someone—I don’t know who—thought it would be a good idea for me to have Jameson’s Irish whiskey, that having been my father’s drink. I’d never considered myself much of a drinker. I liked a couple of beers on a Friday night, and perhaps twice a year I would get drunk. I almost never drank hard liquor, but this crew was insistent, they were matching me shot for shot, and they were paying. It was the sort of thing my father would have been adamant about.

I began to reach for the photograph in my pocket several times and stopped. Finally I fished it out and showed it to the bartender. “Who is she, Marty?” I asked. “Any idea?”

The manner in which he pretended to scrutinize it told me that he recognized the woman immediately. He looked at the picture with a studied perplexity, as though he would have had trouble identifying my father.

“Wherever did you get such a thing?” he asked.

“I found it in the basement, by my father’s shop.”

“Ah. Just come across it by accident then.”

The contempt in his voice seared through my whiskey glow, and left me as sober as when I’d entered. He knew, and if he knew they all knew. And a decision had been reached to tell me nothing.

“Not by accident,” I lied. “My father told me where it was and asked me to get it.”

Our eyes met for a moment. “And did he say anything about it?” Marty asked. “Were there no instructions or suggestions?”

“He asked me to take care of it,” I said evenly. “To make everything all right.”

He nodded. “Makes good sense,” he said. “That would be best served by letting the dead sleep, don’t you think? Forget it, son, let it lie.” He poured me another drink, sloppily, like the others, and resumed moving his towel over the bar, as though he could obliterate the mildewed stench of a thousand spilled drinks with a few swipes of the rag.

I drank the shot down quickly and my buzz returned in a rush. I hadn’t been keeping track, but I realized that I’d had much more than what I was used to, and I was starting to feel dizzy. The rest of the men in the room looked the same as when I walked in, the same as when I was twelve. In the smoke-stained bar mirror I saw Frank Sanchez staring at me from a few stools away. He caught me looking and gestured for me to come down.

“Sit, Danny,” he said when I got there. He was drinking boilermakers. Without asking, he ordered each of us another round. “What were you talking to Marty about?”

I handed Frank the picture. “I was asking who the woman is.”

He looked at it and placed it on the bar. “Yeah? What’d he say?”

“He said to let it lie.”

Frank snorted. “Typical donkey,” he said. “Won’t answer a straight question, but has all kinds of advice on what you should do.”

From a distance in the dark bar I would have said that Frank Sanchez hadn’t changed much over the years, but I was close to him now, and I’d seen him only last night in the unforgiving fluorescent lighting of the funeral home. He’d been thin and handsome when I was a kid, with blue-black hair combed straight back, and the features and complexion of a Hollywood Indian in a John Wayne picture. He’d thickened in the middle over the years, though he still wasn’t fat. His reddish brown cheeks were illuminated by the roadmap of broken capillaries that seemed an entrance requirement for “regular” status at Olsen’s. His hair was still shockingly dark, but now with a fake Jerry Lewis sheen and plenty of scalp showing through in the back. He was a retired homicide detective. His had been one of the first Hispanic families in this neighborhood. I knew he’d moved to Fort Lee, New Jersey long ago, though my father said that he was still in Olsen’s every day.

Frank picked up the picture and looked at it again, then looked over it at the two sloppy rows of bottles along the back bar. The gaps for the speed rack looked like missing teeth.

“We’re the same,” he said. “Me and you.”

“The same, how?”

“We’re on the outside, and we’re always looking to be let in.”

“I never gave a damn about being on the inside here, Frank.”

He handed me the photo. “You do now.”

He stood then, and walked stiffly back to the men’s room. A couple of minutes later Marty appeared at my elbow, topped off my shot, and replaced Frank’s.

“It’s a funny thing about Francis,” Marty said. “He’s a spic who’s always hated the spics. So he moves from a spic neighborhood to an all-white one, then has to watch as it turns spic. So now he’s got to get in his car every day and drive back to his old all-spic neighborhood, just so he can drink with white men. It’s made the man bitter. And,” he nodded toward the glasses, “he’s in his cups tonight. Don’t take the man too seriously.”

Marty stopped talking and moved down the bar when Frank returned.

“What’d Darby O’Gill say to you?” he asked.

“He told me you were drunk,” I said, “and that you didn’t like spics.”

Frank widened his eyes. “Coming out with revelations like that, is he? Hey, Martin,” he yelled, “next time I piss tell him JFK’s been shot!” He drained his whiskey, took a sip of beer, and turned his attention back to me. “Listen. Early on, when I first started on the job—years back, I’m talking—there was almost no spades in the department; even less spics. I was the only spic in my precinct, only one I knew of in Brooklyn. I worked in the seven-one, Crown Heights. Did five years there, but this must’ve been my first year or so.

“I was sitting upstairs in the squad room typing attendance reports. Manual typewriters back then. I was good too, fifty or sixty words a minute—don’t forget, English ain’t my first language. See, I learned the forms. The key is knowin’ the forms, where to plug in the fucking numbers. You could type two hundred words a minute, but you don’t know the forms, all them goddamn boxes, you’re sitting there all day.

“So I’m typing these reports—only uniform in a room full of bulls, only spic in a room full of harps—when they bring in the drunk.”

Frank paused to order another shot, and Marty brought one for me too. I was hungry and really needed to step outside for some air, but I wanted to hear Frank’s story. I did want to know how he thought we were similar, and I hoped he would talk about the photo. He turned his face to the ceiling and opened his mouth like a child catching rain, and he poured the booze smoothly down his throat.

“You gotta remember,” he continued, “Crown Heights was still mostly white back then, white civilians, white skells. The drunk is just another mick with a skinfull. But what an obnoxious cocksucker. And loud.

“Man who brought him in is another uniform, almost new as me. He throws him in the cage and takes the desk next to mine to type his report. Only this guy can’t type, you can see he’s gonna be there all day. Takes him ten minutes to get the paper straight in the damn machine. And all this time the goddamn drunk is yelling at the top of his lungs down the length of the squad room. You can see the bulls are gettin’ annoyed. Everybody tells him to shut up, but he keeps on, mostly just abusing the poor fuck that brought him in, who’s still struggling with the report, his fingers all smudged with ink from the ribbons.

“On and on he goes: ‘Your mother blows sailors … Your wife fucks dogs … You’re all queers, every one of you.’ Like that. But I mean, really, it don’t end, it’s like he never gets tired.

“So the guy who locked him up gets him outa the cage and walks him across the room. Over in the corner they got one of these steam pipes, just a vertical pipe, no radiator or nothing. Hot as a motherfucker. So he cuffs the drunk’s hands around the pipe, so now the drunk’s gotta stand like this”—Frank formed a huge circle with his arms, as if he were hugging an invisible fat woman—“or else he gets burned. And just bein’ that close to the heat, I mean, it’s fuckin’ awful. So the uniform walks away, figuring that’ll shut the scumbag up, but it gets worse.

“Now, the bulls are all pissed at the uniform for not beatin’ the drunk senseless before he brought him in, like any guy with a year on the street would know to do. The poor fuck is still typing the paperwork at about a word an hour, and the asshole is still at it, ‘Your daughter fucks niggers. When I get out I’ll look your wife up—again.’ Then he looks straight at the uniform, and the uniform looks up. Their eyes lock for a minute. And the drunk says this: ‘What’s it feel like to know that every man in this room thinks you’re an asshole?’ Then the drunk is quiet and he smiles.”

Marty returned then, and though I felt I was barely hanging on, I didn’t dare speak to refuse the drink. Frank sat silently while Marty poured, and when he was done Frank stared at him until he walked away.

“After that,” he continued in a low voice, “it was like slow motion. Like everything was happening underwater. The uniform stands up, takes his gun out, and points it at the drunk. The drunk never stops smiling. And then the uniform pulls the trigger, shoots him right in the face. The drunk’s head like explodes, and he spins around the steam pipe—all the way—once, before he drops.

“For a second everything stops. It’s just the echo and the smoke and blood on the wall and back window. Then, time speeds up again. The sergeant of detectives, a little leprechaun from the other side—must’ve bribed his way past the height requirement—jumps over his desk and grabs up a billy club. He lands next to the uniform, who’s still holding the gun straight out, and he clubs him five or six times on the forearm, hard and fast, whap-whap-whap. The gun drops with the first hit but the leprechaun don’t stop till the bone breaks. We all hear it snap.

“The uniform pulls his arm in and howls, and the sergeant throws the billy club down and screams at him: ‘The next time … the next time, it’ll be your head that he breaks before you were able to shoot him. Now get him off the pipe before there’s burns on his body.’ And he storms out of the room.”

Frank drank the shot in front of him and finished his beer. I didn’t move. He looked at me and smiled. “The whole squad room,” he said, “jumped into action. Some guys uncuffed the drunk; I helped the uniform out. Got him to a hospital. Coupla guys got rags and a pail and started cleaning up.

“Now, think about that,” Frank said, leaning in toward me and lowering his voice yet again. “I’m the only spic there. The only other uniform. There had to be ten bulls. But the sergeant, he didn’t have to tell anybody what the plan was, or to keep their mouth shut, or any fucking thing. And there was no moment where anybody worried about me seeing it, being a spic. We all knew that coulda been any one of us. That’s the most on-the-inside I ever felt. Department now, it’s a fucking joke. Affirmative action, cultural-diversity training. And what’ve you got? Nobody trusts anybody. Guys afraid to trust their own partners.” He was whispering, and starting to slur his words.

I began to feel nauseated. It’s a joke, I thought. A cop’s made-up war story. “Frank, did the guy die?”

“Who?”

“The drunk. The man that got shot.”

Frank looked confused, and a bit annoyed. “Of course he died.”

“Did he die right away?”

“How the fuck should I know? They dragged him outa the room in like a minute.”

“To a hospital?”

“Was a better world’s all I’m saying. A better world. And you always gotta stay on the inside, don’t drift, Danny. If you drift, nobody’ll stick up for you.”

Jesus, did he have a brogue? He certainly had picked up that lilt to his voice that my father’s generation possessed. That half-accent that the children of immigrants acquire in a ghetto. I had to get out of there. A few more minutes and I feared I’d start sounding like one of these tura-lura-lura motherfuckers myself.

I stood, probably too quickly, and took hold of the bar to steady myself. “What about the picture, Frank?”

He handed it to me. “Martin is right,” he said slowly, “let it lie. Why do you care who she was?”

“Who she was? I asked who she is Is she dead, Frank? Is that what Marty meant by letting the dead rest?”

“Martin … Marty meant …”

“I’m right here, Francis,” Marty said, “and I can speak for myself.” He turned to me. “Francis has overindulged in a few jars,” he said. “He’ll nap in the back booth for a while and be right as rain for the ride home.”

“Is that the way it happened, Frank? Exactly that way?”

Frank was smiling at his drink, looking dreamily at his better world. “Who owns memory?” he said.

“Goodnight, Daniel,” Marty said. “It was good of you to stop in.”

I didn’t respond, just turned and slowly walked out. One or two guys gestured at me as I left, the rest seemed not to notice or care.

* * *

I removed the picture from my pocket again when I was outside, an action that had taken on a ritualistic feel, like making the sign of the cross. I did not look at it this time, but began tearing it in strips, lengthwise. Then I walked, and bent down at street corners, depositing each strip in a separate sewer along Fourth Avenue.

He’d told me that he’d broken his arm in a car accident, pursuing two black kids who had robbed a jewelry store.

As I released the strips of paper through the sewer gratings, I thought of the hand in the subway tunnel, and my father’s assertion that there were many body parts undoubtedly littering the less frequently traveled parts of the city. Arms, legs, heads, torsos; and perhaps all these bits of photo would find their way into disembodied hands. A dozen or more hands, each gripping a strip of photograph down in the wet slime under the street. Regaining a history, a past, that they lost when they were dismembered, making a connection that I never would.

PRACTICING

BY ELLEN MILLER

Canarsie

When my father started to bench-press me, I figured he meant business. For real. Finally.

By the time he started bench-pressing me, I’d already wisely given up hope that he’d ever make good on his promise. But the bench-pressing seemed an encouraging sign, enough of a reason to believe my father, so I suspended my doubt.

I didn’t simply hope. I believed

He’d been promising for two years—twenty-five percent of the time I’d spent being alive, being his daughter. Being alive and being his daughter were the same single thing. The only thing and everything. All I wanted from the world.

The first time was supposed to be my sixth birthday present. I bugged him. I nagged him, like a wife. I irritated myself when my talking-out-loud voice would whine—like a child, which I insisted I wasn’t—But you promised, even though my thinking-inside-myself voice had long ago admitted defeat, told me the truth, convincingly and correctly maintaining, Nothing doing. Pretend he never said a word. Forget it. Then, out of the blue, he’d say, “Later, I promise,” and he’d give me a wink. Dad was the only man I’d ever meet who didn’t, upon winking, instantly become a calamitous schmuck. “We have plenty of time.”

The promise itself was a present, a gift he offered not only to me, but also to time, to the future, stored in a box filled with mystery, tension, delay, buildup, all to be revealed later. If his promise had been packaged and wrapped, the gift-card’s envelope, taped seamlessly to the top, would have read, Do Not Open Me Until … but the calligraphy would have stopped short of naming the holiday. He kept me guessing and waiting, waiting, but since I couldn’t tell time, I couldn’t know for how long. Exactly what, at eight years old, did later mean? His words, spoken to the future, “We’ll go later, next month,” didn’t sound a helluva lot different from, “We’ll go later, in fifteen years.” One month. Fifteen years What was later? When did later bleed into too late? How much time was plenty of time? What sensations could be expected when plenty of time elapsed and disappeared? When did too late become never? Time, always warped and subjective, was especially so when I hadn’t been around long enough to develop and practice the rote, unoriginal, possibility-canceling, chance-choking, constricting—that is, adult—habits of experiencing time, living in time, doing time, apprehending in a felt way, without having to concentrate so hard my eye sockets pounded, how long fragments of time were supposed to last until they stopped being fragmentary and became durable, lasting. How long? Long enough. To last. Until. Lasting.

Instead of bringing me up, the day I turned six he brought home a squat glow-in-the-dark clock. An alarm clock. I couldn’t read it; I couldn’t set it. I’d look at its various meaningless appendages—arms, hands, digits—then quickly turn from the pale, sickish, muffled green glow. When I couldn’t sleep, the tick contributed its two cents to my considerable, familiar insomnia and anxiety.

Soon I appreciated the stunning appropriateness of the erm alarm clock

Perhaps he intended to teach me early on—to route my thoughts along an acceptable, suitable course immediately, starting my expectations off right at age six—that clocks were meant to be punched.

His promise, so handsomely packaged in that gift-box, contained nothing, so I’d done good to halt hope in its tracks. To stop hoping for Dad to make good on his word, or for much of anything else, seemed a wise idea, a useful policy to adopt more generally, to apply more globally, as an apotropaic A prophylactic against disappointment. Disappointment was dangerous.

But he started again just before I turned eight. “We’ll have so much fun. Just you wait.” Repetition, and the slippage of much too much time—even I knew by then how long too long, how much was much too much—between the initial promise and its most recent nonfulfillment, emptied the promise-box of all the substance it probably had never had, so I gave him a piece of my mind. “You’re full of bull. You’re just all phony baloney.”

“I’m what?” Mock horror. Mock indignation. Mock mockery.

“I said, Dad, that you are all yak and no shack.” I didn’t know what I meant, but I liked how tough it sounded.

“The things that come out of your mouth.” He snorted. “Where do you get them?” In mock fury, he commanded, “Get your tush over here. Right now, you little … you little … you little you.”

He shook his head gravely, freighting the final pronoun, you with extra volume and vocal emphasis, so that the you by whom he meant me almost sounded like it referred to something special. Like some languages had one you for politely addressing outside-people and another you for informally addressing inside-people; other languages had one you for speaking to superiors and another you for speaking to subordinates; English—rather, my Dad’s peculiar delivery of English—conferred upon me a separate, specific second-person pronoun. It sounded and was spelled the same as other you’s, but Dad’s you as in, “you little … you,” referred just to My very own second-person pronoun! Now that was one tremendous gift if there ever was one.

But even having my very own personal pronoun was risky, because it’s pretty tough to keep stopped-hope stopped up when you are getting all youed up, when someone you really like keeps promising you scary, fun, exciting stuff—and even tougher for the of that moment to remain securely devoid of hope, to make smart, self-denying decisions with Dad youing me—the long ooo of it broad and extended, like a hand.

“Now,” he announced, rubbing his hands together—like a man who’s busted his ass all week, eaten crow at a job he hates, but it’s Friday, and his dinner at Abbracciamento on the Pier, a thick steak pizzaiolo, fatty, bloody meat sizzling, cheese bubbling, is being served by a hot-to-trot miniskirt, he’s salivating, thinking, this is gonna be yummy—“we start practicing.” Before I noticed his swift crouch and downward reach, he’d grabbed my ankles and flipped me, along with the rest of the visible world, upside down. Queasy with suddenness, I tried focusing hard, to keep everything from whirling too wildly, on the paint-splatters everywhere covering his stumble-proof, good-luck work boots. Together, we slid to the floor. I righted myself to sitting too fast; my subadequately upholstered tush—a bony butt without cushioning ocks—banged to the linoleum. “We gotta be prepared,” he declared. “I’m gonna need some big muscles if we’re gonna do this.”

I was a weedy child at sixty pounds. My father was a bridgeman. A workingman. To work, in the true, original sense, meant to move heavy objects, to transfer energy from one system to another, causing an object, against its own resistance and stationary inertia, to move. Work called for muscle, math, multiplication. Work was the product of the force used to move something stubbornly heavy and the distance the object had successfully moved in the direction of that force. Dad had been working for a long time.

His biceps were strip steaks, marbled not with fat, but lined with web-works of veins materializing from under his skin. “Put them back! Put them back inside!” I’d cry, when I was little—which, by the time I turned eight, I adamantly decreed I wasn’t, not anymore—while futilely pushing and pressing individual bulging veins back underneath his skin to keep him intact, to return his veins to their proper place inside, where all matters blood-related belonged. And Dad’s thighs and calves were sometimes hard to look at without contemplating mint jelly.

The man had muscle. Nonetheless, he was determined to bench-press me, sans bench, every night. For strength. For practice. A delaying tactic, I understood later, but then, like a fool, I’d already reversed my own prior, better judgment. Stupidly, I again hoped, and I believed that his teasing promise had finally and for real tipped away from the tease toward its promise: the bridge—although I would have gone with him anywhere. I would have had to have gone with him anywhere. Lucky, lucky me: As it happened, I’d been hungering to go up on a bridge with him for years, but if he’d have wanted to go somewhere else, or if he’d have wanted to do something else, there wouldn’t have been much else for me, other than to go, and to do.

After dinner we’d meet in the living room for practicing. He’d go horizontal on the floor, stretching his arms to their widest span. Like a career waiter, deftly steadying a sterling tray, piled nearly to toppling with fragile tableware, he’d broaden and flatten his right hand’s fingers, balancing me delicately, without a flinch, at the bony hollows of my throat and chest. I’d soften my scrawny structure, make myself pliant. When he’d stabilized my torso, he’d wrap his flung left palm around my ankles for lift-off. Muscles and veins popping out all over him, our bodies perpendicular, his arms pumped my body—first up and aloft, far from his, then down, low and close—up and down, up and down until I was flying and falling, flying and falling, breathless, giddy, shrieking, stoned with giggles. He grunted with pretend exertion, like it was so laborious. When he decided we were finished—always, always, he made this determination unilaterally, so I could never anticipate when the end was approaching and temper my wishes accordingly—he lowered me, I rolled off him, and he moaned, exhaling gigantically, like he was so winded.

Bedtime followed. He’d toss me like a gunny sack over one shoulder and carry me firefighter-style to the living room couch, which was my bed, right there in the room where we practiced. Not far to get to my bed. No transitional cooling-off time. After the wild velocity and proximity of practicing, the end’s abruptness, the severance accompanying his “Goodnight, you”—separations always hitting the one who stays behind harder than they hit the one who goes on ahead—I’d marinate in a living room redolent with breath, heat, his man-smell, my flannelly kid-having-fun smell, while he went away to his own bedroom. I’d have trouble falling asleep in that still-buzzing living room. Overstimulated, alone, all jagged up, for hours I’d twist myself into pretzels of indecision.

Should I or shouldn’t I? I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I knew that I shouldn’t.

Much later on, comfortable without the burden and benefit of empirical evidence to negate or support my hypothesis, I’d maintain that sexual acts per se were meager foreplay for the truer pleasure, the deeper intimacy, of shared sleep. Whoever has access to a helpless, sleeping body owns it, controls it, can do anything to it, so it was natural that I’d only ever slept with Dad. Sleeping with him was bad. I knew that. I also knew that bad things weren’t necessarily wrong things, but interrupting his sleep was criminal; if we’d had religion, it would have been sinful. Hours before completely confessing to my sorry self that I’d already decided to go ahead and do it, I’d cringe with the afterward-shame, the dirty regret that should have sunk in later—or the next morning, his eyes still bloodshot, his features absent of all signs of being rested—and which should have deterred me. I hated myself for interfering with his sleep, even more so for loving to do it. For exploiting the wakeful one’s God-like power of ultimate say-so over a defenseless body. He worked very hard at a dangerous job to keep me housed, schooled, fed, clothed. He needed rest. Badly. Too often, always knowing better, I couldn’t defeat the urge to do wrong, especially once the light appeared, and I’d re-remember that not having closed my eyes during the night would neither retard nor prevent the arrival of the too-bright morning, of another next day with unbounded possibilities to be survived or not.

The dark was a mild worry. What kept me awake and afraid was me. Something about me. I scared myself. Lots. Grow up. My thinking-inside-myself voice told me off. Stop being a baby. I’d abandon the couch, slip into his grown-man’s bed, straddling his chest, gently, gently alighting my fingers along his lash-lines. Softly, softly, and firmly, too, I’d press his lids up and open, until I saw his red-webbed eyes’ whites, and I asked, I begged, “Dad? Are you in there?”

“Of course, Bee,” he’d mumble sleepily. As if the answer was a certainty beyond all doubt, that his still being in there, inside himself, whole within his own intact body, as planned, as promised, would always be the case.

NEW YORK CRIMINAL LAW STATUTES: PENAL LAW, PART 3.

Title O. Offenses against Marriage, the Family, and the Welfare of Children and Incompetents.

Article 260. Offenses Relating to Children, Disabled Persons, and Vulnerable Elderly Persons.

§ 260.10. Endangering the welfare of a child

A person is guilty of endangering the welfare of a child when:

1. He knowingly acts in a manner likely to be injurious to the physical, mental or moral welfare of a child less than seventeen years old or directs or authorizes such child to engage in an occupation involving a substantial risk of danger to his life; or

2. Being a parent, guardian or other person legally charged with the care or custody of a child less than eighteen years old, he fails or refuses to exercise reasonable diligence in the control of such child to prevent him from becoming an “abused child,” a “neglected child,” a “juvenile delin-quent,” or a “person in need of supervision,” as those terms are defined in articles ten, three and seven of the family court act.

Endangering the welfare of a child is a class A misdemeanor

If caught, that’s a year or less in jail. No one with even half a brain in his head gets caught.

Canarsie Pier’s stink of briny rot rendered plausible what otherwise seemed unlikely: that Canarsie had once been a sleepy fishing village. Ninety years before Dad and I stood at our jump-off point for more sophisticated practicing—“a whole new level,” he’d said—most of the neighborhood’s few thousand residents, mainly Italian immigrants, made their living fishing, crabbing, clamming, or oystering Jamaica Bay’s rich waters and beds. By the 1920s pollution and the Great Depression had destroyed Canarsie’s shell-fishing industry. Shellfish, aquatic homebodies, were loath to travel far from home, and they generally remained inside the calcareous houses they built for themselves. Food was delivered to their bodies by built-in siphons that drew water into their shells for filter-feeding: first capturing food, then spitting out water. I’d guiltily consider the attachment of shellfish to their houses whenever Dad and I collected shells at Brighton Beach: Every shell in our dry, deadly hands was once someone else’s house! How selfish to bring back to our home, for frivolous ornamentation, the self-made homes of other beings who’d have preferred to stay put, soft bodies encased under solid cover, however temporary and illusory the protection might be.

If sedentary living made clams and other shellfish susceptible to accumulations of high concentrations of human-made poisons—bacterial coliforms from sewage, polychlorinated biphenyls from industry—the Bay’s fish traveled for food, in mobile homes of skin and scale, to mixed and open Atlantic waters, so fish weren’t as vulnerable to dire accumulations of pollutants. In warm weather, crag-faced, gravel-voiced old-timers would cast long for eel and fluke or snag butterfish or samplings of Jamaica Bay’s increasing population of Canarsie White Fish—floating used condoms—right off the Pier’s decaying edges. Word on the Pier, from above, state and federal environmental officials, and from below, locals, people like us, was: “You can fish, but you can’t clam.”

Canarsie Beach Park was part of Gateway National Recreation Area—not a National Park, as if a park was too much to wish for; we needed to maintain realistically low greenery expectations—but a Recreation Area Still, the place was Federal enough to have behatted, uniformed rangers. And rules. The Department of Health had officially and consistently declared Jamaica Bay unswimmable for fifty years: No primary-contact recreation—activities in which bodies made direct contact with raw water, especially total bodily submersion—allowed. Secondary contact recreation, like fishing or boating, where skin contact with water was minimal and ingestion improbable, was permitted. Clamming, I guessed, was ultra-forbidden because it required getting the whole body into the water to dig.

Practicing here, jumping off Canarsie Pier into Jamaica Bay, to simulate the worst potential payout of our gamble with gravity—falling together off a bridge into deep water, which he risked every day, just not while toting me along—required forbidden primary contact recreation. Immersion in Jamaica Bay “violated Federal rules,” Dad warned, voice somber, conspiratorially soft, “As in, the Feds You get it?”

“I got it.”

“Good.”

Bench-pressing hadn’t been practicing; it was pre-training, basic conditioning, a barely callisthenic, chicken-feed beginner’s warm-up leading us to this. To Canarsie Pier. For the for-real practicing—if those particular words, strung together and placed next to each other, made sense. Which they didn’t.

* * *

Dad started when he was fourteen. Until his death at forty-five, every workday of his life, he was scared. Two kinds of work were obtainable in the world: the safe and the dangerous. Experience and practice never made Dad unafraid. Silently, without fanfare, he tolerated extreme fear-states and accepted the probability of grave injury or death as standard workaday inevitabilities, like lunch with the gang or alone up on a scaffold, like fatigue, like fumes. His morning routine: get into whites, shave, shower, shit, like a military man, brush teeth, drink pot of coffee, slap on boots and cap, drive to site, start working, get crushingly, heart-stoppingly, fittingly panicked about dying in the coming hours. Dad did frightening things that other people didn’t want to do; other people didn’t have to do them, because people like Dad did. Blood poisoning did him in after twenty-four years of exposure to industrial chemicals, mostly paints containing an odorless, oily, poisonous benzene derivative, absorbed through skin: aniline blue. Aniline blue sounded like a song title or poem, the name of a daughter or lover. Lyrical, sing-song aniline blue killed him, but before that happened, I’d planned on his dying in a bridge fall.

* * *

There were laws against it.

Child protection laws with tucked-in bylaws that defined bringing children to dangerous workplaces as criminal offenses. Take Our Daughters to Work Day wasn’t designed for the daughters of pile driver, jack hammer, or forklift operators. Taking kids to perilous worksites violated child endangerment laws, laws ratified and upheld—lackadaisically, since the continuance of selected human genera wasn’t a big deal, even when specimens were found in bulk—for protection I didn’t want.

The laws against it didn’t stop us. Did laws ever stop anyone who wanted to do something really bad from doing something really bad? A failure of nerve stopped us. His All his. He, the adroit, well-built, well-practiced man, who did it daily, for real, chickened out. I, who hadn’t yet mastered long division or my dread surrounding it, was ready to jump right in.

Upon starting work at a new job, Dad would half-promise and half-threaten to cart me along to the worksite, fix me in place around his tough neck, my legs parted, one leg dangling off each of his shoulders, and lug me around the job all day, up and down the tiers of the bridge, everywhere work required him to be while he painted. A regular workday, but with a Beth on his back. He’d try not to let me fall. He’d do the best he could. His six feet and three inches—a tall Jew!—guaranteed me an even better view than his of water, sky, skyline, land, of the whole place that Mark LaPlace, a mixed-blood Mohawk, who, along with many Indian ironworkers, drove in every week from the Caughnawaga reservation near Montreal, called the City of Man-Made Mountains.

Earthbound, at home or school, the world was scary and too big as it was. High on a partially completed bridge, higher yet on Dad’s shoulders, the world would swell to unmanageable dimensions, awesome frights, sickening beauties. The anticipation of visual sublimity wasn’t what thrilled me at every promise-threat. I thrilled to Dad’s singular power to scare me, to his correspondingly exclusive power to soothe me. Dad could reassure me; I’d believe his reassurances, trust in them, because he knew, the cells that made him him understood how bad fear could get. Climbing together, he’d have his rope, hook, muscle-meat, and deeply treaded, break-a-leg boots, acting on behalf of his physical integrity and safety. All I’d have was a perfunctory pat on the head, knock ’em dead, kiddo, and his body. I’d be terrified and love it, love him for terrifying me, for his unique capacity to assuage terror he’d authored himself. If some evening, he’d casually, passingly mention taking me up—maybe tomorrow … you never know, do you?—the next morning, suited up in my dungaree overalls, prepared for action, I’d park my tush on his lunch pail, so he couldn’t leave without first reckoning with me, as a housecat might tuck her body within the lining of a suitcase her owner was packing for a journey, not-so-subtly notifying her master, You’re not going anywhere unless you take me, too. As if the cat, no matter how well-loved, had any say at all in the matter.

Every day he left without taking me, until I was twelve and God damn it to Hell he died and stopped no taking me.

Before he pulled that stunt, he kept on pledging and daring me to go. I’d dare him back with a fiercely incautious, You’d better believe it! As if I, no matter how well-loved, had any say at all in the matter.

* * *

Every one of New York City’s children grew up in the shadows of bridges. A smaller subset grew up or died in the penumbrae of bridge deaths. Child endangerment was a Class A misdemeanor, as naughty as a misdemeanor could be before it graduated up a grade to felony. So it was one crime, child endangerment, if I hung around bridge bases when school was out so Dad could half-look after me—babysitters and summer camp didn’t exist in our economic cosmology, the unfeasibility of camp accounting for my never learning how to swim—and it was another crime, child neglect—which was often a felony, not to mention a big fat bore—if he left me alone at home.

An outlaw either way.

Even when school was in session, most of the guys in all the gangs brought their sons to work, where they received their real education. Bridge-building was existence itself, what their fathers before them had done, what their sons after them would probably do. Ironworkers formed multi-generational lines of risk-takers, cold-nerved men bonded together like the high steel it was a life’s assignment to connect. Those burly, balletic men—who took chances only circus acrobats, suicidal souls, Wallendas, or bridgemen would take, who pronounced me cuter than a button, who bear-hugged me till the guacamole would come outa them ears, who gave me quarters just because I was Lefty Tedesky’s girl—were criminals? Plain as day, it couldn’t have been a crime when Chicky Testaverde, who spun cable, brought his fourteen-year-old, Danny, to a job, and it couldn’t have been a crime when a tall ladder caught Danny’s curious eye, and the boy asked, “Can I climb that?”

Chicky replied, in a resigned, benumbed, oh-no-here’s-where-it-all-begins voice, “Awright, but don’t fall.” Could Chicky authoritatively have refused, without Danny laughing in his face as father and son stood right there on a bridge-construction site, where Chicky was now working iron, where both might have been remembering that Chicky’s father, Danny’s grandfather, had worked the Williamsburg Bridge, lifting steel beams with derricks pulled by horses?

Danny climbed that ladder higher and higher, until he stood alone on a slippery top beam—a beam much higher than Chicky had bargained for or would have allowed if Danny had asked—and looked around, taking in the world’s magnitude, and marveled at how extraordinarily far he could see from that height, and instantly decided that ironwork was what he’d someday do. Down at the base, Chicky went all-out ape. “Get down, Danny, you crazy fuck, damn you! You’ll kill yourself up there. And if you die, Danny boy? You know what’ll happen if you die?” Danny smiled down at everyone, smiled what the men called a shit-eating grin. I couldn’t see how eating shit was anything to grin about, but I figured adults knew things I was too young to understand. “If you die,” Chicky screamed at the sky, “I. Will. Fucking. Kill. You.”

Wearing an aw-shucks-I’m-caught-but-I’m-cute mug, Danny climbed down. Everyone, high and low—physically, up on the bridge and down at the base, and professionally, at every station within high steel’s complex system of ranking its men—applauded and cheered. One after another, ironworkers thumped his back hard; sometimes truly to hurt him, because he’d done wrong, he’d gone against his father, and sometimes to congratulate him, as a display of respect, because he’d proven himself bridge-worthy. Danny had demonstrated his passion for and merit within his family’s legacy precisely by defying it in its current incarnation: Chicky. Mostly the men’s back-clapping extended both—contempt and admiration—through the infliction of pain. Just a little pain.

Or a lot. But a lot usually happened at home. Like what they did in public was practice for what they’d do at home. Like they saved a lot up during the day. For later.

Chicky played at grumbling and grousing but couldn’t persuasively beat down his smile—crooked-lipped, prominently lacking some teeth, but jam-packed with filial pride—when he submitted that Danny’s ascent had earned Danny his first beer. Chicky kept a cooler with sodas and beers in his Buick’s trunk on days when the walking bosses weren’t around. He called, “Little Tedesky!” I jumped to attention. “Couldja make yourself useful? Shake a leg? Get my boy here a beer?”

Chicky tossed me his car keys and threw me an approving nod when I caught them no problem. Keds crunching gravel, I ran toward the parking lot, delighted to have a task to fulfill for the men. Danny, overjoyed with his big day’s second distinct launch into masculine adulthood—his illicit, under-age drink, perhaps not his first, as Chicky chose to think—jogged close behind me.

“Today’s your day,” I said, palming the clutch of keys off to him. “You get to do the whole thing.” He unlocked and opened the Buick’s trunk, pried off the cooler’s squeaky Styrofoam lid, retrieved a Rheingold, took a long pull. He offered me a sip.

“Just don’t tell.” Immediately following the initial sip, my arms and legs felt heavy and achy, but they ached good. Another sip, and they ached real good. Another, and I became unsteady. I grabbed Danny’s arm so I wouldn’t skin my knees stumbling to the gravel.

I’d never seen so hairy an arm on someone so young. Up close. With my free hand, I touched the hair on the arm I held hostage, mussing the hair against the whorls of its natural growth configuration, then smoothing it back, as I’d done at home with the wall-to-wall shag. Back and forth, up and down his arm. I was simultaneously lost in and intensely concentrated on the beat, the rhythm of cyclically creating swirling arm-hair chaos and then returning it to tidy normalcy He didn’t stop me. His breath was raggedy. I continued stroking, ruining a pattern, restoring a pattern.

Distantly, Chicky hollered, “I said one beer, not the whole six-pack.” Danny neither responded nor registered hearing his father. Now he had gooseflesh, his soft, young, black arm-hairs standing straight up, a phenomenon I’d later learn was scientifically called piloerection. Chicky shouted, “You writin’ a book or somethin’?” Danny, who got to see his arms and their hair every day, was as transfixed as I was. His breathing steadied, slowed, deepened. Nearly but not quite rupturing my reverie, from afar Chicky yelled, angrily, “Danny? You deaf or just not listening to me today? If I have to come over there …” Wordlessly, Danny stared at my hand gliding along his arm’s shaft. Touching his arm-hair, and the arm-skin underneath, was awfully pleasant and vaguely disturbing, a brand new, unnamable inner commotion that started to spook me. I didn’t want to stop petting him, but I thought I should mention what I’d half-heard. “You’re dad’s mad. You’re in trouble.” Danny didn’t hear me. Chicky bellowed, “Hey, Lefty. People’s gonna think your girl’s the type who hangs around parking lots. See what’s doing over there, will ya?”

My father approached us, boots grinding gravel. Once the beer can came within his eyeshot, his face became a blade of disapproval, features finely sharpened and narrowed. And it cut. I’d done bad. I scrambled for a strategy to fix it.

Perhaps for the first and only blessed time, being a child spared me something. Still young enough to play innocuous tickle-wrestle games, without pulling my hand from Danny’s arm, I wiggled my fingers, ten desperate, panicked worms, deep into Danny’s belly, like I was tickling him, “Cootchie-cootchie-cooo.” Quick-footed, quick-witted Danny followed my lead, doubling over and laughing maniacally, then cootchie-cootchie-cooo-ing my armpits. I shrieked, too, with crazy-person laughter. Although Dad seemed relieved that all Danny was doing was tickling me—the man had no idea that I was doing all the doing, or thought as much—I knew right then that it was officially and indelibly safe to say that I really had a problem, that I was disgusting, that there was poison in my putrefied blood, that I’d been born bad.

A bad seed. A bad egg. Three hundred million bad seeds in a grand hurry toward a head-on collision with one bigger bad egg. The blood-script of a messy but astonishingly idiot-proof recipe for bringing into being a being born bad An accident—a statistically improbable accident—waiting to happen. That would be me.

For decades I’d awaken with a start, sweatily, those two words in my mind, on my tongue. Born bad

* * *

When Dad first warned me that taking kids up on bridges was against the law, he’d explained, in his serious-man voice, “Here’s the tricky thing, Beetle. The laws weren’t made for People Like Us. Mostly, People Like Us have to obey the law, but we don’t have to respect it. And we sure as hell don’t have to like it. Ain’t one law says you have to respect the law.” I was proud. We were tough. We meant business. Me and my bad Dad. A tough team. Once pledged to the team, there’s no getting off. Ever.

Even after death, there’s no quitting the team. Danny loyally stuck by the Testaverde team, as the team did by him, long beyond his death—his premature payment of the ultimate union dues—two years after his transcendent ladder-climb. Violating child labor laws, and working illegally, without papers, Danny had quit high school to work iron. The walking bosses had looked the other way at his age, because Danny was a crackerjack cabler, skilled beyond his years, until the day he’d slipped and fallen off a too-slippery beam.

The men, as Dad recounted the story, struggled to catch him, nearly falling off themselves, but they only managed to grab hold of his shirt. His Alexander’s-boys’-department polyester shirt. In a wakeful nightmare, a day-mare, the men watched impotently as Danny plummeted, and his shirt flew off, and his naked back looked so startlingly white against the black water. Water as hard as concrete, water harder than steel, water that murdered bodies falling from such heights by breaking them into many pieces, even if the lungs managed miraculously to carry on functioning during the descent.

No one could bear to look at Chicky.

Finally, the men watched as, from deep within him, Danny’s intestines sprung pyrotechnically out of his insides and into the open air, unfurling like some kid’s birthday-party streamers, launching skyward, as if powered by a spring-loaded catapult. The remnants of his body sunk heavily into the water, piece by broken piece. His guts were the last part of him anyone saw. His guts—up, up, up—as they soared.

All the men removed their hard hats, tacitly arriving at a collective mandate that the workday was over—and not just for Danny. Most of them immediately headed down off the bridge, but some were immobilized, stunned still, including several who required hours of humiliating, never-to-be-mentioned-again coaching and hand-holding from other men. Three guys were physically incapable—it wasn’t emotional or anything, they swore, but sheerly, physiologically impossible—to unbolt their locked-shut eyes. The three had to be embraced and carried down the whole way.

Criminals. All of us.

* * *

“If we’re gonna climb a bridge together, I have to teach you the right way to fall off. Into water. When you know how to fall right, we can go up and know what to do if God forbid something goes wrong. But remember: None of these things are allowed. There’s rules against it, so you can’t tell anyone what we’re doing. Afterwards, you can’t tell anyone what we did.”

“If it’s not allowed on Canarsie Pier, let’s skip it. It’s rinky-dink anyway. We could jump off a real bridge in Jamaica.”

He grinned amusedly. “You think it’s legal across the county line? In Queens County, but not Kings County?”

I stood awhile, crossed and uncrossed my legs, which locked at my stiffened, knobby knees. I lost my balance a little during one crossover, caught myself, and swallowed hard. I hadn’t meant Queens. I’d meant the island. From the commercials. Ocean waves. Palm trees. Sunsets. And that music. I folded my arms across my chest. “I meant the beach.”

“Forget Bergen Beach. We’re good enough right here. Anyway, how’s stepping from flat sand into the ocean like jumping off a bridge? ’Slike taking a walk, not a fall.” I hadn’t thought through the spatial aspects that far—although secretly, anticipating our trip to the bay in for-real Jamaica, I’d packed my knapsack with my bathing suit and two towels and placed toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, suntan oil, soap, and snacks in my Fonzie lunchbox. Peering down into this Jamaica’s bay, I saw that these logistics weren’t analogous to a work situation either. Canarsie Pier’s setup didn’t provide the slightest simulation of the long-distance free-fall from those heights to those depths, and that was what I’d wanted him to show me. The distance between Canarsie Pier’s cement banks and Jamaica Bay’s foul water was a matter of sad little inches—nothing compared to the vast expanses of absolute nothing between a bridge’s tensile steel and the suck of rushing, fluctuating open water. My stomach sat low, depressed with the first signs of starting-to-be-sad stomach syndrome.

“First off, when you’re falling more than twenty feet, you don’t know diddley-squat about what’s floating around you. You could hit Jimmy Hoffa for all you know. You don’t know how deep the water’s gonna be. Make like you’re blind. A leap of faith.”

I got quiet. I got cold, even though the night was hot, and when I shivered, poking through my Danskin, my nipples mortified me. He wore only pale, unpatterned blue boxers. No shirt. No one was around, so it was okay, he said. He figured cops wouldn’t hassle us at 1 a.m., so we went then, in the small hours. It was to be our secret.

The distinction between secrecy and privacy. A tough one.

The sky was yellowish and bearing down, pressing the low roofs of the attached houses with green awnings beyond Seaview Avenue, closing in on the Pier’s hot concrete. He asked, all sympathetic and paternal, “Getting cold feet?”

“What are you? High as a kite on drugs?” The question had been popping out of Canarsie’s parental mouths.

“Then pay attention. I’ll explain it as many times as you need, but I’ll only demonstrate once.”

“Why?”

His features clustered to a pinch of nose and lips—a disgusted look, I thought, standing with my squinched-raisin nipples and ignorance. “I’m not allowed to jump in even once. I can’t go twice. They’d cart me to jail if they knew you were doing it, too.” I was dry ice, frozen and burnt. “Learning how to fall is the most important thing you’ll ever learn, and they won’t teach you that in school. The trick is to do exactly what doesn’t come naturally. When you’re falling, you won’t be able to see or even think, but if somehow you can, try to fall wherever the water’s deepest.”

“But then I’ll drown.”

“Drowning’s always a risk, but that’s a swimming problem, not a falling problem. And if drowning is your main concern, you lucked out big time, because you can only drown if there’s a miracle and you survive the fall and the hit. The deepest water is furthest from shoreline. Assume the water isn’t deep enough to stop you bashing yourself against the shore bottom. Hit bottom with your head, you break your skull. Hit bottom with your legs, they snap like Pick-Up Sticks. Go for the deepest part. Stay away from all objects, especially anything that supports the bridge.”

“Then there’s nothing to hold onto. To help me. Float.”

“This is true. Nothing to help you out, but also nothing to smash yourself into. All kinds of garbage collects near bridge supports. Sure, a little raft would be nice to find, but you’re more liable to find something a lot bigger and a lot harder than you are. Then you’ll pay.” He turned around, looked behind himself. “Checking for John Law. Coast’s clear. Okay now. Jump feet first. Stay straight. If you aren’t perfectly straight, you’ll break your back when you hit.” I was trembling, and not because of the extreme temperatures my skin had touched. He said, “I thought you wanted this. What’s with the Gloomy Gus punim?”

“I’m just listening.”

“Totally vertical. Feet first. Squeeze your feet together tight. And your butt cheeks.”

“Butt cheeks?”

“If you don’t squeeze your cheeks, water’s gonna rush in. Screw up your insides. Internal damage and such like.”

“Rush in where?” What fun, to watch a big strong man squirm. I knew where he was talking about, that it embarrassed him to talk about it. I knew that things could go inside that place just as things could come out of that place. “Rush in where?”

“Into your insides. Your tummy. And you’ll get one helluva stomachache. Always make sure to cover your privacy real tight.” Outside his boxers, he cupped his hands around his parts, like I was some guy at a row of urinals.

“Why? Why should I? Why should I cover my privacy?”

“You just have to.” I wanted to watch him wriggle out of this one. I remembered how one winter, when we’d gone to see the human polar bears go swimming at Brighton Beach, I’d asked him why men had nipples. He’d blushed and changed the subject to his favorite: ironwork. And a few years earlier, I’d asked him where babies came from. Flustered, pink-faced, without a trace of levity or irony, he said, in a voice possessed of an untainted, artless sincerity never heard out of grown-ups’ mouths, “Ummmmm, you should ask your mother.” My question was sufficiently stress-provoking to make him forget that I didn’t have much of a mother to ask, and that if I did ask the mother I came from, he and I wouldn’t have been having this conversation. This situation.

“Just do what I tell you and remember to protect your privacy.”

The thick yellow sky pushed down on my skull and brain. “First you said I couldn’t think or see straight. Then you said to remember to cover my privacy. How’m I gonna remember if I can’t think?”

“Trust me.” To trust someone who kept checking behind his back did not come easy.

“Explain why you did that.” I pointed, accusing his shorts of something. The idea of his parts poked out; the idea of his sheltering hands obscured the idea of the bulge. “Izzat fair? You said you’d explain it however many times, then you don’t explain it, not even a tiny bit?” He looked around frantically. “Dad, we’re alone, but it doesn’t matter anyway, ’cause everything’s all wrong.”

“Wrong? What’s wrong? I’m steering you wrong?”

My talking-out-loud voice said, “No,” but my thinking-inside-myself voice bawled, You already did. This was supposed to be something else. You’re pulling a change-up on me and you don’t even say you’re sorry. I started crying, then I stopped myself.

“I know it’s scary, Butterfly,” he cooed, all kissy-face-buddy-buddy. “I’ll demonstrate. Better to learn by example.” He plopped onto the concrete and lay flat, flat everywhere except for the forcefully un-flat, trace afterimage of the ghost in his shorts. “Another thing to know. Remember how we make snow-angels?”

“That’s winter. In the snow. It’s summer now. Everything’s different.”

“Pretend with me. As practice.” He spread his arms and legs apart, wide. His pectorals and deltoids emerged, tauten-ing, hardening, and his boxers gapped, puffed, and puckered in places I thought would’ve worried him if he hadn’t been busy trying to get in good with me—after he’d rooked me, no less. His arms and legs described arcs on the concrete. “While you’re falling, making snow-angels in the air generates resistance and slows down your plunge.” He flapped his limbs like a dying bug, too stunned to flip from his back onto twitchy, kicky legs.

I was done. No more pretending. No more practicing. I wasn’t lying down on hot concrete, no way no how, to make fake snow-angels in the summer. I was done bench-pressing, too, because falling lessons, and all the practicing building up to it, had always held zero promise. For me. I said, “This is C-R-A-P crappola.”

“I don’t like that word.”

“Well, tough titties. I don’t like this. I don’t even think I like you. I’m going home.” As if it would work this time, I said it again—I’m going home—as if I had any say at all in the matter. He appeared embarrassingly eager to scuttle like a caught cockroach off the Pier, but if he hadn’t been ready to leave, if he’d wanted something else, somewhere else, or something more, I would’ve been stuck. I had no keys. I wondered whether it was accurate to call it our house if only one of us had keys.

* * *

Chicky Testaverde came by a couple of times that summer to have grief-drinks with Dad after he’d already been at the bar, talking ironwork, having several after-work drinks with the guys. He never confessed to suffering days so stricken it took five after-work drinks to calm his once-nervy nerves. He never confessed to icing over with bone-seizing fear while on bridges now, unable to move in any direction, sometimes hugging a girder or a beam, eyes crushed closed for five minutes. But he spoke like a man indicting himself for murder, which implicated us as coconspirators, when he wept, “I shoulda known to keep my kid off the bridge.”

* * *

Later during the summer of the Pier business, the three of us—Dad, awkwardness, and I—got in the car, tooled around, listened to AM radio and the wind roaring through the open windows. The drives were probably his uncomplicated method of getting through the hours. His directions and destinations were always questionable and unquestioned. One night he’d gotten lost, maybe missed an exit if he’d had one in mind, near the Belt Parkway’s labyrinthine, accident-prone Ocean Parkway intersection, a snaky Mobius-mess of ramps, exits, merges, under- and overpasses. Traffic was slow.

He drove the Olds below an overpass on whose brick someone had spray-painted in darkest black, Hi Scummy.

We noticed it, read it, and looked at each other. Hi Scummy jetted us into laughter so belly-felt it was unbearable, like being too-tickled. Our hysterics were a relief, too, the discharging of something that needed letting out. Laughter was going to kill us, because Dad was losing control of the wheel, swerving like an alkie. He pulled off at the nearest exit and parked. We genuinely could not stop laughing. We were having An Episode. I was scared I might wet my pants, but I also didn’t care if I did.

When he could talk again, Dad asked, “You think the guy who wrote Hi Scummy was pissed off at somebody who drives under that overpass-thing every day? To make sure the other guy really gets the message?”

“How would Scummy know the guy’s handwriting? And would Scummy know to look up there for a message?”

“Hmm. Smart one. Good point. Also, how would Scummy know that he was the exact Scummy that the Hi was meant for? ’Cause for sure there’s more than one person who takes this route and fits that description.” He paused, changed tone, adding a grim voice to his voice. “That’s if we used words like that, Beth. And we don’t. Those words aren’t allowed, so we don’t use them.”

“Oh,” I said, earnestly. “What about words like Dummy-fuck-o?”

“Beth! Brat! Enough! You know the rules about words.”

“Rules schmules!” I waved away his admonition. Laughter was lots better. “What about this? Maybe the person who wrote … that thing … that Hi … is mad at the drivers.”

“All of ’em? In every single car?”

“Well, not mad, exactly, he just thinks they’re, you know, that they’re scummy!”

“What did you just say?”

“Scummy!” I hooted. I hollered. I spat a few spit-bubbles out my mouth, not on purpose, but a couple hit him, which was nice. “I can say that! You can’t stop me! I’m Scummy! You’re Scummy! Everybody’s so Scummy, Scummy, Scummy!”

He tried to paste his I-am-stern-and-strict face onto his face. “Cut out the crap, Beth! What did I just—?” Mid-scold, he gulped, gagged, as he tried to swallow back laughter, quacking glottally at the precise moment he was trying to play the part of an I-know-what’s-best-for-you type Dad—“What did I just tell you?”

“You told me not to say scummy But you also said crap and before that you said scummy a million-zillion times, so you can’t be mad. Nuh-uh. The rule is phony baloney. Like you.” He gunned the engine again, and we went quiet, listen-ing to the Olds’ hum, meandering on small streets toward wherever he and I were headed, that night, that summer.

Then, I Eureka!-ed. Out my mouth, before I knew it was coming, I shouted, “But maybe it might be a nice thing! Think about it. Maybe the person who wrote Hi to Scummy isn’t a mean Dummy-fuck-o. Like it’s the opposite. Maybe he and Scummy are bestest best friends, and Scummy doesn’t mind. It’s only a bad name if it hurts Scummy’s feelings, but Scummy likes him, so he likes it, he likes his name, so it’s nice to be Scummy.”

Dad shook his head hopelessly. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you, kiddo, and I’ve heard all sortsa nicknames, but I never heard anyone call a good buddy Scummy. Nice try. Close, but no cigar.”

My hands fluttered up dismissively, then flopped in my lap as I kept myself from sighing, “Some people just don’t ever get it.” I twisted, faced him head-on. “Dad, will ya use the noodle God gave you? This guy went to a helluva lotta trouble. He walked on those highways, with the cars and trucks zooming by. Look! There’s no road shoulder. He must of been scared.”

“You got that right. He was shit-scared.”

“But we don’t use words like that, do we?” I inquired, all innocent. He reddened. I let him sweat that one out a minute, then continued, “This guy climbed up the walls, and he had to tiptoe around those No Pedestrian Traffic signs just to hang upside down, like bats do, off that overpass. It’s high up there, especially to be upside down, and the bricks are crumbling. That’s scary.”

“Well taken,” he said. “Go on. Argue your point.” His gaze burned a dimple into the side of my face.

“I’m tellin’ you. All that tsuris? Why bother with it? To say hi to some scummy stranger-type of person who wasn’t his friend? It doesn’t make sense. Not unless he likes Scummy.”

He added, in his dropped-register, this-is-cautionary-so-pay-attention tone, “But Beth-Bug, a lotta times people like things that aren’t so good for them. Especially small people like you.”

“You call me Boll Weevil all the time. A lot of people think boll weevils are icky and gross, and they would say you’re being a big Dummy-fuck-o by calling me by a bug-name, but we know you mean it nice. Same with Scummy. Personally, I think Scummy and his best friend have these private names. Scummy likes being Scummy.”

Leaning in toward the windshield, my father peered at the sky through the streaky, dirty glass. Refusing to look at me, he smiled. Then he tried to quash the smile by contorting his face, cranking his jaw around to set his lips in their man-who-means-business-no-kidding-for-real arrangement. Then his whole face relaxed, forfeited its struggle against its own mouth, and he smiled like he was the man who’d invented the light bulb. He touched my cheek. “And you, Boll Weevil. In my book, I’d have to say that you are one terrific allrightnik.”

You

We stayed stopped at the Stop sign for longer than a Stop sign mandated legally. He was staring ahead of himself, into the middle distance. Then his face changed, dropped, and he stared at his lap. His smile faded, his eyed looked darker and more heavily lidded than they had moments before, and the car’s temperature seemed to fall fifteen degrees. He was thinking, I could tell, and it wasn’t about anything good. “What now?” I asked. “Am I in trouble?”

After an empty pause, he spoke absently. “Nah. It’s just … I just still think it’s not a very nice thing to call a friend.”

“Uh-duh-uh,” I muttered. “Guess what? Just because something’s not very nice doesn’t make it wrong.”

* * *

Some thirty years later, I was still alone and without plans to forgive myself for something I’d said in a conversation we’d had when I was six. After work and school, first grade—we both “knocked off,” as he put it, at 3 p.m.—I hung around him in the living room while he read the paper. Then he made dinner, such as it was. That unforgivable evening, he cooked up a vat of “Jewish Spaghetti.” I never knew what inherently Jewish characteristic was discernable in these pale, overcooked noodles—People Like Us called them noodles, not pasta—that he boiled and smeared with a sugary, gummy, aggressively orange sauce—as orange as laboratory signs indicating the presence of radioactive biohazards—spicelessly dotted with sticky, translucent tiles of onion.

Jewish Spaghetti was disgusting. Jewish Spaghetti was nearly inedible. I loved Jewish Spaghetti. I loved how one small bowl of Jewish Spaghetti became seventeen oil drums of Jewish Spaghetti in my gut. A gift that kept on giving.

As we chewed and chewed and chewed, I ruminated on my teacher’s introductory lesson—hurled at us first thing that morning, right after she took attendance—about the dizzying, fearsome procedures involved in telling time. The devices: sun dials, hourglasses, wristwatches, atomic clocks, mechanical clocks. The standards: Greenwich mean, Tidal, Atomic, Geologic, Standard, Coordinated universal, Ephemeris. The calendars: solar, lunar, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Muslim, Julian, Gregorian, Worldsday, Buddhist, Persian, Coptic, Chinese. The Maya Great Circle.

Not even to mention the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

Topping it horrifically off, the Metric System and New Math were hurtling respectively across the Atlantic and through deep space toward Public School 276. I wasn’t smart or good enough to keep up with it or figure it out. Dad, who was unquestionably not when I got him, couldn’t help me. I could only try to tattoo facts on my memory, to remember without understanding.

Suspiciously, I asked him, “Are you old?”

“I’m a little old, but not too old. Like you’re a little young, but not too young.”

A suction grabbed at whatever lived between my ribs and started draining it out. “If you’re a little old now, then soon you’ll be a lot old. When you’re a lot old, you die, right? Isn’t that what happens?”

“Yeah, that’s how it goes. I won’t be a lot old too soon. That’s much later. I’m not planning on dying any time soon.” I coughed. With my fork and fingers, I shaped and reshaped orange spaghetti spirals, not piles of the pasta, but plain, wormy lines of it, flat on my plate. Then I worked on spirals within spirals, still two-dimensional. I gulped. I gulped hard.

“Lookit. C’mon now,” he cooed. From the spirals on my plate, I made and unmade a maze. He slapped his big hands on the table. “Look at me, Beth.” I couldn’t look at him. I concentrated. I complicated my noodle-maze. It looked maze-like. It was crap. Its twirls nauseated me. If I, who’d created this, couldn’t find a way—not one workable entry or exit point—to get myself into and out of the maze, then no one else could lead. Just going in circles and more circles. Round and round forever. Like clock-hands. Like fears. “I said, look at me. Listen good. We got Jewish Spaghetti to eat. Food to mess with. Bridges to climb. We got a lotta living to do before I do something stupid like that.” I ditched my fork, busied my orange fingers making braids, then helices.

“But Daddy, when you die will you be died forever?” Aniline blue. Dyed forever.

“That’s what dying is, kiddo. But I’m not planning on doing that. Not for many years. Not for the foreseeable future.” Later. A little old. Soon. A little young. A lot old. Too soon. Not too young. Much later. Any time soon. Forever. Many years How many years made many years? And foreseeable future? A foreseeable future wasn’t possible. Unforeseeable was the future’s crux. Unforeseeability made the future the future.

All this shape-shifting, fake-out doubletalk. Time couldn’t be told. There was no reason even to bother trying to tell time. Time did not listen.

“Aw, Baby Beth, don’t cry. You’re killing me. Seeing you miserable? That’s what’ll be the death of me.” I wiped my face with the quicker-picker-upper I’d used as a napkin, did the usual little-kid shit, whimpered, sniffled.

I really didn’t want him ever to die. And I didn’t mean to kill him.

“Not for nothing, don’t’cha think it’s kind of hard to be so serious and sad when you got stripes of tomato sauce going down your schnozz?” I slid my index finger down my already sizable nose, and it came back greasily orange. Still inconsolable, I reached my index finger across the table, and striped his nose with my sauce. He stuck three of his fingers into my maze and war-painted my cheeks, which my face’s controlled ache told me were dimpin—the gerund form of a verb he invented just for me, its infinitive form, to dimp, referring to the sudden appearances of my dimples while eating or sup-pressing a smile. I poked a finger into my plate, stirred until my finger was slick with sauce, traced creepy-smiley-clown lipstick around his mouth’s perimeter. He stood, opened the fridge, handed me a can of orange soda. “This’ll make you feel better.” I drank some, cheered up a little, then a lot. Then all better.

I was so saturated with relief and unruly joy that my lips and tongue could almost taste the blood connecting me and my father. I was a balloon-skin about to burst into bits with the force of detonating affection and hope, hope, hope. I barreled toward him, bounded up into his arms, beaming, bobbing my cocksure head, shouting with unadulterated confidence: “You’re right! You’re not going to die any time soon. I just know it!” I spilled out of his arms. I wanted him to see how happy I was, now that I’d figured it out. “Nope!” I jigged a hippy-hoppy succession of leap and skips that he’d called, since I’d been a baby, Beth’s Dance of Sudden Elation. “I was being crazy, all wrong, before. Now for sure I know that you’re going to live at least another two weeks!”

Guilty as charged.

* * *

The good news, when we buried him, was that for the first time in twenty-four years, as his dead body dropped lower and lower, groundward, down, down, down, he had no fear at all. Burying him was the opposite of going up to work. Supine in his coffin, the cheapest my mother’s boyfriend’s money could buy, he descended, disappearing toward the world’s bottom, groundward, instead of climbing to its top, rising up and above, skyward. Sharper, closer to the surface of feeling even than grief, were the bones of my rib cage, truly a cage now, except the heart it was constructed to incarcerate, mine, had turned to nothing. The cage’s new inmate was Zero, the nothing that most definitely was something, an absence more present than my hands in front of me.

After the burial I packed my knapsack with my few things and moved into my mother’s house. I wasn’t going anywhere. Even while primed in a permanent state of cat-like readiness, I was solidly placed. I was keeping vigil. I was staying; I was staying vigilant. I assumed the position, like a long-distance runner poised to bolt at the sound of a gunshot that wouldn’t fire a second too soon. Fast and forward. No promises would be made, fulfilled or not, at 617 Flatlands Avenue, where I’d live with the mother who’d let me go. Where I’d live with the simplest fact—no one was ever going to help me ever—and where I’d live with the impenetrable tangle, the un-unravellable knowledge-knot that my mother had never wanted me around, but there I was, living with her as she resigned herself to living with me in a house attached on both sides and jam-packed with no-Dad and no-cry and plastic-covered furniture, exponentially accelerating my development into the little waste of sperm that I was.

And am.

PART II

New School Brooklyn

CROWN HEIST

BY ADAM MANSBACH

Crown Heights

Tap tap BOOM. Birds ain’t even got their warble on, and my shit’s shaking off the hinges. I didn’t even bother with the peephole. It had to be Abraham Lazarus, the Jewish Rasta, playing that dub bassline on my door.

BOOM I swung it open and Laz barged in like he was expecting to find the answer to life itself inside. A gust of Egyptian Musk oil and Nature’s Blessing dread-balm hit me two seconds after he flew by: Laz stayed haloed in that shit like it was some kind of armor. He did a U-turn around my couch, ran his palm across his forehead, wiped the sweat onto his jeans, and came back to the hall.

“I just got fuckin’ robbed, bro.”

Funny how a dude can cruise the road from neighbor to acquaintance to homeboy without ever coming to a full stop at any of the intersections. Me and Laz, our relationship was like one of those late-night cab rides where the driver hits his rhythm and the green lights stretch forever. He came upstairs and introduced himself the day I moved into his building two years ago: got to know who you live with when you’re moving four, five pounds of Jamaican brown a week. He sized me up, decided I was cool, and told me his door was always open. I didn’t really have too much going on then—just a half-time shit job in an office mailroom and a baby daughter Uptown who I never got to see—so before long I was com-ing by on the regular to smoke. If Laz wasn’t already puffing one of those big-ass Bob Marley cone spliffs when I walked in, my entrance was always reason enough for him to sweep his locks over his shoulder, hunch down over his coffee table, and commence to building one.

I used to call his crib Little Kingston. All the old dreads from the block would be up in there every afternoon: watching soccer games on cable, chanting down Babylon, talkin’ ’bout how horse fat an’ cow dead, whatever the fuck those bobo yardie motherfuckers do. I never said much to any of them, just passed the dutchie on the left hand side. Jafakin-ass Lazarus got much love from the bredren, but a domestically grown, unaffiliated nigga like me stayed on the outskirts. Whatever. Later for all that I-n-I bullshit anyway.

I flipped the top lock quick. “What happened?”

“Motherfucker walked straight into my crib, bro, ski-masked up. Put a fuckin’ Glock 9 to my head while I was lying in bed. Ran me for all my herb.” His hand shook as he lifted a thumb-and-finger pistol to his temple. Fear or rage; I couldn’t tell.

“How many?” I asked. “Who?” In Laz’s business, you don’t get jacked by strangers. Strictly friends and well-wishers.

“Just one, and he knew where my shit was.”

“Even the secret shit?”

“Not the secret shit. I still got that. But the other ten are gone—I just re-upped yesterday. Son of a bitch filled a trashbag, duct-taped me up, and bounced.”

“Didn’t do a very good job with the tape, did he?”

Laz shook his head. “He was too petro. That was the scariest part, T. He was shitting his pants more than I was. And that’s when you get shot: when a cat doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing.”

“You want a drink?” I didn’t know what else to say.

“You got a joint?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Hold on.” I went to the bedroom and grabbed my sack. Laz was sitting on the edge of the couch when I got back, flipping an orange pack of Zig-Zags through his knuckles.

“This might be kinda beside the point right now,” I said carefully, falling into the chair across from him, “but it’s probably time to dead all that cosmic-karmic open-door no-gun shit, huh?”

The bottom line was that Lazarus was practically asking to be robbed. He never locked his door, and the only weapon in his crib was the chef’s knife he used to chop up ganja for his customers. He had some kind of who-Jah-bless-let-no-man-curse theory about the whole thing, like somehow the diffusion of his positive vibrations into the universe would prevent anyone from schiesting him. That and the fact that all the small-timers who copped off him knew that Laz was tight with the old Jamaicans who really ran the neighborhood. Plus, Laz was convinced that he looked crazy ill strutting around his apartment with that big blade gleaming in his hand: a wild-minded, six-two, skin-and-bones whiteboy with a spliff dangling from his mouth and hair ropes trailing down his back. Half Lee “Scratch” Perry, half Frank White.

It was an equation that left plenty out—the growling stomachs of damn near every young thug in the area, for starters. A year ago, all Laz’s customers were dime-bag-and-bike-peddling yardmen, and everything was peace. Then the hip hop kids found out about him. I told Laz he shouldn’t even fuck with them. I know these niggas like I know myself, I said. They’re outa control. They trying to be who Jay-Z says he is on records, dude. You don’t need that in your life.

He shrugged me off. They’re babies. I man nah fear no likkle pickney. Any time Laz started speaking yard, I just left his ass alone. But he should have listened. You could practically see these kids narrowing their eyes at my man every time he turned his back. It had gotten to the point where I’d started locking the door myself whenever I came over.

“It was Jumpshot,” Laz said, as a calligraph of smoke twirled up from the three-paper cone he’d rolled. “It had to be.”

I leaned forward. “Why Jumpshot?” So-called because he liked to tell folks he was only in the game because genetics had failed to provide him with NBA height. Or WNBA height, for that matter.

“Two reasons.” Laz offered me the weed. I shook my head. He blew a white pillow at the ceiling. “Three, actually. One, he sells the most. He’s got the most ambition. Two, that shit last month, when he complained and I sonned him.”

“Hold up, hold up. You did what? You ain’ tell me this.”

Laz cocked his head at me. “Yes I did, bro. Didn’t I? He came by at night, picked up a QP. I was mad tired, plus mad zooted, and I gave him a shitty shake-bag by mistake. So the next morning he shows up with two of his boys, dudes I don’t even know, bitching. Little Ja Rule-lookin’ cocksucker. I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ Sat him down, gave him a new bag, took the one he didn’t want, and threw it on the table. Then I brought out the chalice, like, ‘Now we’re gonna see if y’all can really smoke.’ Part challenge, part apology, you know. My bag and his bag, bowl for bowl. And you know I can smoke, bro.”

He had told me this story. It was funny at the time, hearing how Laz had smoked Jump and his boys into oblivion, burned up half Jump’s new herb sack before the kid even got out of the room. The way Laz told it, Jumpshot’s crew had passed out, but Jump himself refused to go down; he’d sat there all glassy-eyed, slumped back, barely able to bring the chalice-pipe to his lips, while Laz talked at him for hours like he was the dude’s uncle or something—regaled him with old smuggling stories from the island days, gave him advice on females, told him how to eat right, all types of shit. After a while, Laz said, he’d put this one song on repeat for hours, just to see if Jump would notice. “Herbman Trafficking” by Welton Irie, Laz’s theme music: Some a use heroin, some a snort up cocaine/but all I want for Christmas dat a two ganja plane/as one take off the other one land/we load the crop of sensimilla one by one/they tell me that it value is a quarter million/me sell it in the sun and a me sell it in the rain/ca’ when me get the money me go buy gold chain/me eat caviar and me a drink champagne …

“So what’s the third reason?” I asked.

“I recognized that motherfucker’s kicks. He got the new Jordans last week.” Lazarus stood up. “I gotta send a message. Right?”

I threw up my hands. “I’d say so. Yeah. I mean, you gotta do something.”

“Come see Cornelius with me.”

“Man, Cornelius doesn’t know me.”

“You’re in there all the time.”

“So? I’m just another dude who likes his vegi-fish and cornbread. Whatchu want me there for, anyway?”

“’Cause I’ma go see Jumpshot after that. And I’d like some company, you know what I’m saying?”

“I know what you’re saying, Laz, but I’m not tryna just run up on a armed motherfucker. What, you just gonna knock on his door? Say you’re the Girl Scouts? Why would he even be home?”

“If he’s not home, he’s not home. If he is, I’ll play it like I’m coming for help, like, ‘You’re the man on the street, find out who jacked me, I’ll make it worth your while.’”

Laz looked sharper, more angular, than I’d ever seen him. Like he was coming into focus. “I guess if he wanted to shoot you, he woulda done it half an hour ago,” I said.

“Exactly. Now he’s gotta play business-as-usual. Besides, I’m known to be unarmed. Now you understand why: so when I do pick up a strap, it’s some real out-of-character shit.”

“I don’t wanna be involved in no craziness, Laz.” I said it mostly just to get it on the record. Once you put in a certain number of hours with a cat like Lazarus, you become affiliated. Obligated. It starts off easy-going: You come over, you chill, you smoke. Ay T, you hungry? I’m ’bout to order up some food. Put away your money, dog. I got you. Then it becomes, Yo T, I gotta go out for a hot second. Do me a solid and mind the store, bro Or, Man, I’m mad tired. Can you bring Jamal this package for me? I’ll break you off. Good lookin’ out, T.

I stood up and walked out of the room.

“Fuck you going?” Laz called after me. I could tell from his tone that he was standing with his arms spread wide, like Isaac Hayes as Black Moses.

I came back and shook my duffel bag at him. “Unless you wanna carry those ten bricks back home in your drawers.”

“Good call.”

* * *

We drove to the spot, and I waited in the car while Laz talked to Cornelius. Most innocent-looking store in Crown Heights: Healthy Living Vegetarian Café and Juice Bar. X-amount of fake-bodega herb-gates with, like, one dusty-ass can of soda in the window, but Healthy Living was a high-post operation. They sold major weight, and only to maybe two or three cats, total. You had to come highly recommended, had to be Jamaican or be Abraham Lazarus.

The funny thing was that Cornelius could cook his ass off. You’d never know his spare ribs were made of gluten—that’s my word. Tastier than a motherfucker, and I ain’t even vegetarian. All Cornelius’s daughters worked in there, too, and every one of them was fine as hell. Different mothers, different shades of lovely. I stopped flirting after Lazarus told me where he copped his shit. Started noticing all the scars Cornelius had on his neck and forearms, too. He was from Trenchtown, Laz said. Marley’s neighborhood. You didn’t get out of there without a fight.

The metal gate was still down when we got there, but Cornelius was inside sweeping up. He raised it just enough to let Laz limbo underneath. I watched them exchange a few words: watched the face of the barrel-chested, teak-skinned man in the white chef’s apron darken as the pale, lanky dread bent to whisper in his ear. Then Cornelius laid his broom against a chair and beckoned Laz into the back room.

It wasn’t even a minute later when Laz ducked back outside and jumped into the ride. He didn’t say anything, just fisted the wheel and swung the car around. His face was blank, like an actor getting into character inside his head. I’d always thought his eyes were blue, but now they looked gray, the color of sidewalk cement.

“So what he say?” I figured he’d probably ignore the question, but I had to ask.

“He said, ‘Abraham, there are those that hang and those who do the cutting.’ And he gave me what I asked for.” Laz opened the left side of his jacket and I saw the handle of a pistol. Looked like a .38. Used to have one of those myself.

“I was hoping Cornelius would tell you he’d take care of it,” I said.

Laz shook his head about a millimeter. “Not how it works, T.” He made a right onto Jumpshot’s block, found a space, and backed in—cut the wheel too early and fucked it up and had to start over. “Bumbaclot,” he mumbled. There was another car-length of space behind him, but Laz missed on the second try, too. I guess his mind was elsewhere. He nailed it on the third, flicked the key, and turned to me. Surprising how still it suddenly felt in there, with the engine off. How close.

“It’s cool if you want to wait in the car, T.” Laz said it staring straight ahead.

I ground my teeth together, felt my jaw flare. Mostly just so Laz would feel the weight of the favor. “I’m good.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Let’s do this.”

It was a pretty street. Row houses on either side, and an elementary school with a playground in the middle of the block. I used to live on a school block back Uptown. It’d be crazy loud every day from about noon to 3—different classes going to recess, fifty or sixty juiced-up kids zooming all over the place. Basketball, tag, double-dutch. Couldn’t be too mad at it, though. It was nice noise.

A thought occurred to me and I turned to Laz, who was trudging along with his hands pocketed and his head buried in his shoulders like a bloodshot, dreadlocked James Dean. “It’s too early for a tournament, right?”

That was Jumpshot’s other hustle. Dude had eight or ten TVs set up in his two-room basement crib, each one equipped with a PlayStation. For five or ten bills, shorties from the neighborhood could sign up and play NBALive or Madden Football or whatever, winner take all. Even the older kids, the young thug set, would be up in Jump’s crib, balling and smoking and betting. Jumpshot handled all the bookie action, in addition to selling the players beer and weed—at a mark-up, no less, like the place was a bar or some shit. It was kind of brilliant, really.

“Way too early,” said Laz.

We stopped in front of Jumpshot’s door. “Play it cool,” I reminded him.

“We’ll see,” said Laz, and a little bit of that Brooklyn-Jew accent, that soft, self-assured intonation, surfaced for a second. It occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t the first time he’d done something like this. Maybe he didn’t own a gun because he didn’t trust himself with one. I don’t know if the thought made me feel better or worse.

“He’s got a loose ceiling tile in the bathroom,” said Laz. “Right above the toilet.” And he pressed the buzzer, hard, for about three seconds.

Static crackled from the intercom and then a grainy voice demanded, Who dat? A bad connection to ten feet away.

Laz bent to the speaker, hands on his knees, and over-pronounced his words: “Jumpshot, it’s Abraham. I’ve got to talk to you. It’s very important.”

A pause, two heatbeats long, and then, “A’ight, man, hold on.”

I tried to catch Laz’s eye, wanting to read his thoughts from his face. But his stare was frozen on the door. This much I was sure of: The longer Jumpshot took to open up, the worse for him.

But Jump’s face appeared in the crack between door and jamb a second later, bisected by the chain-lock. He flicked his eyes at both of us, then closed the door, slid off the chain, and opened up. He was rocking black basketball shorts, a white wife-beater, and some dirty-ass sweatsocks. If he hadn’t been asleep, he sure looked it.

“Fuck time is it?” He rubbed a palm up and down the right side of his face as he followed us inside.

“Early.” Next to Jumpshot, Laz looked like a gaunt, ancient giant. “But I been up for hours.”

“Yeah?” Jump said, sitting heavily on his unmade bed and bending to pull a pair of sneakers from underneath the frame. “Why’s that?”

Lazarus reached into his jacket and pulled out the .38, held it at waist height so that the barrel was pointing right at Jumpshot’s grill. “I think you know the answer to that,” he said calmly.

Jump looked up and froze. Just froze. Didn’t move, didn’t say shit. I gathered he’d never stared into that little black hole before.

Lazarus smiled. “Where’s my shit, Jumpshot?” he asked conversationally. I gulped it back fast, but for a sec I thought I might puke. It wasn’t the piece, or the fact that Jump suddenly looked like the seventeen-year-old kid he was. It wasn’t even the weird fucking sensation of another dude’s life passing before my eyes the way Jump’s did just then. What turned my stomach was that Lazarus looked more content than I had ever seen him. Like he would do this shit every day if he could.

Jump opened his mouth, made a noise like nhh, and shook his head. I was beginning to feel sorry for him. I’d expected more of the dude. Some stupid Tony Montana bravado, at least: Fuck you, Lazarus. You gonna hafta kill me, nigga.

“T.”

“Yeah, man.”

“Go take a look around, huh? I’ma have a little chat with my man here.”

“Sure.” I headed for the bathroom.

“What are you looking at him for?” I heard behind me. That rabbi voice again. “Look at me. That’s better. Now listen carefully, Jumpshot. You listening? Okay. Here’s the deal. You give me everything back, right now, no bullshit, and you get a pass. You get to pack your shit up and roll out of Dodge.” There was a pause, and I could almost see Laz shrugging. “Who knows, maybe a broken leg for good measure. To remind you that stealing is wrong.”

Finally, Jumpshot found his voice. It was raspy, clogged, but it cut through the stale air like a dart. “I didn’t steal nothing.” Like if he spoke deliberately enough there was no way Lazarus could not believe him. “I … have … no … idea … what you’re talking about.”

I walked back into the room right on cue, and threw two bricks onto the bed. Jump started like I’d tossed a snake at him. “That was all I could find,” I said. Jumpshot’s face was a death mask now, so twisted that any lingering trace of sympathy I might have had for him straight vanished.

“Oh, and this.” I handed Laz the gun. Jump raised up so fast I thought he might salute.

“I never seen that shit before in my life!” The veins in his neck strained; I could see the blood pumping.

“What, that?” Lazarus pointed at the bricks and raised his eyebrows. “That’s weed, Jumpshot. Collie. Ishen. Ganja. Sensi. Goat shit. People smoke it. Gets them high. Or did you mean this?” Lazarus held up the Glock, and as soon as Jumpshot looked at it, bam: Lazarus swung the gun at him and hit Jump square in the face, the orbit of the eye. Knocked him back onto the bed, bloody. Jump let out a clipped yelp and grabbed his face, and Lazarus leaned over him, gun in the air, ready to pistol-whip the kid again.

“At least this shit is loaded,” Laz said, eyes flashing. “At least you robbed me with a loaded gun, Jump. Next time, change your fuckin’ shoes.” Bam Lazarus slammed the gun down again—hit Jump on the hand shielding his face. Probably shattered a finger, at least. Jump screamed and twitched, curled like a millipede, this way and that. Nowhere to go, really.

Lazarus straightened, a gun in each hand, and swiped a forearm across his brow. “Ten minus two leaves eight,” he said. “So where’s the rest, Jump?”

“Fuck you.” Jump said it loud and strong, as if the words came from deep inside him.

“No, Jump,” Lazarus said. “Fuck you.” He turned and pulled the biggest television off its stand, whirled and heaved it toward Jumpshot. Missed. Thing must have been heavy; Lazarus barely threw it two feet. It landed upright. The screen didn’t even break.

Lazarus glanced over at me, a little embarrassed. “Fuck this,” he said. “Sit up, nigger. I’m through fucking with you. Sit up!”

Jumpshot did as he was told. Blood was smeared across his face, clotting over one eye. “Laz—”

“Shut up. Believe me, Jumpshot, I could fuck around and torture you for hours. Trust me, I know how. I even brought my knife. But I don’t have time for all that. So I’m going to wait five seconds, and if you don’t tell me where the rest of my shit is, I’m going to shoot you in the fucking chest, you understand? Go.”

“I don’t fucking know, man. You gotta believe me, Abraham, I swear to God I never seen that shit be—”

“Four.”

“Please, man, I swear on my mother’s—”

Lazarus snatched a pillow off the floor and fired through it. Didn’t muffle shit. Whole building probably heard the sound. Jump fell back flat. Lazarus wiped off the Glock and tossed it on the bed. Crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at Jumphot. The blood was spreading beneath him, saturating the blankets. “What could this fool have done with eight pounds of weed in two hours?”

“Maybe we should talk about it someplace else,” I suggested.

“Mmm,” said Lazarus. “That’s probably a good idea.” But we stood rooted to our spots, like we were observing a moment of silence. I watched Laz’s eyes bounce from spot to spot and knew he was wondering if there was anything in the apartment worth taking. Watching him was easier than watching Jumpshot.

“All right.” The moment ended and Laz spun on his heel. We stepped outside. After the dimness of the apartment, the block seemed almost unbearably bright.

We drove back to the crib and ordered breakfast from the Dominican place. Laz had steak and eggs. “Aren’t you supposed to be a vegetarian?” I asked.

“Usually,” he said with his mouth full, swiping a piece of toast through his yolk. He shook his head. “Eight fuckin’ pounds.”

“Only thing I can come up with is that he took it straight to one of the herb gates on Bedford,” I said. “On some pump-and-dump shit.”

Lazarus nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. Anybody else would ask questions.” He slid his knife and fork together neatly, as if a waiter was going to come and clear our plates. “I’ll never see that weight again, basically.”

“At least it was paid for, right?”

“Half up front, half on the re-up. That’s how Cornelius does business.” He steepled his hands and tapped his fingertips against his chin. “I’m gonna have to leave town, T. Take what I’ve got left, go down south, and bubble it.” He lowered his head, toyed with a lock. “I swore I’d never do the Greyhound thing again. But it’s still the safest way to travel.”

“How long you talking about?” I asked.

Laz shrugged. “A month or so. I’ll go see my bredren in North Kack, bubble what I need to bubble, let shit blow over. You can mind the shop, right? Keep the business up and running so the Rastas don’t start looking for a new connect?”

“If Cornelius will fuck with me, I can.”

“He will. I’ll set that up before I go.”

“When you gonna bounce?”

Lazarus reached over and grabbed the duffel with the bricks in it. He walked over to his closet and dumped an armload of clothes inside, then bent down and pulled a floor-board loose. Inside the hollow was a roll of dough and one more brick. He tossed those in, too. I neglected to mention that it was my bag he was packing.

“I’m ready now,” he said.

Laz took a shower, made a few phone calls. I went up to my crib and did the same, then came back down and rolled us one last spliff. We smoked in silence. Always the best way. When it was over Laz stubbed the roach, pushed off palms-to-knees, and stood. “Everything is set,” he said, and tossed me his car keys. “You might as well get used to driving it.”

We were quiet all the way to Times Square. I kept wait-ing for Laz to start peppering me with instructions, but he just leaned back in the passenger seat, rubbing his eyes. Occasionally, he’d sing a little snippet of a Marley song to himself: Don’t let them fool ya/or even try to school ya. Maybe it was stuck in his head and he just had to let it out, or maybe the song made him feel better. He had a good voice, actually.

I parked the car, walked him up to the ticketing desk, and then down to the terminal. The bus was already boarding. I offered Laz my hand; he clasped it, then pulled me into a shoulder-bang embrace. “Hey, listen,” he said. “That shit with Jumpshot. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call him a nigger. I was heated. You know I didn’t mean anything by it, right?”

“I know,” I said.

He leaned in for another soulshake. “Hold it down for me, bro.”

“No doubt,” I said.

“I’ll see you in a month. And I’ll call before then.”

“Do that.”

“All right, bro. One love.”

“Be safe,” I said.

“No doubt.”

“Peace.”

“Peace.” He glanced over his shoulder, hefted the duffel bag, and disappeared up the steps.

I walked to the far side of the terminal and checked my watch. Laz’s bus was due to depart at 1:15. It was 1:13 when the two DTs I’d tipped off cut the line, flashed their badges at the driver, and boarded. I didn’t wait to see them haul Laz off, just got on the escalator, made my way back to the car, and rolled back to Brooklyn. Climbed the stairs to my apartment, triple-locked the door, and rolled myself another joint. Slipped on my brand new Jordans, stacked my eight bricks into a pyramid, and just stared out the window, taking in my new domain. So long, Lazarus, I thought. I never liked your fake ass anyway. Just another punk whiteboy beneath it all. Damn near shit yourself when I put that nine to your dome. Probably serve your whole sentence and never figure out what happened. Probably call me every week from the joint, talking about, “What’s going on, bro?” Probably expect cats to remember who you are when you get out.

HUNTER/TRAPPER

BY ARTHUR NERSESIAN

Brooklyn Heights

CATCHMEFUCAN, late 30s, divorced, graduate school type, nipple and foot bottom, descriptive tinkle torture, only literary straps, no working class ropes or common place marks. Looking for a little pen pal punishment.

This enticed me for solely one reason: This would be the notice I’d post were I hunting for me. Circular logic to most, but to me this entry was bait for a sting. Still, I figured, I have the willpower to finger the flames with-out getting burned. To CATCHMEFUCAN, I wrote back, I’d love to try to be more than a pen pal—GOTCHU.

Well, GOTCHU, you can always try. Just be prepared to join the graveyard of so many others that failed, cause you won’t succeed.

Thus we started our little cat-and-mouse relationship. I figured maybe I’d get some pud-pulling tidbits. Cinch the ropes around my wrists, pour hot wax on my breasts, clamp me if I’m naughty, smack me if I’m nice … Blah blah blah, the usual stuff you’d expect from an S&M shatroom. But with her it was different.

She’d have none of that. Whenever I mentioned that I’d love to give her a tweak, she’d write something dismissive like, That’s not necessary.

It was as though some ponytailed Dorothy from Kansas had accidentally ventured into this Oz of Bondage and Domination. I could see why she didn’t get much action. No one else would have put up with her.

Do you realize that you advertized in an S&M chat room? I finally asked after weeks without so much as a slap or tickle in the endless exchanges.

Course I do, you randy lad.

And yet whenever I make any advances along that line, you seem surprised.

I have to get to know you better before I can fully reveal that side of myself to you.

This is the Internet! We’re never going to meet.

I pass a million people every day. You’re my only lovebug. A meeting of minds is far more intimate than a meeting of bodies.

So how long do you have to know someone for before we can get intimate?

The longer you can wait, the better it’ll be, she replied with all the smugness of a red-hot poker cauterizing my wounded heart.

Her e-mail exchanges always took something out of me. Afterwards, I’d have to nurse myself back to my indestructible self developing the innermost buds of fantasies that one day would blossom. On that fateful day when I finally had her, I could act out all my dreams. But even my dreams were hindered, until I found out what her dreams were. Without her realizing it, I had to learn what scared her more than anything else, to extract the sweetest nectar of her fear.

Occasionally I’d test her borders, nothing gross or icky, just little things, like Why’d you divorce? or, What are your measurements? Wondering if she was actually still married, or if she was in a wheelchair.

She’d invariably turn the questions into sarcastic come-backs.

I divorced cause I knew I’d meet you, or, You see me every night on cable, I’m Anna Nicole Smith.

So soon, in order to keep it earnest, our e-missives became little more than a line or so. One long banal conversation that lasted for weeks and then months. Whenever I turned on my computer, she was always right there. Like warm little homemade muffins just waiting for me, but they always had a little needle inside, some funny little dig. Slowly, like a voice in my head or a low-level addiction, I came to thoughtlessly expect it. I learned to eat around what used to get caught in my throat. At the end of a long, empty day, a day of resisting the urge to follow a thousand lonely ladies home and bring them to my ecstatic world, I knew I could read CATCHME’s little comments du jour. It became something to look forward to. I couldn’t go to sleep without an exchange.

* * *

One night about three months into our little chat, she must’ve had a little too much too drink, because she let out a slip: It’s three in the morning and I just made a big boo boo.

What kind of a boo boo?

A naughty one.

How naughty?

Very very naughty.

Naughty girls need to be disciplined, I pushed.

But who will take time to do that?

Just type in where you are, lost little girl, and I’ll come get you. When I hit send, I knew I shouldn’t have. I knew I was pushing too hard.

She didn’t write me back for a month after that—punishment by deprivation—and I thought I had lost her until one day I got a new message: Boy, it was a beautiful day today, wasn’t it?

I wanted to write back that she could eat my stinking shit and if I ever saw her I’d strangle her with her own intestines as I fucked her death wounds. Instead I wrote, Sure was With sudden regularity, the e-mails resumed. Though they took on a bit more depth, they still remained along the surface. She’d talk about her little garden, and soon she mentioned other potted plants of domesticity: the old oak trees on her block; the aggravating honks of trucks that double-parked in front of the supermarket around the corner, causing constant traffic bottlenecks. She mentioned that every morning while watering her rooftop plants, she could see the Williamsburg Savings Bank clock from the back of the building and the Jehovah’s Witness digital clock toward the front, and the two-minute discrepancy between them. She talked about how she liked going on strolls near the waterfront over the cobblestoned streets in her neighborhood.

I get dehydrated quickly when I go on walks, I replied, and hoping that she’d slip up and tell me the area she lived, I asked, You don’t get out much either do you?

I’m not agoraphobic, but I am a bit of a homebody.

One day, when I casually mentioned that I had a birthday coming up, she wrote back, Let’s do something for your birthday.

Like what?

A visual date, she proposed. At 6 p.m. tonight, I’m going to be on my rooftop holding a wine glass, toasting the western tower of the Bridge. You do the same.

Which bridge?

The Brooklyn.

It’s a date, I replied.

That afternoon I dropped a hundred dollars on a high-powered pair of field glasses. Because she said the western tower I thought that perhaps she was in one of the new high-rises around the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. I arrived a half an hour early and when I walked across the bridge toward the western tower, I spotted a middle-aged woman also holding binoculars. She was in her forties, small, dehydrated, in drab clothes. Nothing to look at, easy to kill. All I could think was, she had the same idea as me. When I approached to make small talk, she suddenly lifted her spy glasses and yelled, “Holy shit!”

When I turned to see what she was looking at, I saw a gentle cascade of grayish feathers.

“What happened?”

“The falcon just grabbed a pigeon.”

“What falcon?” I asked.

“A peregrine falcon nest up there with a fledgling.” She was pointing to a small stone doorway high above the second pillar. By her general demeanor, I knew this Audubon member wasn’t her

I still had fifteen minutes before her toast. I spent the time scanning both sides of the river for any glint of a wine glass. After an hour, feeling empty and pissed, I headed back to Brooklyn and walked to the F train stop at York.

A teenage girl was waiting all alone at the farthest end of the platform. I seriously considered dragging her a few extra feet into the darkness of the tunnel. But before I took a step, I realized the token clerk got a good look at me. If she screamed, there would only be one escape route. I was actually relieved when someone else finally showed up.

Upon arriving home, an e-mail was waiting for me: Happy birthday to you.

I wrote back that I was in agony for her.

Agony?

I know this sounds odd, but I think I’ve fallen in love with you.

That’s funny. Tell me another.

I’m serious. I can’t get you out of my head. I’m always thinking about you. Can’t we just put all the bullshit aside and meet somewhere like two adults? We’ll just have coffee and if you like what you see, we can go on a proper date.

To be quite honest, I’m nothing special to look at. Right now, you claim to be in love with me and we didn’t even meet. I’ve gone on dates with guys who’ve used me in the most degrading ways and then decided never to call me again. Frankly, I don’t even like sex. (I only like what it symbolizes.)

Me neither! We don’t have to have a sexual relationship. I can love you as a friend.

We can be friends on the Internet.

In order to assuage my obsession, and allay my fears of rejection, I need to meet you face to face.

And by meeting you, I stand to lose everything, she replied, as though we were corresponding in some goddamned nineteenth-century epistolary novel like two star-crossed lovers.

I promise, even if you’re old, fat and limbless, if you got bad skin or an overbite, if you smell awful or can’t dress, or your eyes are too close together, or your ears stick out, whatever irregularity or infirmity you got, I will forever maintain our friendship.

I’m sorry but no.

Are you a man? Is that it, because if that is the case, even that I will not mind, but I need to see you.

Please try to understand—I just can’t.

I feel that this is cruel and manipulative on your part and I resent it.

I’ve only adhered to the stated rules of our friendship.

You led me to believe that this relationship would eventually lead somewhere.

And so it has. I feel I know you, and here we are arguing with all the intimacy of old lovers.

Are you married? Or in a relationship?

Not that it matters, but no. Please try to understand that anonymity is for both our sakes.

That is so fucking patronizing! And I resent this mock legal formality as if you have some bullshit authority!

You’re right, I’m sorry, but frankly you’re scaring me.

I don’t mean to, but if I can’t find some resolution to this, you’ll leave me with no recourse other than to cease this relationship as it presently exists.

When did you become such a needy person! The thing I always found most attractive about you was that you always sounded so firm and strong. I took you to be a lone wolf but here you are a braying little lamb.

I didn’t respond.

Perhaps we can work something else out.

I didn’t respond.

Perhaps I can speak to you on the phone. Would that be acceptable? You can give me your number and I’ll call you at some specified time.

I didn’t respond.

What exactly is it you hope to gain from our meeting? If anything, I believe it will kill the love—a word I don’t use lightly—that does exist.

I didn’t respond.

Do you want me to be more vulnerable, is that it?

Though I wanted to respond, I didn’t. I really was half hoping she’d just go away—for her own sake.

Suppose I send you a nude photo of myself—deleting my face of course—my nudity will be fully vulnerable for you to see. If you respond to this, I will e-mail the photo. I will also trust that you won’t simply laugh at my less than perfect body and then never return my messages. This is my last and best offer, and let me assure you that even if we were to meet (which we won’t) you’d never get such a candid view of me. If you don’t reply to this final offer, I will be compelled to bid you farewell and give up this e-mail address.

I finally responded: I am inclined to accept this offer, but I suppose I must do so with a word of caution. In matters of the heart, there are no lies, nor is there right and wrong. Despite all the cliches to the contrary, the heart is a shark. It consumes what it must, and turns its back on what it cannot use. This photo might very well do the trick, and satiate the hunger of obsession, but there is a chance that I will still find myself pining for you. If so, then I’m truly sorry.

Spare me the bad Tennessee Williams prose. If I am going to stand naked before a mirror, and snap a goddamn polaroid of myself, then scan it into my computer and e-mail it to you—some whiny clown whose name I don’t even know—I damn well insist that I get some assurances for it. Specifically promise me that you will continue our correspondence without any more bullshit. Otherwise, goodbye forever.

It wasn’t exactly like I had a lot to lose. Still, in an effort to drive a hard bargain, to get the very most I could, I said, All right, but let me begin by saying, I can spot a phony picture right off. If you do take a self-portrait, I expect it to be well lit, well focused, and in color. In addition to your body, I will require your hair—not just pubic, but head hair. And if you dye your hair or put on a wig, and I sense that too, the deal is off. I understand you don’t want to show your face, fine. But a woman’s hair is very important to me, it allows me to grasp some sense of her character and identity.

Although I’m beginning to fear that I seriously miscalculated you, she replied, an offer made is an offer kept. I suppose I can reveal my hair, but first I plan to wash and brush it, so if you find that “phony” say so now. Let me also specify that the photo will not be some raunchy piece of pornography. I will stand nude, in a lit room at a distance of several feet, and snap the photo using my polaroid camera, but I’m not some hussy, so if that is what you’re expecting, say so now as I do not want to degrade myself any more than I have to. If you send me a follow-up e-mail saying you were expecting to see “pink” or some crap like that—just forget it, buster. It’ll be a straight-forward shot, minus my face.

I replied: I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t pose in some pornographic fashion, and you should know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t expect such a tawdry thing. Though you probably don’t believe me, this is not for erotic purposes.

* * *

Three days passed without a word. Then on the night of the fourth day, checking my e-mail account, I saw it: her e-mail with an attachment had arrived. The re: said, Why not take all of me.

When I hit the attachment, I slowly watched a naked form loading onto my screen. As she was revealed, I could barely catch my breath. I didn’t remember seeing anyone quite as erotic. The entire time I knew it was her, simply because she really was quite ordinary. Her brushed-out shag of red hair, then an oval whited-out face, strong shoulders, a firm, lean torso. Beautiful breasts, a flat unscarred abdomen. Below that was an untrimmed tangle of reddish brown pubic hair, so rich I could smell her. All unscrolling into a typical, intelligent, early-middle-aged woman, who clearly watched her diet and occasionally exercised.

The one detail that particularly caught my eye was just above her ankle. It was a small green sea horse.

The correspondence had quickly devolved into a game of stud poker. After seeing the photo, I had this instinct to fold. The little voice in my head said, this is as much as you can ever hope to hurt her. So, if only to do that, it made sense not to reply.

Therefore I made no response. Of course, she grew indignant sending her own unrequited e-mails. But I never opened them and I only read the re: line Where are you? and, Am I that Ugly? and, I thought you were a man of your word. Finally, after the second week, I got a re: from her that read, I forgive you, I only hope this the worst thing you ever did.

When I opened the message, it said, If vanishing after seeing me nude is the worst thing you’ve ever done, I’m glad I could sacrifice myself for you—if only to give you a taste of the darkness.

No, I’ve done a lot worse, I replied.

Thank god, and I was beginning to think you a boy scout.

That’s funny coming from such a girl scout.

Oh, I do a million little, awful things every day.

Like what?

Like ignoring the elderly lady who sits outside my building and greets me every morning. Or yelling at mothers whose children scream too loud in the playground across the street. Or just contributing to the mediocrity of the routine world by filling up space, taking resources and only leaving a trail of excrement behind.

None of those are even illegal.

Perhaps, but how many awful legal acts equate to one small illegal thing? For that matter, are certain illegal acts really even that awful?

Murder is illegal, but is it always awful? Do most people even earn their right to exist? I think the worst things in life are actually quite legal.

That’s true in theory. In a world of six billion people in which most contribute nothing, I’d rather live among fewer people of a high quality. However, I am not a murderer.

What does that mean? To be a murderer, you simply commit murder.

Actually there are common traits that go into the composition of many homicidal minds. For starters, psychologists found that babies who aren’t held and shown affection during a crucial period of their infancy lose a basic human empathy that flowers into compassion and understanding.

How do they test for compassion among infants?

They found that babies who were held and hugged and kissed and loved will cry when other babies are crying, demonstrating empathy (not to be confused with sympathy), while infants that were not loved remain silent while other babies wept.

I didn’t remember other babies crying when I was grow-ing up, but if they did, I probably just found it annoying. I wrote back, asking about other ingredients that go into the murderous cookie dough.

They found an inordinate amount of killers suffered from some kind of head trauma.

I did remember hitting my head as a kid, but I also remembered other kids of my age group suffering from head injuries. In my old neighborhood, kids fell out of trees, off bicycles, down stairs all the time.

What else? I persisted.

Many violent personalities were victims of violence themselves during their childhood.

You sound like you’ve read your stuff, I fired back, pissed at her simplistic, Martha Stewart recipe for how to shake and bake a murderer.

Only because I live in constant fear of crime. Is that so wrong? Don’t you have any fears?

Sure.

What are they?

It was the perfect opportunity, so I wrote back: I’ll tell you mine, but only if you tell me yours.

Fine, you first.

Attempting to be truly macabre, I wrote: Having my penis slowly dissected with my own scalpel. What about you?

Being cut off. Just floating in a bottomless pit of blackness, still alive, with only your own worthless existence to contemplate. That’s the most harrowing thing I can think of. Apparently she had given the question some thought.

That engendered my newest fantasy. When I finally found her that’s what I’d do. After blinding and paralyzing her, I’d submerge her in a sensory-deprivation tank with water matching her skin temperature so that she’d feel nothing. Then I’d slip a tube down her throat for oxygen, and an IV drip in her arm for nutrients. I’d just leave her alive for a month or two until she slowly starved to death.

* * *

Some weeks later, two events occurred within days of each other. The first was a simple warning from my e-mail server, stating that I was running out of space for my account. Always a pack rat, reluctant to delete anything, I was forced to download all the e-mails she had sent to me. Upon doing this, I reread all her little messages—they had all the tedium of a drawing-room romance. Aside from that, though, I became aware for the first time exactly how many little geographic references she had made over the weeks and months.

While walking home the next day, I noticed that the decennial census had just commenced. Young folks with shoulder bags that read U.S. Census were tramping around my neighborhood. Immediately, it struck me that this would be an ideal cover for someone who wanted to inconspicuously canvas an area. I let out an accidental squeal as I realized that an excellent opportunity existed for me to find her.

I had planned to simply join up and work for the census, but the very next afternoon I stopped at a local Burger King. That’s when I saw a group of them. Four census enumerators were going over their forms with what looked to be a supervisor. I bought a burger and coffee, and taking off my jacket, I headed to a small table at one end where they were sitting. Slowly sipping my coffee and eating my burger, I waited.

When one census enumerator was up getting food and another was in the bathroom, only two remained at the table. I approached discreetly and draped my jacket over the nearst U.S. Census bag, which was sitting on the floor. Then, pulling it under my arm, I dashed out.

Now it was a question of which neighborhood. All the clues were there. It was simply a matter of triangulating the various details she had mentioned in her e-mails. I extracted and isolated every single geographical reference into a list. The three most significant details were that she lived a few blocks from the river, and that there was a view of both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. In Dumbo you couldn’t make out the statue. From Cobble Hill you couldn’t see the Bridge. Only Brooklyn Heights allowed views of both—it was just that easy. In fact, those two simple variables only allowed about a three-block stretch of real estate. She had to either be on Montague Terrace, Pierrepont Place, or Columbia Terrace. Montague Terrace had a play-ground across the street that she had mentioned. Behind the Breukelen, a door-manned apartment building, was a row of three small brownstones. She had to be in one of them. Two of the brownstones were single-family occupancies. The last one had apartments.

I came early the next day, ready to wait her out. Try to see if I could spot a curly-red-haired middle-aged woman with a dark green sea horse tattoo on her ankle. Red is a minority hair color, so the fact that I had insisted she show it was further proof of my superior intellect.

Her sea horse would be the confirming mark, yet she would have to be wearing a dress or shorts in order to spot the tattoo. As this was unlikely, I realized I might have to subtly interrogate any possible suspects. After four hours, a half-dozen women had come and gone from the buildings, but no big red.

Finally, around 4, before everyone came home from work—and the risk of her sharp screams could get me caught—I pulled on the census bag, put on a hat, a pair of tortoiseshell glasses, and decided to knock on a few doors.

In the first brownstone was an old lady that loved to talk. In the second building was a shy kid whose parents weren’t home. Each of them was a perfectly useful victim, and though I couldn’t help but think that the police would eventually interview these two, I was hopeful that the disguise might work. After all, most people aren’t very observant.

When I finally came to the old outdoor intercom of the last building, I felt my heart beat in my ears, and I knew she was here. Ringing the first-floor and then the second-floor apartments, I got no response. Upon pressing the loose top-floor button, I wondered if the buzzer was even connected to anything.

“Who is it?” a woman’s timid voice peeped out.

“Census.”

A buzz sounded and the downstairs door popped open, allowing access to a musty, dark stairwell. There were no bikes, shopping carts, or baby carriages in the hallway. If there were other tenants in the building, I saw no immediate signs of them. By the time I got up the stairs to her door, it was slightly ajar. I opened it and called out, “Hello, U.S. Government, anyone home?”

“Hi there,” a middle-aged woman muttered.

“Hi, we didn’t get your census form,” I began, looking her up and down. Her hair was a brownish red bundle, so she could’ve been the one, but it wasn’t decisive. She was wearing loose shapeless pants, so it wasn’t evident if she had the tattoo on her calf. As I took a form out of my bag and started slowly going through the questions, she spotted the fact that the sides of my shirt were wet with perspiration—the result of hours in the sun waiting for her. I kept wiping off my forehead to keep the sweat from dripping on the form.

“Would you like a Coke?” she graciously asked, taking a can from her fridge.

“No thanks,” I replied. “Are you married, single, divorced?”

She opened a water faucet and just let it run until it was cold. The slight spray of cool water splattering on my hot neck finally compelled me to say, “Actually, a cup of water would be perfect.”

She grabbed a glass from a high shelf, filled and put it down before me. While I pressed it to my forehead, she said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll fill this out myself.”

As she marked in the various boxes, I sipped the water and surveyed the room. Floral wallpaper, evenly spaced reproductions, various pictures and knickknacks—all the trappings of middle class housekeeping. I was desperately trying to ascertain whether her spouse or lover was in the other room. If she had a dog or cat, I would’ve seen it by then. But was a kid or parent sleeping in the back? All was quiet as she checked through the income boxes and then onto the questions of ethnicity.

“All done,” she replied a moment later, folding the form in half and handing it back to me.

“Can I get another glass of water?” I asked. When I offered her my empty, holding it up to the light, I could see traces of some powder sliding down along the sides. She drugged me! “Holy shit!”

She bolted into the bedroom. I jumped to my feet and raced behind. Inside was a queen-size bed with four metal posts—perfect.

“What the fuck did you slip me?”

“Nothing! I swear!”

With my right hand I yanked her wrist up tightly behind her back, painfully. With my left hand, I reached around front, ripping open her shirt so that her breast tumbled out.

“What did you slip me!”

“Nothing, I swear! It must have been soap from the dish-washer.”

I shoved her face forward and yanked up the right leg of her pants. There it was—the dark green sea horse.

Suddenly I felt myself growing weak.

“You drugged me, you bitch!” I grabbed some ties dangling from her doorknob and had to work quickly, securing her before I passed out. Then when I came to, I could finish the job.

“I can’t believe I found you,” I said, circling the silk tie around her right wrist firmly, pulling it tightly around the post, knotting it again and again.

“Please leave me alone!” she begged as I began with the second wrist. Tying the knot, twisting, cinching, retying, until all she could do was wiggle.

“You know who I am, don’t you?”

“No!” she groaned. “Who?”

“It’s me! I reached right up the ass of the Internet and pulled you out,” I explained, as I secured her right ankle to the right post of the bed. I felt her head shaking violently. She was weeping as I collapsed on top of her. “You must have known I was coming for you,” I added, feeling so little keeping me conscious. “You had something ready for me. Didn’t you?”

That’s when I saw that she wasn’t crying at all, she was giggling, but I had her arms and one leg tied tight. I hit her hard across the face. My lids and limbs were so heavy, and her free leg was kicking—I couldn’t lasso it to the post. Sluggishly, I raced up and fit the tie into her laughing mouth. I tied it again and again. She’ll be ready for me when I …

* * *

Smacks across my face, whack upon whack, till I start blinking. I’m handcuffed and she’s looking down on me.

“Men are such half-wits,” she says.

“What are you talking …?” I’m barely able to speak.

“What’s your handle?”

“My what …?”

She smacks me some more. As I awaken, I see I am in a stone room, probably her cellar. I’m spread out on the frame of an old metal army cot without a mattress. My wrists and ankles are cuffed to the four corners. In the bright light, crusted splotches of blood are visible on the floor. She keeps hitting me hard across the face.

“What the fuck!” I yell out.

She empties the contents of my wallet on my chest. She is holding my knife. I can see that she has clipped a square of my pants away so that my genitals are exposed.

“Listen carefully, because I don’t want to lose my temper. I’ve been e-mailing with five of you little piggies. I got the first one immediately, and the second one three months ago, so that leaves three. What name do you use when you e-mail me?”

“I’m GOTCHU.” I can barely open my mouth.

“Oh, you’re the idiot that I sent the faceless photo to,” she explained. “The others all insisted on seeing my face.”

“But … but I caught you,” I say groggily.

“You caught me?” she asks. “I sent enough geographical references for a retard to figure out where I live, and it took you what, six months? The other guy figured it out in six weeks.”

“Witnesses saw me come into your house!”

“Who’s going to find you missing?” she asks. “You don’t work for the census. You don’t live around here.”

“What are you going to do?” I’m slurring, barely able to keep my eyes open. “Are you going to kill me?”

“On the contrary, I’m going to do everything I can to keep you alive as long as possible,” she says. “Oh, but don’t worry, your scalpel is going to get used, after all.”

NEW LOTS AVENUE

BY NELSON GEORGE

Brownsville

On a recent late-fall Saturday afternoon Cynthia Green was walking down New Lots Avenue in East New York with her seven-year-old daughter Essence and an armful of groceries from the local bodega. The slender, pale-skinned young woman was thinking of how to convince her mother to babysit Essence that night so she could go out, when a black sedan pulled up beside her. The black man inside called out, “Act like you don’t know me!” Being that this was the kind of car only a cop would be seen in and she wasn’t carrying anything more criminal than two forties, she decided to stop.

When she looked at the driver, Cynthia said, “What you doin’ around here?”

Cousin Johnny replied, “Workin’.” He was a thick-shouldered, brown-skinned man with the makings of a soon-to-be-large natural do. He was wearing a green road Donavan McNabb jersey. There was small Sony video camera on the seat next to him.

“Workin’ in this car?”

“Nice, huh?”

Cynthia knew cousin Johnny as a cop. And he still was, only more so.

“Now I’m with DEA.”

“Since when?”

“Since the last two years. You don’t keep up with your relatives, do you? Anyway, how’s my favorite cousin doing?”

They exchanged family updates—what this and that cousin or aunt was doing. Then Cynthia said, “You better be chill around here.”

“Don’t worry,” he replied, “all I’m doing is taking pictures right now. You know the Puerto Rican dude who lives over there? They call him Victorious?”

“The Victorious that lives over there?” She pointed toward a brown two-story row house. Johnny nodded affirmatively. “Yeah,” she added, “I know him well.”

“Well,” her cousin said, holding up the video camera, “this is for him.”

Victorious was a highly entrepreneurial member of the Five Percent religion. Had a job in the cafeteria of a municipal office building downtown, sold jewelry that his wife made, and, according to cousin Johnny, was extremely close to some Latino brothers from Colombia about to make a major move into East New York and Brownsville. Victorious had gone to junior high school with Cynthia, had hung out with her on the block many nights and shared his dope cheeba over the years. He was a homie.

“So,” she asked, “he’s in deep trouble?”

“No more than any of the other people I take pictures of. I’m all over the five boroughs. It pays good.” Johnny was from a rock-solid middle class family in St. Albans, Queens. Both his parents had worked for the city, and he’d gone to John Jay, majoring, of course, in criminal justice. Now he lived in Jersey in a cozy little suburban home just like his white colleagues. Except that Johnny was black, which made him perfect for the kind of work he was doing now—spying on other people of color working in the underground economy.

As Johnny sat, camera in lap, he teased little Essence, who welcomed the friendly male attention. Cynthia, who was feeling all sorts of conflicting feelings, said, “I know it’s good money and benefits, but niggas is buck out here.” Johnny seemed unconcerned. He’d made his decision about the kind of life he was living a long time ago. There was nothing Cynthia could say that her aunt Lucille hadn’t said many times before. Johnny just picked up his video camera, flipped the switch, and took a nice shot of Cynthia and Essence.

“Tell your mother I send my love,” he said, as his cousin walked away and Essence waved at him.

That evening, when Johnny’s car was gone (perhaps replaced by another, but who could tell?), Cynthia stopped by Victorious’s place. His parents lived downstairs and Victorious and his wife upstairs. Cynthia wondered if they could take a walk together. He was a lanky, slightly handsome yellow-skinned man with a goatee and a baldy. There was the tip of a tattoo visible on his neck just above the turned-up lapels of his beige Rocawear jacket.

She could see his breath in the cold and how the patterns of his breathing changed as she spoke. It surprised him that she had a DEA agent for a cousin, but nothing else she said did. Victorious told her the DEA had busted his apartment just the month before, confiscating “a lot of money,” but didn’t find any drugs. His wife had been there alone when it happened and the DEA had given her a receipt on the way out. She hadn’t been sleeping too well since that visit. In fact, he finally admitted to Cynthia, she’d moved back to her mother’s house in Bushwick just last week. Victorious told Cynthia what he told his wife—the money had come from the city job and from selling her jewelry, the drug stuff was just some mess. Cynthia didn’t speak on it: That part wasn’t her business. But he was a long-time friend. That’s why they were standing under the bare branches of a tree on New Lots Avenue on this night in thirty-degree weather.

“Just be chill,” Cynthia told him finally. “Maybe you better try and get your money back, you know, and start a video store or a laundry. People always have to get their clothes washed.”

“Good looking out,” he said, and then gave her a hug. She could feel his body shaking slightly, though his face was impassive. After Cynthia left, Victorious stood in the doorway of the two-story building, his head turning left and right as he peered into cars parked along the street and listened to the roar from the elevated IRT train a few blocks away. He’d lived on New Lots Avenue his whole life and almost every day thought about when he’d be ready to move.

The next afternoon, when Johnny rolled by the house, video camera on the seat, he noticed that the curtains on Victorious’s windows were gone. It wouldn’t be until the day after that he discovered Victorious had moved.

SCAVENGER HUNT

BY NEAL POLLACK

Coney Island

The nighttime air at Coney smells like corn dogs and fried clams and a little bit like garbage. It’s a good smell, once you get used to it, and a good place. There are lights and activity and you never know who’s going to walk past. For an old man who’s kind of curious, but also kind of not interested in talking to anyone, it’s perfect. I can watch the people and still concentrate on my world, a swirl of wooden horses and songs from the thirties that no one remembers anymore. I oil the poles when they get squeaky, track real horses in the Post, and count the quarters at the end of the shift. There’s not much conversation. I’m basically an ugly bastard with a thick accent, and I don’t want to scare anyone. Why should I play to type? I wasn’t born to be the creepy guy who runs the carousel.

In the summers I keep the ride open late. You never know when a bunch of teenagers from Montclair might show up. The Puerto Rican families stay out until midnight on the weekends. More and more, too, I get the kids—I call them kids, but they’re in their twenties—out on a date, trying to impress each other on the bumper cars and Whack-A-Mole. Big night for them, I guess, to look at the freaks, or to pretend like they’re freaks themselves. When they make it over to me, which they almost always do, I slow the carousel down so they can enjoy each other. The young have certain needs. I was young once, too, and once there was romance in my life.

Sometimes special circumstances arise. It was after 11 p.m. I yawned into the newspaper; no one had been by for a ride in at least forty-five minutes. I decided it was time to shut down.

Two girls came along the boardwalk. They weren’t beautiful in the way that you see on TV, or naturally beautiful, either, but they had style. In fact, they had a style that I hadn’t really seen before, hair done a certain way, t-shirts of a certain design, their skirts real short, cut at a certain angle. They had a look about them that just seemed, well, contemporary. I’m not a contemporary guy, but I could still tell.

They stopped in front of me. I felt my breath sting my chest, which happens when I get excited. One of them said, “Please don’t tell me you’re closed.”

I gulped. Sixty-four years old, and still a sucker. “Just about to,” I said.

“Shit!” she said. “You’ve got to let us ride.”

“What?”

“We really need to ride the carousel.”

She reached into her purse and took out a twenty.

“For both of us,” she said.

“It doesn’t cost that much.” Then—don’t ask me why—I said, “You two ride for free.”

The other girl, prettier than the first, touched my arm. I felt a jolt travel down my spine and into my brain. I’ve always been stupid around women.

“Aren’t you sweet?” she said.

“We’re gonna ride for three songs,” said her friend.

“Okay,” I replied.

I was going to lose a little money. I didn’t care. It had been a profitable summer. So I started up the carousel.

The first few notes of the organ coming to life scare me. It sounds like someone being resurrected from the dead, against his will. Didn’t seem to bother the girls, though. One of them got on top of a tall black horse in the front. The other took a digital camera out of her purse. While the first girl rode and waved, the other one took pictures. When the song ended, they switched places quickly.

While the second song was still playing, the girl who was taking pictures walked to my booth.

“I’m gonna get on the carousel with my friend,” she said. “Will you take our picture together?”

“Okay.”

“We’re on a scavenger hunt,” she said. “We need proof of being in different places and doing different things.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It’s very fun. You should come with us next time.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “I have to …”

“I was kidding,” she said. “Oh.”

She got on the carousel for the third song. They sat together on a bench. I stood in front of the ride, camera ready.

“Take our picture!” called out one of them. I couldn’t tell which. The carousel had started moving and they were blurry. The first time around, I got them with their arms in the air, shouting. But it was a little out of focus.

“Again!” one of them said.

When they came around the next time, the photo took nice and clear. The girls were kissing. Not on the cheek, either. Really kissing. And they kept kissing until the ride was over. I’d never seen girls do that before.

“You get the pictures?” the first one asked.

“Oh yes.”

“You got us kissing, right?”

“Yes.”

She put the camera in her purse. The other girl patted my hand. I blushed.

“See you next time,” she said.

* * *

No one was going to Coney a dozen years ago. It was really at its low point. So when I bought the carousel, I didn’t expect to make any money. I’d retired from my city job with some savings. When you start at twenty-two, you can stop work pretty early. My wife and I didn’t have any kids, and we didn’t enjoy each other, either. She doesn’t like traveling, and I don’t like going out to dinner. I needed something to do. One day, I was walking down the boardwalk, trying to remember what it’d been like as a kid. There was a For Sale sign.

I talked to the Russian who was taking care of the ride. He obviously didn’t give a shit. The paint on the horses was chipping off, the poles were rusted, and the room was decorated with a faded mural dating, at the latest, to 1965, but probably further back than that. It was dingy and depress-ing.

“Who wants to ride a fake horse, anyway?” the Russian said.

He was asking a little more than I had available, but what the hell? I went to the bank and pulled some financing together. A guy I knew from the city was able to grease the walk-through inspection. After I closed the deal, I went home for dinner.

“Where’ve you been?” asked my wife.

“I just bought the Coney Island carousel,” I said.

She looked at me hard. I’ve never been able to figure out why she hates me so much.

“So?” she said. “You think you’re special?”

I’d definitely made the right choice.

The heating system was old but still pretty efficient. I spent the winter—which was miserable, with winds like knives—chipping away the rust. I bought some industrial cleaner and gave the whole place a scrub, which took about ten days. Then I hired some mural painters, real cheap, students from Parsons. They did up the horses beautifully. I wasn’t as happy with their work on the mural, but it was fresh paint, so it didn’t really matter. I hammered together a comfortable little booth to sit in. Someone came out and worked on the organ. Before I knew it, April had arrived.

I went up to Martha’s Vineyard for a few days, and didn’t take my wife. Told her I was going to visit mother in the home. The carousel operator on the island couldn’t have been nicer. I was a quick study. The day after tax day, 1992, I opened the ride.

* * *

The girls came back two weeks after their first visit. It was around the same time of night. They looked even cuter than before, if that was possible.

“Remember us?” asked one of them.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m Katie, and this is Diane.”

I took Katie’s hand. “Hello,” I said.

“Can we ride the carousel tonight?” said Diane.

“Of course!”

She handed me a twenty.

They got on together this time. But they didn’t ask me to take a picture. They just rode around. Katie pulled out a little flask, and they sipped from it. I didn’t usually allow drinking on the ride, but it was late and no one was going to get in trouble.

They got off when the song ended.

“You want to ride with us?” Diane asked.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to operate …”

“I can do it!” she said. “For one song! You can show me how.”

For some reason, I said okay. It didn’t take a genius, after all. She picked it up pretty quickly. Did a practice spin. Then Katie and I got on. We sat together on a bench.

The carousel started going round.

“This is so fun!” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

When the ride stopped, Diane got up from the booth. Katie and I were sitting on the bench. Diane pointed the camera at us. And then Katie kissed me, hard, on the lips. I felt her tongue tickling my teeth, and I opened my mouth gratefully. My eyes were closed. Through the lids, I could see the flash going off. She kept kissing me. It felt wonderful! Another picture. And then it was over.

“Hey,” she said, “you’re a great kisser!”

“Thank you.”

She got up. Diane was scrolling through the pictures. Katie went over to look.

“Holy shit!” she said. “Did I really do that?”

“You did!” Diane replied.

“We’re gonna win this one!” said Katie.

They walked away, giggling.

“Wait!” I called out. “You’ve still got one more song!”

“Next time, handsome,” said Diane. She whispered something in Katie’s ear. Katie laughed like crazy. They turned around and looked at me and laughed even harder. I laughed back. I wanted them to know I understood.

I got home around midnight. My wife was still awake. She was always awake.

“What are you smiling about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

* * *

Sometime in the last ten years, Coney got hot. The people attending the Mermaid Parade started getting younger. Lines got longer at the freak show. Riding the Cyclone became cool again. I saw a headline, “Not Your Father’s Coney Island,” in that Time Out rag. I raised my prices by a dollar. Summers became extremely active. Then they opened the ballpark, and things really went nuts.

The new kids seem desperate to me. For fun, or for something. I spent the sixties behind a desk at the Water Department. My kid brother took me to a Springsteen show in 1975. It was okay, but I never really had a taste for rock-n-roll. Not like I want to deny other people their good time. Life just doesn’t seem like a party to me, and it never has. Except with those girls.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the girls and their scavenger hunt. First, I’d never had a kiss like that. Second, the whole idea of a scavenger hunt as an adult activity baffled me. I thought it was something for a child’s birthday party. Just a dumb activity for dumb times, I supposed, like goldfish-swallowing, pole-sitting, or telephone-booth-stuffing. Maybe they’re trying to forget that there’s a war on. Or maybe they don’t know.

Still, I couldn’t wait for them to come back.

They showed up late on Sunday night of Labor Day weekend. There were still a few people riding the carousel, because it was a holiday. Katie winked at me. Diane waved. I smiled. They leaned against the entrance, smoking.

It took about half an hour for me to get everyone else out of there.

“Hello, ladies,” I said, approaching them. “Good to see you.”

“Good to be seen,” Diane said.

“Another scavenger hunt?”

“Yeah,” said Katie. “High-stakes. Winner gets ten grand.”

“No kidding?” I said. “How can I help.”

Diane looked around.

“Pull down the gate,” she said.

“We don’t close for a little while.”

She sidled against me, and I felt something stick into my ribs. Her eyes glared.

“You’re closed,” she said.

I pulled down the gate.

“Shut off the lights,” Katie demanded.

“What?”

“Shut down everything.”

“Aren’t you going to ride?” I asked.

Diane pulled the gun out of my ribs and waved it in front of my face.

“Do it!” she said.

I turned the lights off and shut the power down. The grate was closed. Diane nudged me into the booth. She pointed the .38 at my head. Katie stood behind her, with the camera. “Open the cashbox,” Diane said. She then took a picture. The flash went off. “But …”

“Open the fucking cashbox!”

I did, and took out the money: $275.

“Throw it on the floor,” Katie said.

I hesitated. Diane pressed the gun hard into my ear. I threw the money. Katie took a picture. Then she bent over and started picking the money up. There was enough light coming in from the boardwalk that she could find most of the bills. I looked at her face, back-lit by neon, and she didn’t seem so beautiful anymore.

“Now get on the floor yourself,” Katie said. “On your back.”

I did what she asked. Diane bent over me. She put the gun in my mouth.

“Try anything, and I pull the trigger.”

Katie took another picture.

With her spare hand, Diane undid my belt buckle, and the button and zipper of my jeans. She seemed to hover for a second.

“I can’t do this,” she said.

“What?” Katie replied.

“I’m not going to suck this guy’s cock.”

Oh, please do, I thought.

“Well, I’m not going to do it, either,” Katie said.

They both stared at me. I stared back. Maybe one of them would change her mind.

“Get up and open the gate,” Diane said.

I sighed and did what they said. Diane caressed my cheek.

“You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Keep the money.”

“Good boy,” said Katie.

“But don’t come back,” I added.

“Don’t worry,” Katie said, “you’ll never see us again.”

And they were gone.

I stopped for a couple of drinks on the way home. On the television hanging over the bar was a news report. Some yuppie kids had been arrested trying to stick someone up in front of the TKTS booth in Times Square, and a similar incident had occurred at the Bronx Zoo. They said they’d been on a scavenger hunt. The Scavenger Hunt Robberies, the news called them.

By morning, the Post would have reports of a half-dozen. Mine wasn’t among them. It never would be.

I got home around 3 a.m.

“Who do you think you are?” said my wife.

“No one,” I answered.

Just the creepy guy who runs the carousel.

THE CODE

BY NORMAN KELLEY

Prospect Heights

Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

—Donald Rumsfeld

Code had always survived by the philosophy that he lived by; he recognized no other man’s law but his own: Take whatever is needed and fuck all the rest. He was the real thing: a bona fide nigga-man who lived and survived the streets. Unlike an array of fake niggaz who recorded stories about the ’hood, he was the real deal. He had the scars to prove it, the wages of sin, and he made sure that bitchez paid special attention to them when they worshipped his battle-scared body. No bitch ever left his threatening grip without kissing his keloid medals of the street, wounds received from rival niggaz and Five-Os.

Upon arriving upstate he had shanked two motherfuckahs Day One who looked at him as if he were sweet meat. He wasn’t gonna play that faggot shit. He got their minds right—as well as the whole cellblock. He had no time for that shit. His time was short and he wasn’t going to be cornered into taking sides in simple-minded prison gangs. A tag quickly went down that Code wasn’t somebody you wanted to fuck with. He sat alone and was given respect. OGs nodded and went their way; the younger ones just kept moving.

Code did his time: He worked in the prison shops, did his daily 300 push-ups, and worked on his rhymes. He was planning to make his own luck when he returned to the city and produce his masterstroke: The Code It would be the story of one bold, bad, crazy nigga’s life in the ’hood, back in Brooklyn, back in Prospect Heights. It would have everything that urban contemporary airplay craved: phat beats, flowing delivery, and the chronicle of a real nigga’s life, not back in the day but here in the moment, meaning a nigga telling it like it is—gun-play, lurid depiction of urban scenes, and plenty of fucking. He was going to go even further and have the screams of snuffed-out bitchez mixed in. Of course, no one would know if the cries were true or not (except him), but he would let others know that when he spoke of contemporary urban reality, he was beyond keepin’ it real. He was making it a fuckin’ reality. He had no time for fake niggaz frontin’ a reality he already knew about.

When Code’s lurid tales of murderous mayhem coursed their way through the underground, neighborhoods that had been relatively quiet spiked in crime. It took awhile for the police to figure out what was going on in certain neighborhoods, but they eventually found a correlation between Code’s underground tapes and an increase in robbery, spousal abuse, and urban cowboy antics. He “Ain’t Fuckin’ Around,” as he relayed in one song:

There was nobody or

No one to hold me down

I’ve kicked every motherfuckah

Even my mama around

Niggaz knows me as a man about town

Ain’t no motherfuckah who doesn’t know that

I ain’t fuckin’ around

Or:

Yeah, baby, let me do it to you

I knew you’d love it since you’re just cooze

I’ve never met a bitch that wouldn’t do the do

It’s my God-given right to smack you & be cruel

You know you like

You know you like that

You know you like it

And if you don’t you’re still gonna be smacked

“You Know You Like It” was accompanied by the dickhardening, ass-smacking sound of a woman screaming, “Yeah, fuck me!” That caught the ear of Dr. Rhyme, one of hip hop’s most influential producers, the genius behind Da Sick Niggaz Convention Rhyme put his trackers out to find that “crazy motherfuckah with the sick-ass lyrics and slick production.”

Word went out on the street, and Code’s hands went into his pocket when two unfamiliar niggaz unexpectedly approached him at his local hang spot, Club Prospect on Franklin Street.

“Who the FUCK sent you?” he screamed at one, who was down on his knees, mouth bleeding from the pistol whipping he had just received from Code. Code was nervous; rumors were circulating that two of the other chart-topping rappers, Wuz Dat and Killadelic, had ceased their war and were thinking about jacking his ass up: The new nigga on the block was a threat. And Code could always smell another nigga’s evil ways blocks ahead.

The club went silent: The doors were locked and all the customers witnessed the legendary Bad One in action. Only a few were disgusted by Code’s criminal-mindedness. Most of the patrons, young men and women from the neighborhood, had become inured to the random display of violence, which was increasingly the soundtrack to their reality. Watching Code was like watching a power fantasy in actual play. He was a brother in control and knew how to handle another nigga. Even the club’s exotic dancers stopped moving and watched Code at work. Finally, one of the men was given permission to reach into his jacket pocket and retrieve a card with Dr. Rhyme’s telephone number.

With his 9mm’s barrel jacked up against the roof of one of the nigga’s mouths, his foot on the neck of the other emissary from Rhyme & Crime Records, dialing his cellphone with his thumb, Code found that the doctor was in New York. The doctor wanted to know if he was ready to be a serious music playa. If so, would he join him for dinner in Manhattan?

Used to Mickey D’s or curry goat with dirty rice and beans, Code and his thuggish trio of bodyguards rolled into an Upper East Side restaurant on 61st Street. Their presence caused some consternation (it was mainly the display of do-rags, sports jerseys, oversized trousers, and untied shoes) until Dr. Rhyme approached the maitre d’ and interceded. A gray velvet jacket was placed on Code, and his boys were told to park their rumpled asses at a bar that kept him in their eyesight.

“I’m sorry about that misunderstanding with yo’ niggaz,” said Code as he sat down, referring to Rhyme’s messengers.

Dr. Rhyme was gracious; as a former Cali gang-banger, he understood the dictates of security; it was the code of the streets. Obviously, his agents hadn’t approached Code with respect, and respect was important. He would dispose of them accordingly.

Code was nodding to all that Rhyme said, but kept his eyes on the most magnificent-looking one-eyed bitch he had ever laid his own bloodshot eyes on. She was dark, and Code, like most niggaz, tended to go for the current J. Lo model of Boricua negritude. But T-Sound was fine, despite the one eye, and she displayed her finery with even more subtlety when she excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. Code assumed that she sucked Rhyme’s dick; that’s what bitchez were good for. That, and giving a nigga a son. Rhyme recognized the trajectory of Code’s male gaze.

“She’s one of my producers,” said Rhyme. “T-Sound discovered your tape and listened to it. Girl got ears.”

“And one eye,” Code retorted. Not bad for a one-eyed bitch—and with a wicked ass to boot, thought Code. If she didn’t return, he’d have to start licking the chair she sat in.

She was Tanya Sonido, from el barrio, and Code was trying to calculate how he could get her away from his new contact, the man who was going to produce his way outta the ghetto. He may have to kill him to snatch her. He had done it before—but before business?

“Will she be my producer?” asked Code.

Rhyme looked at him. “You don’t mind a woman producing your sound?” This was unheard of, and Rhyme recognized that this was one nigga who didn’t give a fuck what other niggaz said or thought.

“Shit, she could suck my dick while doing it.”

Rhyme nodded: “Yeah, she’s a bad motherfuckah …”

“You Negroes talking about me?” asked a suave voice.

The two turned around and found T-Sound standing behind them. She returned to her seat and flashed the whitest pair of teeth that Code ever saw on a black woman. It was also her almond-shaped eye and wide, sensuous smile. She was an older woman, maybe about thirty. She probably knew how to really fuck a man. Not like these amateur bitchez who watched skeezer videos and acted like they could hump. This bitch could probably fuck as well as a dude; that is, putting her back into it as if she had a dick. Men knew how to fuck; bitchez just got laid.

Dinner proceeded with Rhyme and T-Sound finding their prospective new talent something to eat on the exotic menu. After coffee and cognac, they—Code, along with his boys—went to Rhyme’s nearby hotel room and discussed his vision for his project, The Code

While fixing drinks at the room’s wet bar, Rhyme saw the effect that T-Sound’s bod was having on Code. It was her pulchritudinous figure and that black eye patch. There was something mysterious, remotely kinky, about a fine-looking woman wearing an eye-patch that got some men’s third leg thumping in their pants. There was heat between them, the bitch and the nigga. Rhyme watched them as they sat down and talked about his lyrics, life, and production ideas; who he listened to and what he wanted to incorporate. It would be a chronicle of gunz, bitchez, and bodacious niggatude. Code was surprised that T-Sound had produced many of the CDs that he liked and had been deejaying in clubs. Code mentioned that he enjoyed listening to women screaming and hollering, and told her that he watched a lot of porn.

“So do I,” she said, “but I like to watch men getting their asses busted.”

Code smoothed the waves on his head. “Shit, the only people who do that are faggots.”

“Yep, and they be the only ones getting it up the ass, baby. I especially enjoy she-males busting a nigga’s ass.”

“Whut?” He looked at Rhyme and then back at her.

“Have you tried it?” asked T-Sound, an inquisitive arch rising over her good eye.

“Fuck no,” laughed Code, slightly put off that a bitch he was getting hard for would ask a 100-percent black man like himself that kind of question. “I’m the fucker; not the fucked!”

“Too bad.” She looked him over as if she were imagining herself doing something very nasty to him.

“If you were a dude, I’d have killed you for …”

Tanya tossed her head back. A mane of rich black hair swept through the air as she sat invitingly across from him. Her legs were parted slightly, as if she was offering a taste of herself.

“Well, come on, nigguh,” she challenged. “You want to slay me like you do those niggaz back in Brooklyn? Or you wanna fuck this Boricua bitch? This black bitch? This disease-free bitch? I got something for you.”

She rocked her head as if she was good to go, kicking it to him in Spanish. “Yo, popi …”

Rhyme watched him. Tanya was taunting him before a room full of men, his niggaz. This would have been different if it were just him and the boys, but Tanya was playing with fire. A few seconds went by and Code gave her a hard nigga stare, an icy glance that he had perfected when deciding another man’s fate.

Rhyme understood what was going on and walked over with a drink and handed it to Code, who took it down in one swallow and said to his boys, Bebop and Cisco, “Let’s roll. I’ll have my lawyer contact you about a contract. Bitch, I’ll see your fine ass in the studio.” He grabbed a fist full of crotch before he went out the door, then added, “You better not bend over while we’re there, or you’ll get this!”

With that, they left.

“Damn, that nigga was fine,” moaned Tanya as she grabbed her own crotch, taking a drink from Rhyme. “I wanted to fuck his ass there on the spot!”

“Shit, that boy would have shot you, Tanya.”

Tanya reached down and pulled up a Glock pistol from between the cushions of the couch. “Or he would have died trying. How much do you think we can get for him?”

“Well … if we do this CD, he’ll be a premium,” surmised Rhyme.

* * *

A few months later, a contract signed and time spent in the studio, Tanya walked into Club Prospect on Franklin Street and sat down beside Code, who was sticking dollar bills in a dancer’s G-string with his teeth. He could feel himself thickening even when she sat an inch or so away. Lately he had been having dreams about her … pulling her clothes off, inching his way down to her crotch, getting her hot and nasty for his coup de grâce. But now she wanted to talk about some business, music business.

“Look, one of them sounds like someone is being choked to death,” she said, flicking an ash of her clove cigarette into a tray on the bar.

It was homage to an original gangsta, the legendary Nate Ford, he told her. Ford excelled in the “asphixiation of love,” a love/death grip. Ford had learned that by choking a bitch, his hands on her throat, he could involuntary cause her vaginal muscles to firmly grip his dick as he simultaneously exploded into and suffocated her.

Not even the Marquis de Sade had that one in his arsenal of techniques, Ford was reported to have told a Russian business associate as they sat around one evening laughing over coke and cognac. “Kinky technique,” Code explained. Ford had even shown his Russian guest a video of himself snuffing a young Puerto Rican woman. On the tape, Ford leered into the camera and then, with the brio of ultimate contempt, pulled out and discharged over the dead woman’s body. “Good to the last drop,” Ford then said. This was the sort of video that Code collected.

“That’s what you want on your debut album?” asked T-Sound. “You want people to see you as a sick, demented fuck?”

“I don’t care what people think,” snarled Code, his eyes narrowed nearly to slits, mocking an African mask. “I am the last of a dying breed: the last of the bad-ass niggaz. True to form, true to the code: I just want niggaz to buy my music …”

“And shine your shoes …”

“Whut?”

“Skip it,” said T-Sound. She wasn’t going to engage in self-disgust just because of dealing with low-lifes like him. This was a business, and it sometimes became nasty when dealing with nasty people.

“T-Sound …” he rolled off his tongue.

“What?” She was looking at a dancer who could have made better money by keeping her clothes on.

“How’d you lose your eye?”

“Fighting a nigga who wanted to get some free pussy the hard way,” she coolly replied. “He didn’t understand any part of the word no.” She went into her hand purse and pulled out a matching onyx cigarette case and lighter.

“Did he get any?”

“No,” she said, lighting the cigarette. Tanya turned and faced him fully. A shadow fell across her face, the dark patch growing into a partial shroud over one side of her head. “All he got was an eyeball, but his balls got some of this!” She pushed a little black switch upward on the lighter with her thumb, and a gleaming, sharp two-inch blade appeared.

What Code found menacing wasn’t the blade, but that she was too cool; nothing frazzled her. She was just like him: a deadly nigga. Weeks ago he had walked into the recording studio with his boys, armed, stinking of liquor, and she had thrown out his bodyguards with her even bigger, badder, and bolder bodyguards, niggaz who worked day jobs with the city’s most feared gang, NYPD. He tried to stare her down during a disagreement about one song in which he was going for the soap-soft. After dissing women for ten tracks, he wanted to include some lovey-dovey sop—asking a “girl” if she would love him even if he didn’t have money—after having extolled the sociopathic virtues of getting it by any means necessary on the rest of the recording!

T-sound had told him: “Look, it is clear to me that even though you enjoy fucking us, you don’t like or have any respect for women. So who are you trying to fool with this track, your mother? Niggaz like you don’t have mothers. You’re the classic son of a bitch, tu sabes?

She told him this an inch from his face, like a Marine DI to a jarhead, and added: “You gonna be hard, be hard all the way. No half-steppin’. Save that pussy love shit for your second album—if you live that long.”

Tanya Sonido. She looked like a woman, smelled like a woman, and even dressed like one. She wore the kind of clothes—dresses, suits, or blazers with jeans—that accented a woman’s best features, and she had rounds of features like the military had rounds of ammunition in Iraq. A phat, firm ass that didn’t bust out the seams like other nigga bitchez; voluptuous breasts that hung underneath her shirts in their own right, not assisted by silicone injections. She had nice calves and strong-looking muscles that ran along her thighs, evidence of gym work, and nice definition to her shoulders and biceps. The bitch was built. She was hard like him: ghetto—but she had style and grace, and wasn’t nigga-down 24/7. That was all he could ever be, and he was beginning to suspect that this was limiting.

T-Sound exhaled some smoke from her nostrils: “Hear that, Code? Hear 50 Cent kickin’ it on the jukebox? That’s the nigga you ought to have a problem with, not me. I’m on your side.” She set down her cigarette and looked at him, her full red lips slightly parted. “Or are you having trouble concentrating?”

Suddenly it was getting hot. OGs had talked about a special kind of woman that men found hard to beat, hard to resist. The French called them femmes fatales, mysterious women that could do a nigga in if he wasn’t careful. Code realized that his dick was getting hard due to his overpowering lust and fear of her. She could do what no other man or woman had ever been able to do: read him. She knew what he wanted from her, needed from her, and what he could never allow anyone else to do: become close to him. His rules of engagement dictated that he possess no friends, only associates; that he have no real love, only pussy; no family—that had been destroyed years ago.

But Tanya was different; she took her time with him. She reminded him that despite being shot four times; despite never being convicted of killing two men and exterminating another man and his two children; despite raping or gangbanging a dozen women of various races and nationalities, as well as engaging in numerous hold-ups and burglaries; and despite selling vast quantities of controlled substances, he was just breaking twenty-two. She could be his mentor and get him out of a life that he didn’t mind rapping about, but had worn thin since the last time he was shot. The code dictated that a nigga didn’t last too long.

But he did have a problem with her, and she had scoped that out earlier.

“You want to fuck me, right?” prompted T-Sound. She reached over in his direction to get another napkin from a bar dispenser for her drink. “No can do. Someone else has fucking rights to my cunt.”

“Rhyme?”

She shook her head. “No, we’re partners. My wet-box is saved for someone else … but you can either fuck my ass or come in my mouth. Two out of three ain’t bad, is it?”

T-Sound, looking at her watch and announcing an impending meeting, told him that if he wanted to do it, it had to be now, in the piss-smelling, HIV-potential men’s room of Club Prospect. “And you better get that tongue of yours good and moist, because you’re going to stick it up my ass before you stick your third leg in me. See you in a few minutes, chocolate.” She slid off her seat and grabbed a handful of him at his below-the-belt area. “Hmmm, I’m gonna like this entering my back door. She slipped into the men’s room, making sure the video camera would capture them at the right angle.

Code went to work on his tongue. Water, followed by orange and grapefruit juice, and then some club soda with a twist of lime. He purchased a few sample bottles of one of those new-fangled sweet-tasting cognacs that all the niggaz had been singing about and promoting over the airwaves and in intellectually deficient shop-and-fuck magazines. He was going to drink them out of her ass-crack. Armed with them in the side-pockets of his urban fatigues, Code pulled out his notebook and jotted down a few pre-coital lines:

Now what does a nigga

Have to think about

When a goddamn nasty bitch

Offers her ass or her mouth!

* * *

The Prospect Place Ladies’ Auxiliary liked what they saw. They saw fine-looking black meat inching in and out of an even finer, perspiration-coated posterior—Tanya’s. The audio portion was still better, with Tanya saying all kinds of nasty things Español, and the preferred exclamations in Niggaese about bitch this and bitch that

“Believe me, girls, this boy can barely read,” confirmed Tanya, “but he knows how to work a woman’s ass.”

The women cackled and hooted when Tanya told them that she had emptied him three times, enjoying the feel of his warm spunk oozing down her legs as she left him nearly drained on the john at Club Prospect.

“Watch this, ladies,” she said, directing their attention back to the TV/video monitor. The tape showed a limp but massive black snake slowly retreating from Tanya’s rear.

“Mon Dieu, that boy is hung!” said Francesca, an Afro-Francophone from Paris. “But can he eat?”

“He can be trained,” Tanya commented with an authoritative crack of her crop against her boots. “Any man can be trained under the proper regimen.”

“What’s the word on the bidding?” asked Janette.

“It’s starting at a million,” replied Tanya.

“What?” said another woman, Carmen. “Why so much?”

“Because your GOP friends in the Log Cabin Society and several of the Sons of the Confederacy want a raw nigga as much as some of you do,” Tanya explained, “and when The Code is released and he suddenly disappears, he’ll be a collector’s item.”

“No wonder they call it the Log Cabin Society,” quipped Dominique.

“I heard that even a few Saudi princes are taking a bid on him,” commented Francesca. “Non?”

“Oui,” affirmed Tanya. “Raw niggaz are the rage; hip hop has advertised that.”

The women assembled at Tanya’s Prospect Heights brownstone, the crème of nouveau black womanhood, were wealthy. Businesswomen, achievers, well-known role models, church-going hot moms—they had all acquired a taste for supine men, especially hard-co’ raw niggaz. Over the years, certain people had tried to eradicate the scourge of what some called gangsta rap, but had been less than successful. While others had managed to assassinate some well-known acts and perpetuate the myth that their deaths had been the result of incessant male-ego feuding, Tanya had been developing the art of “slutting,” turning street niggaz into cunt-lapping dawgz.

There was no better example of her handiwork than “Juliette,” a corseted, black-fishnet-wearing, muscular servant whose pecs had been tagged with the emblems of his gang-banging days. Jam-Bone Jones had been lured to Tanya’s basement months ago. She could always pick the sluts by their inordinate fear of “faggots.” These young ghetto bucks were obsessed with homosexuals and treacherous black women—people who had to be either exterminated or kept down. She could always tell which ones could be flipped. In her mind, Code was no different. Soon after showing him that her ass-muscles could squeeze him into a climax, she knew she had him hooked. She had even encouraged him to include the piece he had written about their toilet tryst, “Slutz and Dawgz,” on The Code That way, she thought, his mind would always be on her and what she could do for him—and him.

After a long day at the studio, where she had castigated him for lame delivery, she had him stay behind for some vocal-relaxation exercises: She blew him. But she wouldn’t allow him to speak or come near her without a withering comment or a comparison to 50 or Nas or Jay-Z, or the ultimate insult, Eminem. (“That cracker makes niggaz like you look counterfeit!” she told him after a flaccid flow.)

Jam-Bone Jones had been the same. He excoriated faggots but wasn’t beyond sucking off a vivacious she-male like Dominique, and he was definitely surprised that T-Sound had a little something extra.

“What’s the plan?” asked Darlene, while testing Juliette’s serving etiquette. As the newly minted slut poured tea, Darlene grabbed “her” dangling meat and Juliette didn’t even flinch. How could she with her exacting cycloptric mistress watching her every move, ready to punish her with the severe sting of a silver-tipped riding crop. Tanya looked every bit the bitch goddess; she wore a white linen shirt, jodhpur breeches, and knee-high riding boots.

“Well,” said Tanya measuredly, “I thought I would appeal to his masculine nature and tell him that a bunch of hot bitches—you all—wanted to meet him. This will be the night of the CD release party at Club Prospect. He’ll be high and ready … and hot. ¡Muy caliente!”

* * *

You got it! You got it!

You know you got it

When you see me

Gunnin’ for yo’ ass!

Blocks of motherfuckahs be running my way

Niggaz be gone when they see my 47/AK

Taking my time, drinking my wine

Shot another nigga couldn’t tell time

Back at da crib, laying back,

Had a bitch suck my dick

She drown when I didn’t hold back

You got it! You got it!

You know you got it

When you see me

Gunnin’ for yo’ ass!

—“Gunnin’ for Yo’ Ass”

The Source, Vibe, XXL, Murder Dawg Review, Rolling Stone, SPIN and even one commentator on National Public Radio proclaimed the era of The Code “The most vicious piece of misogynistic and anti-gay pornography ever produced by the team of Dr. Rhyme and T-Sound,” wrote a reviewer—and she liked it.

“What’s not to like/I’m a powerful motherfuckah when I’m on the mike,” rapped Code as he walked the length of the bar at Club Prospect. The joint was jammed and nigga deep; the ’hood had turned out to see one of their own, who had gone platinum before the CD was even released.

“King Kong with a powerful ding-dong!!!” he roared, thumping his chest, grabbing his meat. “Give me cash! I’m a ho’ too! You got it! You got it! I want it!” And they gave it to him—small green piles of dollar bills formed at his feet. Code tore off his shirt, used it to mop his face and chest, and thew it to his fans. Half-naked, his ripped musculature was coated in a thin sweat; he had the aura of a champion boxer, a new jack Muhammad Ali. As a matter of fact, he was thinking about calling himself that, toying with naming his next album Jihad Real Niggaz Die. He took in the adulation and the sullen stares of the wanna-be players, confident that he could whack any one of them as he jumped off the bar with his hands on his heater. A real nigga, he thought, was always ready to die. That’s why the likes of Eminem and the legion of other pallid wanna-bes were counterfeit; they weren’t going to die like real niggaz.

Rhyme sat in a special VIP section of Club Prospect, a cushioned alcove that rose above the floor and allowed him to peer down at an elevated angle at the masses. Code was making his way through the crowd, toward the club’s door. Code’s executive producer made a phone call: All was ready. The place was stinkin’ on a midsummer night and management hadn’t fixed the air conditioner. Everything was set. Tanya had left and waited outside. It was 9 p.m. and a crowd was still waiting to get in to see “King” Code.

With a phone to her ear, Tanya leaned against a car and took in a sultry summer breeze, an amazing relief after experiencing the sweatbox that passed for a club.

“T-Sound!”

Tanya, flipping down the cover of her c-phone, turned and saw him. He looked magnificent; the moonlight made his dark skin glisten. He was manly beautiful, gorgeous, and she was going to break him.

“The party is in there,” he said, pointing back to the club.

“Nigga, are you high?” she asked.

“I’m always high when I’m with yo’ fine ass.”

Before he could say another word, she embraced him and burned his lips with an infinite kiss, brushing a thumb against an exposed nipple on his chest.

“Goddamn …” he said, catching his breath. “You can bring a nigga down with that.”

“I want you to meet some people, Code,” she said softly. “I’m having a special celebration at my place …”

“Naw, I got my peeps, my crew back there, and …”

“… and then you can fuck me, really fuck me …”

Code looked at her. “We’re talkin’ pussy, right?”

“All that you can eat, nigga …”

“I’m way down for that.”

“What about your peeps?”

“Fuck ’em!”

They wouldn’t even have to take a car. Her place was only a few blocks away and they walked over hand-in-hand, crossing Washington Avenue, passing the stores he had once robbed, the owners he had brutalized because they didn’t move fast enough or didn’t have enough cash on hand. Code was excited. Things were finally coming together, coming his way. He could now get off the streets and do new things, like take the time to think about what was going on. No nigga had the time to think in the ’hood; it was all about survivin’. He had crawled, inched, shot, knifed, and fucked his way to this moment with this incredible woman.

When they turned onto Prospect Place, their pace slowed. A swarm of emotions swelled up in him; Code was feeling something that he had never known existed.

“Yo, I got to tell you something,” he said, stopping at the ground floor entrance that led to her playroom and dungeon. She had a series of reinforced restraints ready for him.

“What?” she replied, as she unlocked the door; she felt that he sensed what was about to transpire.

“I … I …” he grappled. “Shit …”

“What’s wrong, baby?” solicited Tanya, caressing his face. He was so handsome, she thought. So beautiful, but deadly.

“I’ve never been in love before,” he answered, looking at her with open and inviting eyes, no longer, at least at this moment, suspicious slits of mayhem.

Warmly murmuring a response, Tanya thought that this was indeed a very nasty business, but peered at him intensely and pressed him against the door, then knelt down. All that could be heard was the un-zipping of his trousers; all that he felt was her warm and experienced mouth, and the joy of repetition that her tongue offered. After she voraciously milked him, Code was changed. He was left feeling woozy, as if he been spiked, Vanessa Del Rio’d. Slowly, he opened the door and entered the basement that was blasting his music, the sound of the hip hop generation. It was young men like him who had dethroned a previous generation and ushered in the reign of the new HNIC, a reign in which authentication meant death.

Half-dressed as he had been since leaving the club, Code, still dazed, walked into a room with scores of naked women who appeared glad to see him, kissing his keloid medals of the street. He was offered a palette of tastes: breasts, asses, thighs, legs, buttocks, vaginas, cunts, and pussies. While being told that they were making a home movie of his triumph with a bevy of hot bodies, he didn’t notice that he was also being given the “Dawg of the Year Award,” a choke collar. Dominique fastened it around his neck just as Darlene lowered his trousers and stripped him of the rest of his clothes and his 9mm. The women admired his flaccid male-thang that ran halfway down his thigh. They could tell that he was happy to be in their presence, even happier when a group of them began devouring him, attending to every part of his body with probing hands and tongues, rubbing their sticky, lubricated orifices against his street-toughened, muscular black body.

When Francesca slipped on the black metal handcuffs, Code was still woozy from the weed and booze and Tanya’s mouth-fucking, and didn’t think too much about it when he was made to kneel down to service Dominique, who waited with opened legs; her warm aroma greeted his quivering nostrils. This was fun: doing dawg duty amongst all the booty. But his enthusiasm waned when he discovered Dominique’s ever-enlarging cock staring him in the face—and hers was just as large as Code’s. Protesting, struggling against the handcuffs now holding his arms behind his back, Code was forced into service upon feeling the cold barrel of his own “nigga-stopper” behind his right ear and the grip of the choke chain around his neck. Knee-deep into deep-throating Dominique, Code could feel his own backdoor being prepared for a rear-entry maneuver.

Upstairs, Tanya was offered a cognac by Juliette and sighed as she began the bidding, watching Code’s ravishing on the monitor. In a few days, the training would begin and she would bust his opened, dark ass with her own twelve inches—without lubrication. As a fully equipped hermaphrodite, she would teach him how to service her wet slit while he lay on his back in a supine position with his legs and arms beneath him. His transformation from man to bitch would begin. In a few more weeks, Code would disappear and be corseted, shaved, lipsticked, and turned into “Charlene,” sold to the highest bidder. Code’s disappearance would drive up The Code’s sales and further the rumor that the system had taken down another black man. No one would believe that he had been turned into a woman-manufactured male slut, especially not the brothers on the street. But T-Sound knew differently. Music, like sex, was a nasty business, a very nasty business.

PART III

Cops & Robbers

CAN’T CATCH ME

BY THOMAS MORRISSEY

Bay Ridge

The fuck are you doing?” shouted the squat, muscular man from his van. “I was just gonna park there!”

Detective Sal Ippolito heaved his bulk from the car and felt his temper start to rise. Control. He took a calming breath through his nose, enjoying the aromas wafting from the open back window of Epstein’s Bakery, and tapped his windshield. “See that red light on my dashboard? That little sign next to it? I’m a cop. I get to park here because I’m working. Find somewhere else.”

“You see this sign?” The man slammed a stubby-fingered hand on his door, above the Bay Ridge Bread and Bakers lettering. “I’m working, too. I got to pick up bread for my route. ’The fuck am I supposed to do that if you’re in my way?”

Ippolito took another breath. Another delicious nose-ful of cookie-bread-donut goodness warmed his freezing nostrils. “Look,” he said, restraining his annoyance. “It’s Christmastime. How about giving me a little present by not busting my balls? The longer I stand out here talking to you, the longer it’s going to be until I take care of things inside, and the longer until you get to pick up your bread. Go have a cup of coffee. Go do some shopping. Go do anything else, because until further notice this bakery is a crime scene and no one goes in or out. Capice?”

“It’s 4 o’clock in the morning. ’The fuck am I going to go shopping?” The squat man slammed his van into gear. “Crime scene, my ass. Go commit grand theft donut, ya fat pig.”

Ippolito unconsciously rubbed his basketball stomach, fighting the desire to chase him down for premeditated assholery. “Hell with it.” Crystals of salt and half-melted slush crunched underfoot as he turned and walked to the rear door. “At least I can resist temptations.”

Entering the bakery was like walking into a brownie: warm, moist, and sweet. Steam and heat thickened the atmosphere in a delightful contrast to outside. Ippolito licked his lips, taste buds searching for some of the chocolate or almond that flavored the air.

“H—hello?” A tiny, wizened woman edged into the kitchen. She was so bundled up against the cold, Ippolito doubted she would have been able to swing the fire axe she grasped. “Who are you?”

“Police, ma’am.” He slowly took out his badge. “Detective—”

“Sally! Little Sally Ippolito!” The woman relaxed and lowered the axe. Its weight made her lurch forward. “Not so little anymore, eh?”

Ippolito frowned before he recognized her. “What are you doing here, Mrs. Funerro?”

“I called you people.” The old woman shuffled over to lean against a sink filled with batter-crusted trays and pans. “Eppy used to save the first loaf of bread of the day for me. I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so I thought I’d surprise him coming by. I’ve done it before when my goddamn insomnia kept me awake. I think that snippy waitress at the Bridgeview gave me regular coffee when I asked for decaf, just to be mean—”

“Mrs. Funerro, what happened? The operator said you told her there was trouble.”

“I didn’t want to say too much over the phone because I wanted to get this,” she shook the axe, “to protect myself.”

“From what?”

“I came to the back door, because I know Eppy leaves it open sometimes to let the heat out—isn’t that a silly thing in this cold?—and when I called out, he didn’t answer. I found him in the front. Well, his body. I was going to call Father Mulhern, too, over at St. Patrick’s, but then I remembered Eppy is—well,—Jewish. I don’t know what those people do about death. Maybe I should call a rabbi?”

“Mrs. Funerro—” Visions of being trapped in the old lady’s apartment when he was a grocery delivery boy years ago, delayed by tales of sciatica and back spasms, made him cut her off. “Did you say Mr. Epstein is dead? You found his body?”

She exhaled. “I thought the police were observant. How will you find clues if you aren’t even listening to what I say?”

Ippolito unholstered his gun. Mrs. Funerro gasped. Putting a finger to his lips, he crept to the doorway with the surprising grace of the obese.

“I told you, I found his body. There’s no one else here now.”

He scanned the shop. Formica cases sat packed with fresh racks of oversized chocolate chip cookies, perfectly frosted layer cakes, and pastries of every shape and filling. Glass and stainless steel reflected the holiday window lights while the Now Servin sign was reset to zero, a string of number tabs hanging below it like a tongue. A flat tray filled with some kind of cookie waited atop the serving counter to be put away. Everything looked as normal as any of the dozen bakeries and bagel shops around the neighborhood, except for the wide red puddle staining the black-and-white tile floor. A slight slope had allowed it to spread almost to the front door.

Ippolito sighed. “Oh boy.”

Epstein’s body lay facedown behind the serving counter. Ippolito crouched and rolled him partway over. The front of his baker’s whites was now squishy scarlet from the nasty, raw gash at his throat, while dozens of tiny rips revealed more wounds on his body. Their edges looked as though something had been gnawing at him.

What the hell? “You were the only person here?” he asked without turning. “No one else? No animals, dogs, or some rats, maybe?”

“Rats? Eppy kept a clean shop.”

He gently set the body back down. No sign of a struggle was in evidence, but a gingerbread figure lay near Epstein’s outstretched hand in a grotesque parody of the dead man. The cookie wasn’t a traditional shape; still humanoid, it looked like a man in a suit and hat, holding a gun. The white frosting gave it a pin-striped suit and mobster attitude, still evident even though half its head and one shoulder had been bitten off. It had apparently come from the sheet of similar cookies inside the case—all those rows were symmetrical except the top, which presumably was missing the half-eaten one. Ippolito picked up a sheet of wax paper.

“Hello, saliva traces and DNA.”

He started to rise, when he noticed something on the glass inside the case. In front of all the mouth-watering treats (Resist the temptation! he scolded himself), words had been written in what looked like Epstein’s blood:

Run, run, as fast as you can

Can’t catch me …

Mrs. Funerro came up behind him. “Did you find something? Is that a clue?”

Quickly he stood, using his bulk to block her view of the body and, more importantly, the writing. “You must have watched police shows on TV. You know I can’t say anything.” Especially if I don’t want everyone from here to Astoria to know about it He held the half-eaten cookie behind his back. “Forensics will tell us what happened. For now, I need you to do something very important.”

The old woman leaned forward conspiratorially. “You want me to canvass for witnesses? I could do that—I know everyone from Shore Road to Fort Hamilton Parkway. Maybe somebody saw something. That snippy waitress got her break at the diner a little while ago. Maybe she knows something—she’s always talking to those boys who go in there, the little gossip.”

“No, no, that could be dangerous.” Ippolito put an arm around her skeletal shoulder and guided her through the kitchen to the rear door. “I need you to go back to your house and write down everything you saw and experienced here tonight.”

“Write down …?”

“You’re our main witness right now. We need to protect you.” He nodded solemnly. “I’ll have a car sent to watch your door, too. Just in case.”

Hope enlivened her voice. “Am I … in danger, you think?”

“Just in case.” He touched one beefy finger to the side of his nose. “But do me a favor—no axes. We can’t have our most valuable witness hurting herself.”

Now she was positively glowing. “Of course. Of course, you’re right. But the Bridgeview is on my way. If I stop there I can question—”

“Straight. Home.” He closed the door before she could argue.

Epstein had kept a small office next to the kitchen. Ippolito used its phone to make his report before going back out to the front shop to wait for assistance. Through the front window he watched snow begin to fall on an empty Fourth Avenue. Memories of his grocery delivery days returned like ghosts of Christmases past. Way too many years ago. Years and pounds. He started to smile until a glare reflected off the floor and reminded him why he was there. The car, a Mercedes SUV with a Christmas tree’s worth of headlights, had stopped at a red light outside. A shirtless young man wearing a thick gold rope around his neck hung out the passenger window.

“I love you, Angieeee! Merry Fucking Christmas!” the man screamed. “Aaaaaaaaa! I love you, Aaaangieeee!”

Across the street an apartment window slammed open. “She don’t love you, ’cause she’s up here sucking my dick! Just shut the hell up!”

Now the driver of the SUV joined in. “You can’t talk to my boy like that! Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

The light turned green and the SUV sped off in a screech of tires and obscenities. “Home sweet home,” Ippolito shook his head. “Where everybody’s a tough guy and no one takes crap from no one, because their boys have got their backs.”

He turned away from the window and his memories to study the scene. The tray atop the serving counter was also filled with those mobster gingerbread men, in eight neat rows of four. Gingerly he avoided the pool of blood as he stood over them. The cryptic message on the display case was backwards from this side, but the baked goods looked just as wonderful. From this position he couldn’t see the body either, and any of the smells death brings were smothered by the overwhelming scent of delightful holiday treats.

“Temptation,” he reminded himself. He stared into the display case, feeling like a child, before something odd caught his eye: One of the gingerbread mobsters had red hands. And they all had white frosting eyes and pinstripes, but red mouths.

Ippolito frowned. The gingerbread mobsters on the countertop looked identical, but with white frosting mouths. He picked one up and circled the counter, stepped over Epstein’s body, and crouched to take one from inside the case. His knees creaked. Holding the two side by side he noticed the one from inside the case, in addition to the varied coloring, also seemed … bigger.

Fatter.

“Hmph.”

Carefully he replaced the larger one, an involuntary grunt escaping his pursed lips as he reached. “Jesus, I’ve got to lose some weight. My New Year’s resolution.” Still in a crouch, he leaned against the counter for support. The hand on which he rested his weight clutched the gingerbread mobster from the countertop.

“What are you looking at?”

The gingerbread mobster had no reply. Its white frosting eyes remained unblinking, its white frosting mouth remained in a fixed sneer.

The temptation proved too much. He cocked his head at the cookie and adopted the tone of the SUV driver: “Fuck me? Fuck you!” He chuckled as he bit off its head and chewed. “Yeah, I can eat you. It isn’t New Year’s yet.” He took another bite. The gingerbread was still faintly warm, and a hint of cinnamon tickled his palate. It dissolved in his mouth like butter on hot pancakes, leaving an aftertaste of gingery vanilla.

“Wow,” he smacked his lips. “Mr. Epstein, the world will mourn the loss of so great a cookie master—”

Scuttling above him made Ippolito’s head snap up. He dropped the half-eaten cookie and started to rise, reaching for his gun. As he came eye-level with the counter he saw the flat pan was now empty. Before he could process this, he saw why.

And he screamed.

* * *

“God, he just called this in,” the patrolman said sadly. “Can’t have been more than twenty minutes ago.”

Detective Mike Schofield’s jaw tightened. “Well, obviously the killer came back.”

Ippolito’s body lay atop the body of the bakery’s proprietor. It took two blankets to cover the mass, and both were sponging up blood. It was everywhere. Schofield noted spray patterns from severed arteries as well as smears that showed the hefty detective hadn’t gone down without a fight. Judging by the damage to Ippolito’s body, there had been more than one assailant.

The patrolman was staring at the display case’s glass window. “What’s this supposed to mean?”

Schofield glanced at it. “Whatever it means, it’s written here, too.” He pointed at the countertop. “‘Run, run, as fast as you can. Can’t catch me …’ We’ll see about that, scumbag. You don’t kill a cop and walk away. We watch out for our own.”

Next to the writing sat a tray filled with gingerbread mobsters. Schofield frowned. They were big and fat, overlapping each other in a way that would have made them burn in the oven if that was how they’d been cooked.

“Let me ask you something,” he said to the patrolman. “You bake gingerbread men, you give them faces with white frosting, right?”

“Yeah.”

Schofield pointed at the cookies on the countertop. “So how come these ones have red mouths?”

CASE CLOSED

BY LOU MANFREDO

Bensonhurst

The fear enveloped her, and yet despite it, or perhaps because of it, she found herself oddly detached, being from body, as she ran frantically from the stifling grip of the subway station out into the rainy, darkened street.

Her physiology now took full control, independent of her conscious thought, and her pupils dilated and gathered in the dim light to scan the streets, the storefronts, the randomly parked automobiles. Like a laser, her vision locked onto him, undiscernable in the distance. Her brain computed: one hundred yards away. Her legs received the computation and turned her body toward him, propelling her faster. How odd, she thought through the terror, as she watched herself from above. It was almost the flight of an inanimate object. So unlike that of a terrified young woman.

When her scream came at last, it struck her deeply and primordially, and she ran even faster with the sound of it. A microsecond later the scream reached his ears and she saw his head snap around toward her. The silver object at the crest of his hat glistened in the misty streetlight, and she felt her heart leap wildly in her chest.

Oh my God, she thought, a police officer. Thank you, dear God, a police officer!

As he stepped from the curb and started toward her, she swooned, and her being suddenly came slamming back into her body from above. Her knees weakened and she faltered, stumbled, and as consciousness left her, she fell heavily down and slid into the grit and slime of the wet, cracked asphalt.

* * *

Mike McQueen sat behind the wheel of the dark gray Chevrolet Impala and listened to the hum of the motor idling. The intermittent slap-slap of the wipers and the soft sound of the rain falling on the sheet-metal body were the only other sounds. The Motorola two-way on the seat beside him was silent. The smell of stale cigarettes permeated the car’s interior. It was a slow September night, and he shivered against the dampness.

The green digital on the dash told him it was almost 1 a.m. He glanced across the seat and through the passenger window. He saw his partner, Joe Rizzo, pocketing his change and about to leave the all-night grocer. He held a brown bag in his left hand. McQueen was a six-year veteran of the New York City Police Department, but on this night he felt like a first-day rookie. Six years as a uniformed officer first assigned to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, then, most recently, its Upper East Side. Sitting in the car, in the heart of the Italian-American ghetto that was Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood, he felt like an out-of-towner in a very alien environment.

He had been a detective, third grade, for all of three days, and this night was to be his first field exposure, a midnight-to-eight tour with a fourteen-year detective first grade, the coffee-buying Rizzo.

Six long years of a fine, solid career, active in felony arrests, not even one civilian complaint, medals, commendations, and a file full of glowing letters from grateful citizens, and it had gotten for him only a choice assignment to the East Side Precinct. And then one night, he swings his radio car to the curb to pee in an all-night diner, hears a commotion, takes a look down an alleyway, and just like that, third grade detective, the gold shield handed to him personally by the mayor himself just three weeks later.

If you’ve got to fall ass-backwards into an arrest, fall into the one where the lovely young college roommate of the lovely young daughter of the mayor of New York City is about to get raped by a nocturnal predator. Careerwise, it doesn’t get any better than that.

McQueen was smiling at the memory when Rizzo dropped heavily into the passenger seat and slammed the door.

“Damn it,” Rizzo said, shifting his large body in the seat. “Can they put some fucking springs in these seats, already?”

He fished a container of coffee from the bag and passed it to McQueen. They sat in silence as the B train roared by on the overhead elevated tracks running above this length of 86th Street. McQueen watched the sparks fly from the third rail contacts and then sparkle and twirl in the rainy night air before flickering and dying away. Through the parallel slots of the overhead tracks, he watched the twin red taillights of the last car vanish into the distance. The noise of the steel-on-steel wheels and a thousand rattling steel parts and I-beams reverberated in the train’s wake. It made the deserted, rain-washed streets seem even more dismal. McQueen found himself missing Manhattan.

The grocery had been the scene of a robbery the week before, and Rizzo wanted to ask the night man a few questions. McQueen wasn’t quite sure if it was the coffee or the questions that had come as an afterthought. Although he had only known Rizzo for two days, he suspected the older man to be a somewhat less than enthusiastic investigator.

“Let’s head on back to the house,” Rizzo said, referring to the 62nd Precinct station house, as he sipped his coffee and fished in his outer coat pocket for the Chesterfields he seemed to live on. “I’ll write up this here interview I just did and show you where to file it.”

McQueen eased the car out from the curb. Rizzo had insisted he drive, to get the lay of the neighborhood, and McQueen knew it made sense. But he felt disoriented and foolish: He wasn’t even sure which way the precinct was.

Rizzo seemed to sense McQueen’s discomfort. “Make a U-turn,” he said, lighting the Chesterfield. “Head back up 86th and make a left on Seventeenth Avenue.” He drew on the cigarette and looked sideways at McQueen. He smiled before he spoke again. “What’s the matter, kid? Missing the bright lights across the river already?”

McQueen shrugged. “I guess. I just need time, that’s all.’’

He drove slowly through the light rain. Once off 86th Street’s commercial strip, they entered a residential area comprised of detached and semi-detached older, brick homes. Mostly two stories, the occasional three-story. Some had small, neat gardens or lawns in front. Many had ornate, well-kept statues, some illuminated by flood lamps, of the Virgin Mary or Saint Anthony or Joseph. McQueen scanned the home fronts as he drove. The occasional window shone dimly with night lights glowing from within. They looked peaceful and warm, and he imagined the families inside, tucked into their beds, alarm clocks set and ready for the coming work day. Everyone safe, everything secure, everyone happy and well.

And that’s how it always seemed. But six years had taught him what was more likely going on in some of those houses. The drunken husbands coming home and beating their wives; the junkie sons and daughters, the sickly, lonely old, the forsaken parent found dead in an apartment after the stench of decomposition had reached a neighbor and someone had dialed 9-1-1.

The memories of an ex-patrol officer. As the radio crackled to life on the seat beside him and he listened with half an ear, he wondered what the memories of an ex-detective would someday be.

He heard Rizzo sigh. “All right, Mike. That call is ours. Straight up this way, turn left on Bay 8th Street. Straight down to the Belt Parkway. Take the Parkway east a few exits and get off at Ocean Parkway. Coney Island Hospital is a block up from the Belt. Looks like it might be a long night.”

When they entered the hospital, it took them some minutes to sort through the half-dozen patrol officers milling around the emergency room. McQueen found the right cop, a tall, skinny kid of about twenty-three. He glanced down at the man’s nametag. “How you doing, Marino? I’m McQueen, Mike McQueen. Me and Rizzo are catching tonight. What d’ya got?”

The man pulled a thick leather note binder from his rear pocket. He flipped through it and found his entry, turned it to face McQueen, and held out a Bic pen.

“Can you scratch it for me, detective? No sergeant here yet.”

McQueen took the book and pen and scribbled the date, time, and CIHOSP E/R across the bottom of the page, then put his initials and shield number. He handed the book back to Marino.

“What d’ya got?” he asked again.

Marino cleared his throat. “I’m not the guy from the scene. That was Willis. He was off at midnight, so he turned it to us and went home. I just got some notes here. Female Caucasian, Amy Taylor, twenty-six, single, lives at 1860 61st Street. Coming off the subway at 62nd Street about 11 o’clock, 23:00, the station’s got no clerk on duty after 9. She goes into one of them—what d’ya call it?—one-way exit-door turnstile things, the ones that’ll only let you out, not in. Some guy jumps out of nowhere and grabs her.”

At that point, Rizzo walked up. “Hey, Mike, you okay with this for a while? My niece is a nurse here, I’m gonna go say hello, okay?”

Mike glanced at his partner, “Yeah, sure, okay, Joe, go ahead.”

McQueen turned back to Marino. “Go on.”

Marino dropped his eyes back to his notes. “So this guy pins her in the revolving door and shoves a knife in her face. Tells her he’s gonna cut her bad if she don’t help him.”

“Help him with what?”

Marino shrugged. “Who the fuck knows? Guy’s got the knife in one hand and his johnson in the other. He’s trying to whack off on her. Never says another word to her, just presses the knife against her throat. Anyway, somehow he drops the weapon and she gets loose, starts to run away. The guy goes after her. She comes out of the station screaming, Willis is on a foot post doing a four-to-midnight, sees her running and screaming, and goes over her way. She takes a fall, faints or something, bangs up her head and swells up her knee and breaks two fingers. They got her upstairs in a room, for observation on account of the head wound.”

McQueen thought for a moment. “Did Willis see the guy?”

“No, never saw him.”

“Any description from the girl?”

“I don’t know, I never even seen her. When I got here she was upstairs.”

“Okay, stick around till your sergeant shows up and cuts you loose.”

“Can’t you, detective?”

“Can’t I what?”

“Cut me loose?”

McQueen frowned and pushed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. I think I can. Do me a favor, though, wait for the sarge, okay?”

Marino shook his head and turned his lips downward. “Yeah, sure, a favor. I’ll go sniff some ether or something.” He walked away, his head still shaking.

McQueen looked around the brightly lit emergency room. He saw Rizzo down a hall, leaning against a wall, talking to a bleached-blond nurse who looked to be about Rizzo’s age: fifty. McQueen walked over.

“Hey, Joe, you going to introduce me to your niece?”

Joe turned and looked at McQueen with a puzzled look, then smiled.

“Oh, no, no, turns out she’s not working tonight. I’m just making a new friend here, is all.”

“Well, we need to go talk to the victim, this Amy Taylor.”

Rizzo frowned. “She a dit-soon?”

“A what?” McQueen asked.

Rizzo shook his head. “Is she black?”

“No, cop told me Caucasian. Why?”

“Kid, I know you’re new here to Bensonhurst, so I’m gonna be patient. Anybody in this neighborhood named Amy Taylor is either a dit-soon or a yuppie pain-in-the-ass moved here from Boston to be an artist or a dancer or a Broadway star, and she can’t afford to live in Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights or across the river. This here neighborhood is all Italian, kid, everybody—cops, crooks, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Except for you, of course. You’re the exception. By the way, did I introduce you two? This here is the morning shift head nurse, Rosalie Mazzarino. Rosalie, say hello to my boy wonder partner, Mike Mick-fucking-Queen.”

The woman smiled and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Mike. And don’t believe a thing this guy tells you. Making new friends! I’ve known him since he was your age and chasing every nurse in the place.” She squinted at McQueen then and slipped a pair of glasses out of her hair and over her eyes. “How old are you—twelve?”

Mike laughed. “I’m twenty-eight.”

She twisted her mouth up and nodded her head in an approving manner. “And a third grade detective already? I’m impressed.”

Rizzo laughed. “Yeah, so was the mayor. This boy’s a genuine hero with the alma mater gals.”

“Okay, Joe, very good. Now, can we go see the victim?”

“You know, kid, I got a problem with that. I can tell you her whole story from right here. She’s from Boston, wants to be a star, and as soon as you lock up the guy raped her, she’s gonna bring a complaint against you ’cause you showed no respect for the poor shit, a victim of society and all. Why don’t you talk to her, I’ll go see the doctor and get the rape kit and the panties, and we’ll get out of here.”

McQueen shook his head. “Wrong crime, partner. No rape, some kind of sexual assault or abuse or whatever.”

“Go ahead, kid, talk to her. It’ll be good experience for you. Me and Rosalie’ll be in one of these linen closets when you get back. I did tell you she was the head nurse, right?”

McQueen walked away with her laughter in his ear. It was going to be a long night. Just like Joe had figured.

* * *

He checked the room number twice before entering. It was a small room with barely enough space for the two hospital beds it held. They were separated by a seriously despondent looking curtain. The one nearest the door was empty, the mattress exposed. In the dim lighting, McQueen could see the foot of the second bed. The outline of someone’s feet showed through the bedding. A faint and sterile yet vaguely unpleasant odor touched his nostrils. He waited a moment longer for his eyes to adjust to the low light, so soft after the harsh fluorescent glare of the hall. He glanced around for something to knock on to announce his presence. He settled on the footboard of the near bed and rapped gently on the cold metal.

“Hello?” he said softly. “Hello, Ms. Taylor?”

The covered feet stirred. He heard the low rustle of linens. He raised his voice a bit when he spoke again.

“Ms. Taylor? I’m Detective McQueen, police. May I see you for a moment?”

A light switched on, hidden by the curtain but near the head of the bed. McQueen stood and waited.

“Ms. Taylor? Hello?”

The voice was sleepy, possibly sedated. It was a gentle and clear voice, yet it held a tension, an edginess. McQueen imagined he had awoken her and now the memories were flooding through her, the reality of it: yes, it had actually happened, no, it hadn’t been a dream. He had seen it a thousand times: the burglarized, the beaten, the raped, robbed, shot, stabbed, pissed on whole lot of them. He had seen it.

“Detective? Did you say ‘detective’? Hello? I can’t see you.”

He stepped further into the room, slowly venturing past the curtain. Slow and steady, don’t move fast and remember to speak softly. Get her to relax, don’t freak her out.

Her beauty struck him immediately. She was sitting, propped on two pillows, the sheet raised and folded over her breasts. Her arms lay beside her on the bed, palms down, straight out. She appeared to be clinging to the bed, steadying herself against some unseen, not possible force. Her skin was almost translucent, a soft glow emanating from it. Her wide set eyes were like liquid sapphire, and they met and held his own. Her lips were full and rounded and sat perfectly under her straight, narrow nose, her face framed with shoulder-length black hair. She wore no makeup, and an ugly purple-yellow bruise marked her left temple and part of her cheekbone. Yet she was the most beautiful woman McQueen had ever seen.

After almost three years working the richest, most sophisticated square mile in the world, here, now, in this godforsaken corner of Brooklyn, he sees this woman. For a moment, he forgot why he had come.

“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked as he stood in her sight.

He blinked himself back and cleared his throat. He glanced down to the blank page of the notepad in his hand, just to steal an instant more before he had to speak.

“Yes, yes, Ms. Taylor. I’m Detective McQueen, six-two detective squad. I need to see you for a few minutes. If you don’t mind.”

She frowned, and he saw pain in her eyes. For an instant he thought his heart would break. He shook his head slightly What the hell? What the hell was this?

“I’ve already spoken to two or three police officers. I’ve already told them what happened.” Her eyes closed. “I’m very tired. My head hurts.” She opened her eyes and they were welled with tears. McQueen used all his willpower not to move to her, to cradle her head, to tell her it was okay, it was all over, he was here now.

“Yeah, yeah, I know that,” he said instead. “But my partner and I caught the case. We’ll be handling it. I need some information. Just a few minutes. The sooner we get started, the better chance we have of catching this guy.”

She seemed to think it over as she held his gaze. When she tried to blink the tears away, they spilled down onto her cheeks. She made no effort to brush them away. “All right,” was all she said.

McQueen felt his body relax, and he realized he had been holding himself so tightly that his back and shoulders ached. “May I sit down?” he asked softly.

“Yes, of course.”

He slid the too-large-for-the-room chair to the far side of the bed and sat with his back to the windows. He heard rain rattle against the panes and the sound chilled him and made him shiver. He found himself hoping she hadn’t noticed.

“I already know pretty much what happened. There’s no need to go over it all, really. I just have a few questions. Most of them are formalities, please don’t read anything into it. I just need to know certain things. For the reports. And to help us find this guy. Okay?”

She squeezed her eyes closed again and more tears escaped. She nodded yes to him and reopened her eyes. He couldn’t look away from them.

“This happened about 11, 11:10?”

“Yes, about.”

“You had gotten off the train at the 62nd Street subway station?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“What train is that?”

“The N.”

“Where were you going?”

“Home.”

“Where were you coming from?”

“My art class in Manhattan.”

McQueen looked up from his notes. Art class? Rizzo’s inane preamble resounded in his mind. He squinted at her and said, “You’re not originally from Boston, are you?”

For the first time she smiled slightly, and McQueen found it disproportionately endearing. “No, Connecticut. Do you think I sound like a Bostonian?”

He laughed. “No, no, not at all. Just something somebody said to me. Long story, pay no attention.”

She smiled again, and he could see it in her eyes that the facial movement had caused her some pain. “A lot of you Brooklynites think anyone from out of town sounds like they come from Boston.”

McQueen sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in mock indignation. “‘Brooklynite?’ You think I sound like a Brooklynite?”

“Sure do.”

“Well, Ms. Taylor, just so you know, I live in the city. Not Brooklyn.” He kept his voice light, singsong.

“Isn’t Brooklyn in the city?”

“Well, yeah, geographically. But the city is Manhattan. I was born on Long Island but I’ve lived in the city for fifteen years.”

“All right, then,” she said, with a pitched nod of her head.

McQueen tapped his pen on his notepad and looked at the ugly bruise on her temple. He dropped his gaze to the splinted, bandaged broken fingers of her right hand.

“How are you doing? I know you took a bad fall and had a real bad scare. But how are you doing?”

She seemed to tremble briefly, and he regretted having asked. But she met his gaze with her answer.

“I’ll be fine. Everything is superficial, except for the fingers, and they’ll heal. I’ll be fine.”

He nodded to show he believed her and that yes, of course, she was right, she would be fine. He wondered, though, if she really would be.

“Can you describe the man to me?”

“It happened very fast. I mean, it seemed to last for hours, but … but …”

McQueen leaned forward and spoke more softly so she would have to focus on the sound of his voice in order to hear, focus on hearing the words and not the memory at hand.

“Was he taller than you?”

“Yes.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five-eight.”

“And him?”

She thought for a moment. “Five-nine or -ten.”

“His hair?”

“Black. Long. Very dirty.” She looked down at the sheet and nervously picked at a loose thread. “It … It …”

McQueen leaned in closer, his knees against the side of the bed. He imagined what it would be like to touch her. “It what?” he asked gently.

“It smelled.” She looked up sharply with the near panic of a frightened deer in her eyes. She whispered, “His hair was so dirty, I could smell it.”

She started to sob. McQueen sat back in his chair.

He needed to find this man. Badly.

* * *

“I want to keep this one.”

McQueen started the engine and glanced down at his wristwatch as he spoke to Rizzo. It was 2 in the morning, and his eyes stung with the grit of someone who had been too long awake.

Rizzo shifted in the seat and adjusted his jacket. He settled in and turned to the younger detective.

“You what?” he asked absently.

“I want this one. I want to keep it. We can handle this case, Joe, and I want it.”

Rizzo shook his head and frowned. “Doesn’t work that way, kid. The morning shift catches and pokes around a little, does a rah-rah for the victim, and then turns the case to the day tour. You know that, that’s the way it is. Let’s get us back to the house and do the reports and grab a few Zs. We’ll pick up enough of our own work next day tour we pull. We don’t need to grab something ain’t our problem. Okay?”

McQueen stared out of the window into the falling rain on the dark street. He didn’t turn his head when he spoke.

“Joe, I’m telling you, I want this case. If you’re in, fine. If not, I go to the squad boss tomorrow and ask for the case and a partner to go with it.” Now he turned to face the older man and met his eyes. “Up to you, Joe. You tell me.”

Rizzo turned away and spoke into the windshield before him. He let his eyes watch McQueen’s watery reflection. “Pretty rough for a fuckin’ guy with three days under his belt.” He sighed and turned slowly before he spoke again.

“One of the cops in the ER told me this broad was a looker. So now I get extra work ’cause you got a hard-on?”

McQueen shook his head. “Joe, it’s not like that.”

Rizzo smiled. “Mike, you’re how old? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? It’s like that, all right, it’s always like that.”

“Not this time. And not me. It’s wrong for you to say that, Joe.”

At that, Rizzo laughed aloud. “Mike,” he said through a lingering chuckle, “there ain’t no wrong. And there ain’t no right. There just is that’s all.”

Now it was McQueen who laughed. “Who told you that, a guru?”

Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pockets and produced a battered and bent Chesterfield. “Sort of,” he said as he lit it. “My grandfather told me that. Do you know where I was born?”

McQueen, puzzled by the question, shook his head. “How would I know? Brooklyn?”

“Omaha-fuckin’-Nebraska, that’s where. My old man was a lifer in the Air Force stationed out there. Well, when I was nine years old he dropped dead. Me and my mother and big sister came back to Brooklyn to live with my grandparents. My grandfather was a first grade detective working Chinatown back then. The first night we was home, I broke down, crying to him about how wrong it was, my old man dying and all, how it wasn’t right and all like that. He got down on his knees and leaned right into my face. I still remember the smell of beer and garlic sauce on his breath. He leaned right in and said, ‘Kid, nothing is wrong. And nothing is right. It just is.’ I never forgot that. He was dead-on correct about that, I’ll tell you.”

McQueen drummed his fingers lightly on the wheel and scanned the mirrors. The street was empty. He pulled the Impala away from the curb and drove back toward the Belt Parkway. After they had entered the westbound lanes, Rizzo spoke again.

“Besides, Mike, this case won’t even stay with the squad. Rapes go to sex crimes and they get handled by the broads and the guys with the master’s degrees in fundamental and advanced bullshit. Can you imagine the bitch that Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug would pitch if they knew an insensitive prick like me was handling a rape?”

“Joe, Bella Abzug died about twenty years ago.”

Rizzo nodded. “Whatever. You get my point.”

“And I told you already, this isn’t a rape. A guy grabbed her, threatened her with a blade, and was yanking on his own chain while he held her there. No rape. Abuse and assault, tops.”

For the first time since they had worked together, McQueen heard a shadow of interest in Rizzo’s voice when the older man next spoke.

“Blade? Whackin’ off? Did the guy come?”

McQueen glanced over at his partner. “What?” he asked.

“Did the guy bust a nut, or not?”

McQueen squinted through the windshield: Had he thought to ask her that? No. No he hadn’t. It simply hadn’t occurred to him.

“Is that real important to this, Joe, or are you just making a case for your insensitive-prick status?”

Rizzo laughed out loud and expelled a gray cloud of cigarette smoke in the process. McQueen reached for the power button and cracked his window.

“No, no, kid, really, official request. Did this asshole come?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. Why?”

Rizzo laughed again. “Didn’t want to embarrass her on the first date, eh, Mike? Understandable, but totally unacceptable detective work.”

“Is this going somewhere, Joe?”

Rizzo nodded and smiled. “Yeah, it’s going toward granting your rude request that we keep this one. If I can catch a case I can clear up quick, I’ll always keep it. See, about four, five years ago we had some schmuck running around the precinct grabbing girls and forcing them into doorways and alleyways. Used a knife. He’d hold them there and beat off till the thing started to look like a stick of chop meat. One victim said she stared at a bank clock across the street the whole time to sort of distract herself from the intimacy of the situation, and she said the guy was hammering himself for twenty-five minutes. But he could never get the job done. Psychological, probably. Sort of a major failure at his crime of choice. Never hurt no one, physically, but one of his victims was only thirteen. She must be popping Prozac by the handful now somewheres. We caught the guy. Not me, but some guys from the squad. Turned out to be a strung-out junkie shitbag we all knew. Thing is, junkies don’t usually cross over into the sex stuff. No cash or H in it. I bet this is the same guy. He’d be long out by now. And except for the subway, it’s his footprint. We can clear this one, Mike. You and me. I’m gonna make you look like a star, first case. The mayor will be so proud of himself for grabbing that gold shield for you, he’ll probably make you the fuckin’ commissioner!”

* * *

Two days later, McQueen sat at his desk in the cramped detective squad room, gazing once again into the eyes of Amy Taylor. He cleared his voice before he spoke, and noticed the bruise at her temple had subsided a bit and that no attempt to cover it with makeup had been made.

“What I’d like to do is show you some photographs. I’d like you to take a look at some suspects and tell me if one of them is the perpetrator.”

Her eyes smiled at him as she spoke. “I’ve talked to about five police officers in the last few days, and you’re the first one to say ‘perpetrator.’”

He felt himself flush a little. “Well,” he said with a forced laugh, “it’s a fairly appropriate word for what we’re doing here.”

“Yes, it is. It’s just unsettling to hear it actually said. Does that make sense?”

He nodded. “I think I know what you mean.”

“Good,” she said with the pitched nod of her head that he suddenly realized he had been looking forward to seeing again. “I didn’t mean it as an insult or anything. Do I look at the mug books now?”

This time McQueen’s laugh was genuine. “No, no, that’s your words now. We call it a photo array. I’ll show you eight photos of men roughly matching the description you gave me. You tell me if one of them is the right one.”

“All right, then.” She straightened herself in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. She cradled the broken right fingers in the long slender ones of her left hand. The gentleness made McQueen’s head swim with—what?—grief?—pity? He didn’t know.

When he came around to her side of the desk and spread out the color photos before her, he knew immediately. She looked up at him—and the sapphires swam in tears yet again. She turned back to the photos and lightly touched one.

“Him,” was all she said.

* * *

“You know,” Rizzo said, chewing on a hamburger as he spoke, “you can never overestimate the stupidity of these assholes.”

It was just after 9 on a Thursday night, and the two detectives sat in the Chevrolet and ate their meals. The car stood backed into a slot at the rear of the Burger King’s parking lot, nestled in the darkness between circles of glare from two lampposts. Three weeks had passed since the assault on Amy Taylor.

McQueen turned to his partner. “Which assholes we talking about here, Joe?” In the short time he had been working with Rizzo, McQueen had developed a grudging respect for the older man. What Rizzo appeared to lack in enthusiasm, he more than made up for in experience and with an ironic, grizzled sort of street smarts. McQueen had learned much from him and knew he was about to learn more.

“Criminals,” Rizzo continued. “Skells in general. This burglary call we just took reminded me of something. Old case I handled seven, eight years ago. Jewelry store got robbed, over on Thirteenth Avenue. Me and my partner, guy named Giacalone, go over there and see the victim. Old Sicilian lived in the neighborhood forever, salt-of-the-earth type. So me and Giacalone, we go all out for this guy. We even called for the fingerprint team, we were right on it. So we look around, talk to the guy, get the description of the perp and the gun used, and we tell the old guy to sit tight and wait for the fingerprint team to show up and we’ll be in touch in a couple of days. Well, the old man is so grateful, he walks us out to the car. Just as we’re about to pull away, the guy says, ‘You know, the guy that robbed me cased the joint first.’ Imagine that?—‘cased the joint’—Musta watched a lot of TV, this old guy. So I say to him, ‘What d’ya mean, cased the joint?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, two days ago the same guy came in to get his watch fixed. Left it with me and everything. Even filled out a receipt card with his name and address and phone number. Must have been just casing the place. Well, he sure fooled me.’”

Rizzo chuckled and bit into his burger. “So,” he continued through a full mouth, “old Giacalone puts the car back into park and he leans across me and says, ‘You still got that receipt slip?’ The old guy goes, ‘Yeah, but it must be all phony. He was just trying to get a look around.’ Well, me and Giacalone go back in and we get the slip. We cancel the print guys and drive out to Canarsie. Guess what? The asshole is home. We grab him and go get a warrant for the apartment. Gun, jewelry, and cash, bing-bang-boom. The guy cops to rob-three and does four-to-seven.”

Rizzo smiled broadly at McQueen. “His girlfriend lived in the precinct, and while he was visiting her, he figured he’d get his watch fixed. Then when he sees what a mark the old guy is, he has an inspiration! See? Assholes.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a good thing,” McQueen said. “I haven’t run across too many geniuses working this job.”

Rizzo laughed and crumpled up the wrappings spread across his lap. “Amen,” he said.

They sat in silence, Rizzo smoking, McQueen watching the people and cars moving around the parking lot.

“Hey, Joe,” McQueen said after a while. “Your theory about this neighborhood is a little bit off base. For a place supposed to be all Italian, I notice a lot of Asians around. Not to mention the Russians.”

Rizzo waved a hand through his cigarette smoke. “Yeah, somebody’s got to wait the tables in the Chinese restaurants and drive car service. You still can’t throw a rock without hitting a fucking guinea.”

The Motorola crackled to life at McQueen’s side. It was dispatch directing them to call the Precinct via telephone. McQueen took his cell from his jacket pocket as Rizzo keyed the radio and gave a curt “Ten-four.”

McQueen placed the call and the desk put him through to the squad. A detective named Borrelli came on the line. McQueen listened. His eyes narrowed and, taking a pen from his shirt, he scribbled on the back of a newspaper. He hung up the phone and turned to Rizzo.

“We’ve got him,” he said softly.

Rizzo belched loudly. “Got who?”

McQueen leaned forward and started the engine. He switched on the headlights and pulled away. After three weeks in Bensonhurst, he no longer needed directions. He knew where he was going.

“Flain,” he said. “Peter Flain.”

Rizzo reached back, pulled on his shoulder belt, and buckled up. “Imagine that,” he said with a faint grin. “And here we was, just a minute ago, talking about assholes. Imagine that.”

* * *

McQueen drove hard and quickly toward Eighteenth Avenue. Traffic was light, and he carefully jumped a red signal at Bay Parkway and turned left onto 75th Street. He accelerated to Eighteenth Avenue and turned right.

As he drove, he reflected on the investigation that was now about to unfold.

It had been Rizzo who had gotten it started when he recalled the prior crimes with the same pattern. He had asked around the Precinct and someone remembered the name of the perp. Flain. Peter Flain.

The precinct computer had spit out his last known address in the Bronx and the parole officer assigned to the junkie ex-con. A call to the officer told them that Flain had been living in the Bronx for some years, serving out his parole without incident. He had been placed in a methadone program and was clean. Then, about three months ago, he disappeared. His parole officer checked around in the Bronx, but Flain had simply vanished. The officer put a violation on Flain’s parole and notified the state police, the New York Supreme Court, and NYPD headquarters. And that’s where it had ended, as far as he was concerned.

McQueen had printed a color print from the computer and assembled the photo array. Amy Taylor picked Flain’s face from it. Flain had returned to the Six-two Precinct.

Then Rizzo had really gone to work. He spent the better part of a four-to-midnight hitting every known junkie haunt in the precinct. He had made it known he wanted Flain. He had made it known that he would not be happy with any bar, poolroom, candy store, or after-hours joint that would harbor Flain and fail to give him up with a phone call to the squad.

And tonight, that call had been made.

McQueen swung the Chevy into the curb, killing the lights as the car rolled to a slow stop. Three storefronts down, just off the corner of 69th Street, the faded fluorescent of the Keyboard Bar shone in the night. He twisted the key to shut off the engine. As he reached for the door handle and was about to pull it open, he felt the firm, tight grasp of Rizzo’s large hand on his right shoulder. He turned to face him.

Rizzo’s face held no sign of emotion. When he spoke, it was in a low, conversational tone. McQueen had never heard the older man enunciate more clearly. “Kid,” Rizzo began, “I know you like this girl. And I know you took her out to dinner last week. Now, we both know you shouldn’t even be working this collar since you been seeing the victim socially. I been working with you for three weeks now, and you’re a good cop. But this here is the first bit of real shit we had to do. Let me handle it. Don’t be stupid. We pinch him and read him the rights and off he goes.” Rizzo paused and let his dark brown eyes run over McQueen’s face. When they returned to the cold blue of McQueen’s own eyes, they bored in.

“Right?” Rizzo asked.

McQueen nodded. “Just one thing, Joe.”

Rizzo let his hand slide gently off McQueen’s shoulder.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ll process it. I’ll walk him through central booking. I’ll do the paperwork. Just do me one favor.”

“What?” Rizzo repeated.

“I don’t know any Brooklyn ADAs. I need you to talk to the ADA writing tonight. I want this to go hard. Two top counts, D felonies. Assault two and sexual abuse one. I don’t want this prick copping to an A misdemeanor assault or some bullshit E felony. Okay?”

Rizzo smiled, and McQueen became aware of the tension that had been hidden in the older man’s face only as he saw it melt away. “Sure, kid,” he nodded. “I’ll go down there myself and cash in a favor. No problem.” He pushed his face in the direction of the bar and said, “Now, let’s go get him.”

Rizzo walked in first and went directly to the bar. McQueen hung back near the door, his back angled to the bare barroom wall. His eyes adjusted to the dimness of the large room and he scanned the half-dozen drinkers scattered along its length. He noticed two empty barstools with drinks and money and cigarettes spread before them on the worn Formica surface. At least two people were in the place somewhere, but not visible. He glanced over at Joe Rizzo.

Rizzo stood silently, his forearms resting on the bar. The bartender, a man of about sixty, was slowly walking toward him.

“Hello, Andrew,” McQueen heard Rizzo say. “How the hell you been?” McQueen watched as the two men, out of earshot of the others, whispered briefly to one another. McQueen noticed the start of nervous stirrings as the drinkers came to realize that something was suddenly different here. He saw a small envelope drop to the floor at the feet of one man.

Rizzo stepped away from the bar and came back to McQueen.

He smiled. “This joint is so crooked, old Andrew over there would give up Jesus Christ Himself to keep me away from here.” With a flick of his index finger, Rizzo indicated the men’s room at the very rear in the left corner.

“Our boy’s in there. Ain’t feeling too chipper this evening, according to Andrew. Flain’s back on the junk, hard. He’s been sucking down Cokes all night. Andrew says he’s been in there for twenty minutes.”

McQueen looked at the distant door. “Must have nodded off.”

Rizzo twisted his lips. “Or he read Andrew like a book and climbed out the fucking window. Lets us go see.”

Rizzo started toward the men’s room, unbuttoning his coat with his left hand as he walked. McQueen suddenly became aware of the weight of the 9mm Glock automatic belted to his own right hip. His groin broke into a sudden sweat as he realized he couldn’t remember having chambered a round before leaving his apartment for work. He unbuttoned his coat and followed his partner.

The men’s room was small. A urinal hung on the wall to their left, brimming with dark urine and blackened cigarette butts. A cracked mirror hung above a blue-green stained sink. The metallic rattle of a worn, useless ventilation fan clamored. The stench of disinfectant surrendered to—what?—vomit? Yes, vomit.

The single stall stood against the wall before them. The door was closed. Feet showed beneath it.

McQueen reached for his Glock and watched as Rizzo slipped an ancient-looking Colt revolver from under his oat.

Then Rizzo leaned his weight back, his shoulder brushing against McQueen’s chest, and heaved a heavy foot at the stress point of the stall door. He threw his weight behind it, and as the door flew inward, he stepped deftly aside, at the same time gently shoving McQueen the other way. The door crashed against the stall occupant and Rizzo rushed forward, holding the bouncing door back with one hand, pointing the Colt with the other.

Peter Flain sat motionless on the toilet. His pants and underwear lay crumpled around his ankles. His legs were spread wide, pale and varicosed, and capped by bony knees. His head hung forward onto his chest, still. McQueen’s eyes fell on the man’s greasy black hair. Flain’s dirty gray shirt was covered with a brown, foamy, blood-streaked vomit. More blood, dark and thick, ran from his nostrils and pooled in the crook of his chin. His fists were clenched.

Rizzo leaned forward and, carefully avoiding the fluids, lay two fingers across the jugular.

He stood erect and holstered his gun. He turned to McQueen.

Morte,” he said. “The prick died on us!”

McQueen looked away from Rizzo and back to Flain. He tried to feel what he felt, but couldn’t. “Well,” he said, just to hear his own voice.

Rizzo let the door swing closed on the sight of Flain. He turned to McQueen with sudden anger on his face. “You know what this means?” he said.

McQueen watched as the door swung slowly back open. He looked at Flain, but spoke to Rizzo.

“It means he’s dead. It’s over.”

Rizzo shook his head angrily. “No, no, that’s not what it fucking means. It means no conviction. No guilty plea. It means, ‘Investigation abated by death’! That’s what it means.”

McQueen shook his head. “So?” he asked. “So what?”

Rizzo frowned and leaned back against the tiled wall. Some of the anger left him. “So what?” he said, now more sad than angry. “I’ll tell you ‘so what.’ Without a conviction or a plea, we don’t clear this case. We don’t clear this case, we don’t get credit for it. We don’t clear this case, we did all this shit for nothing. Fucker would have died tonight anyway, with or without us bustin’ our asses to find him.”

They stood in silence for a moment. Then, suddenly, Rizzo brightened. He turned to McQueen with a sly grin, and when he spoke, he did so in a softer tone.

“Unless,” he said, “unless we start to get smart.”

In six years on the job, McQueen had been present in other places, at other times, with other cops, when one of them had said, “Unless …” with just such a grin. He felt his facial muscles begin to tighten.

“What, Joe? Unless what?”

“Un-less when we got here, came in the john, this guy was still alive. In acute respiratory distress. Pukin’ on himself. Scared, real scared ’cause he knew this was the final over-dose. And we, well, we tried to help, but we ain’t doctors, right? So he knows he’s gonna die and he says to us, ‘I’m sorry.’ And we say, ‘What, Pete, sorry about what?’ And he says, ‘I’m sorry about that girl, that last pretty girl, in the subway. I shouldn’ta done that.’ And I say to him, ‘Done what, Pete, what’d you do?’ And he says, ‘I did like I did before, with the others, with the knife.’ And then, just like that, he drops dead!”

McQueen wrinkled his forehead. “I’m not following this, Joe. How does that change anything?”

Rizzo leaned closer to McQueen. “It changes everything,” he whispered, holding his thumb to his fingers and shaking his hand, palm up, at McQueen’s face. “Don’t you get it? It’s a deathbed confession, rock-solid evidence, even admissible in court. Bang—case closed! And we’re the ones who closed it. Don’t you see? It’s fucking beautiful.”

McQueen looked back at the grotesque body of the dead junkie. He felt bile rising in his throat, and he swallowed it down.

He shook his head slowly, his eyes still on the corpse.

“Jesus, Joe,” he said, the bile searing at his throat. “Jesus Christ, Joe, that’s not right. We can’t do that. That’s just fucking wrong!”

Rizzo reddened, the anger suddenly coming back to him.

“Kid,” he said, “don’t make me say you owe me. Don’t make me say it. I took this case on for you, remember?”

But it was not the way McQueen remembered it. He looked into the older man’s eyes.

“Jesus, Joe,” he said.

Rizzo shook his head, “Jesus got nothin’ to do with it.”

“It’s wrong, Joe,” McQueen said, even as his ears flushed red with the realization of what they were about to do. “It’s just wrong.”

Rizzo leaned in close, speaking more softly, directly into McQueen’s ear. The sound of people approaching the men’s room forced an urgency into his voice. McQueen felt the warmth of Rizzo’s breath touching him.

“I tole you this, kid. I already tole you this. There is no right. There is no wrong.” He turned and looked down at the hideous corpse. “There just is.”

EATING ITALIAN

BY LUCIANO GUERRIERO

Red Hook

Buoy bells in Buttermilk Channel gave DeGraw and Mintz lazy company as they started their waterfront stroll at India Wharf off Summit Street. Even as late as 3 in the morning, the constant hum of vehicles entering the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel off the Gowanus Expressway lent the bells a pleasant harmony.

The nightly foot patrols these cops made through the labyrinth of freight containers and warehouses were keeping Wild Willy’s crew—Red Hook’s Mafia bad boys—from molesting the busiest stretch of freight piers left in the big city. Every year, the derricks at the water’s edge offloaded 120,000 containers of cocoa, coffee, salt, pumice, and all sorts of other goods—especially those of the electronic variety—that became catnip to thugs looking to take their taste of things.

There was pressure for DeGraw and Mintz to look the other way, a lot in the way of temptation thrown at them. But they resisted the escalating bribe offers, even arrested some of Wild Willy’s tougher customers, and this patch of waterfront got so quiet on the overnight shift that the dynamic duo started hating the isolation, felt cursed by their own success. With nothing much to do, even the night watchmen of the local freight hauling companies left them alone, retreating to some dim office somewhere to play poker.

DeGraw tried to get the duty changed so that at least some of the other overnight cops could split patrol time in the waterfront area, but Mintz followed him in to the brass and argued against it, the son of a bitch.

DeGraw couldn’t understand being blocked by a partner who went behind his back. It bugged him. But then, for their two years together, Mintz was always a strange partner. He was a bundle of quirks and nerves and had a bad habit of busting balls just a little too often. Sometimes it made DeGraw question where Mintz’s head and heart were.

Ultimately, though, DeGraw decided that Mintz was just a strange guy—one who sometimes played dumb so he could shirk some duty, sure, but one who wouldn’t sell you short when it really counted. He believed that for all his faults, Mintz was a decent enough cop, clearly not a gung ho type but a guy who’d stood up during some heavy-duty moments they’d faced together. DeGraw figured he could do worse for a partner.

And maybe Mintz had been right to fight for the water-front patrol. The piers even began to grow on them when they realized that the duty was cake. In fact, the precinct commander was so happy to reap the glory for their accomplishments that they were given latitude to freelance with no brass looking over their shoulders, a rare privilege for cops in uniform. Long as they got back to Red Hook Park when they were supposed to patrol it, the duty sarge let them do as they pleased. Wasn’t the first time what started as a crap assignment turned out to be okay.

They were so isolated as they made their way from India Wharf south across Commercial Wharf and onto Clinton Wharf, tugging on all the locked warehouse doors, looking down all the alleys and between the big metal containers, that they’d taken to eating their lunch on the Clinton pier head near the railroad yard, under one of the big red derricks. If the weather was right, it was actually a pretty peaceful spot, except for the occasional turf war that broke out between armies of river rats.

On a clear night, the partners could see Lady Liberty standing vigil on the Jersey side of upper New York Bay, but on this balmy mid-September night, rain was forecast. Taking lunch, DeGraw and Mintz could hardly see Governor’s Island across the Buttermilk because a fog was starting to blanket the water where the upper bay became the East River.

Mintz dropped the last piece of crust from his meatball Parmesan hero and it didn’t bob on the undulating black water for even five seconds before some unseen creature snatched it under.

Probably a striped bass, DeGraw figured.

“Prob’ly a striper,” Mintz said.

Still trying to drown the breakup of his marriage, DeGraw’s lunch consisted of four bottles of tepid beer and eight cigarettes. Draining the last bottle, he flipped the empty into the water and let go a satisfying belch.

After a still moment spent staring at the water, they stood up on the pier, unzipped, and started peeing into the brine—another nightly ritual.

“Actually got plenty of time, you know,” Mintz said.

“Might as well finish up early,” DeGraw said, “go back and get the park done.”

“What’s this job do to your mind, Frankie?” Mintz said. “I mean, we’re out here foiling the bad guys all the time, we gotta imagine how these skells think, don’t we? Gotta do something to the way we think, don’t it?”

“Nah, we thought like this to begin with,” DeGraw said, peeing on and on. “Some of us, if we don’t put on a uniform, we end up doing exactly what the skells do.”

“You sayin’ I have a criminal mentality?”

“We look at these buildings and containers and we see what the criminals see. God help me, Lou, but if we’re not wearin’ these uni’s, you and me are in there even before Wild Willy’s guys, taking shit outa here and fencin’ it. I do believe that’s true.”

“I sold fireworks when I was a kid,” Mintz said. “Made myself fat green while the other guys got pinched. Guess I got a talent for puttin’ the other guy ’tween me and danger.”

“Criminal mentality,” DeGraw said. “I boosted cars, sold nickel bags. Then we lied on the police interview, another dishonesty. Face it, pal. Takes one to know one.”

“Guess that’s true, with, uh …” Mintz said, “with that other stuff you do.”

DeGraw almost came back at Mintz for making mention of his outside activities. As far as DeGraw knew, Mintz was the only one on the force who was aware that he sold illegal guns, and DeGraw had made it understood that the touchy subject was to be off limits. DeGraw kept it all fairly well hidden, but unnecessary talk could put him in jeopardy. Still, DeGraw thought better of scolding Mintz, because it would have required him to talk about it.

They let go the last drops of pee in silence, shook themselves, and zipped up.

“… ’Cuz we’re two friggin’ corrupt sons a bitches …” Mintz muttered as they made their usual way out toward Ferris and Wolcott, checking doors and alleys as they went. “… And remember, whatever I learned about crime I learned from you, Frank. So if all that’s in our bones, why do we play it straight? Why don’t we go, you know, like they say in the movies, to the dark side?”

“Don’t know about you,” DeGraw said, “but I don’t wanna get too fat on the ill-gotten gains, ’cuz ya never know when that feast’ll be over, and then yer fucked. Keepin’ it more or less clean, maybe I don’t eat so good but at least I eat in peace.”

Then DeGraw stopped short. In the dim diffuse light, the hand on the sidewalk at the head of the alley didn’t look real. The yellow skin with black splotches looked like painted latex, but the ragged end of the wrist gave it away; it trailed strands of sinew and a small ooze of blood. Accepting the possibility that the hand was real, DeGraw waved Mintz over and started to go queasy.

Mintz didn’t say a word, his mouth agape at the sight of the hand.

“Who’s goin’ in?” DeGraw whispered, using his chin to point down the alley.

Mintz put a hand to his belly and backed away a step, stammering, “But, but I … I can’t … I … I …”

DeGraw signaled for Mintz to stand watch as he turned and gazed into the alley’s murk. They both drew their 9mm Glock handguns, dangled them at their sides, clicked off the safeties.

Stepping into the alley, DeGraw slid a big Maglite from his belt and clicked it on. He still couldn’t glimpse the length of the alley. Not much more than a small mountain of stacked garbage was to be seen from the sidewalk, so he moved to it, peeked around it, and crept forward, all while Mintz stayed put.

When Mintz said, “Careful,” DeGraw jumped because he thought Mintz was warning of an attacker. He lost his grip on the flashlight and it clattered to the ground. Stifling his impulse to go back and pummel Mintz, DeGraw stooped to retrieve the Maglite. Light rays glinting off something ten feet hence caught his eye. Then the bulb blew out and the alley fell into blackness again.

Rather than retreat, DeGraw went to where he’d seen the red flash, stooped, and opened his eyes as wide as he could. He noticed wetness on the cement. Squatting, DeGraw could smell the distinct odor of blood. Then he made out objects in the center of the blood puddle. Setting his feet close to it, he hunched over and went down to one knee, feeling blood soak into his pants. Squinting until he knew what he was looking at, he saw a scrotum, and about a foot away from that, a severed penis.

Mintz, agonizing, broke the silence again, “Whatcha got?”

“Fuckin’ set of balls and a mutilated thingy,” DeGraw said with more calm than his heart commanded.

“Friggin’ Christ,” Mintz moaned. “Are you shittin’ me?”

There’s an extremely unhappy man in Brooklyn tonight, DeGraw thought as he stood, found the wall with his shoulder, and crept further down the alley, gun out front. He knew he was walking through more blood, soon coming to a severed human arm without a hand, and eventually to a torso that was missing the sex organs, one arm, and its head. He noticed that the head had been propped on a barrel against the opposite wall, eyes open like it was viewing the scene.

His heart trying to pound its way out of his chest, DeGraw wanted to run. But he filled his lungs to the brim and exhaled out loud, forcing himself to do his job, make observations. The victim seemed to be a male Caucasian, late twenties/early thirties, minus the aforementioned body parts.

DeGraw lit a cigarette and then held the lighter in front of the victim’s vaguely familiar face. It was bloody, mouth twisted in what had to be either the victim’s final agony or some kind of sick last laugh.

Holding the lighter up, he could see nobody else in the alley, which ended at a solid wall. He scanned up the sides of both buildings and could see no one on a rooftop, so he turned back to the sidewalk, away from the victim and toward Mintz.

Emerging from the alley, gun holstered, DeGraw remained silent because he wanted to make Mintz ask, just to bust nuts a little bit.

“Well?” Mintz said.

“Well what?”

“What’d you find? … Jesus Christ, Frank.”

“Call it in. Rest of the guy’s down there, in pieces.”

As Mintz pulled his radio, DeGraw walked over to a puddle, patting at his pockets. “Gimme some gloves, Louie.” DeGraw took one last drag from his cigarette and flicked it away. Then he slipped on the surgical gloves Mintz handed him, lifted a soggy wallet, and flipped it open. Mintz held his Maglite on it, peering over DeGraw’s shoulder.

As if DeGraw needed another shock right at that moment, he saw the driver’s license photo of a man he was now sure he recognized.

“Hold that call,” DeGraw said, and then looked over at Mintz. “Know who we got here? None other than William Montemarano.”

“Wild Willy?” Mintz said. “And they left him here? … Why, Frank?”

“’Cuz we put him outa business for good, I guess,” DeGraw said. “Aw, fuck, and I never knew before this second, but this guy’s the scumbag who goes out with my ex.”

“Wait, Sandra? How the hell’s Sandy go out with a Mafioso like Wild Willy?”

“I don’t think she knew he was the same guy. I sure didn’t To me, he’s just Bill-some-Italian-guy, Bill the guy who owned a tow truck company. We never ran into him down here anyway, just his crew, so I didn’t know what he looked like. Did you?”

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Mintz said. “She serious about this guy?”

“Fuck,” DeGraw said, face going dark as the full extent of the situation dawned on him. “Whole time together, I never laid a hand on my wife she didn’t want me to …”

“What?” Mintz said, not quite following the train of thought.

“You know, I just spanked her and stuff like that, but …”

“Frank, I don’t wanna know about … Why you talkin’ about yer sex life?”

“Was just a game,” DeGraw said. “Never, and I mean never did I raise my hand to Sandy in anger.”

“Fine. But what’s that gotta do with Wild Willy in pieces in the alley here?”

“Once, Lou, one time only, I hit Sandy. Big argument, she was slammin’ me with a telephone ’cuz I wouldn’t let her make a call to this mutt, this new boyfriend.”

“Who turns out to be Wild Willy, but okay, what does you hittin’ Sandy …?”

“I wasn’t even outa the house yet and she’s whorin’ herself with this guy. I’m givin’ her shit about it, and she’s really pummelin’ me in the chest. Which is fine, but then she clips me in the face and I just react, on reflex. I cuff her one on the chin and she goes down in a heap like I’d really hauled off, which, you know, I absolutely did not do.”

“Okay, got it, stormy freakin’ romance,” Mintz said. “But …”

“I shouldna had those beers at lunch.”

“Wait a minute,” Mintz said. “Yer makin’ turns here …”

“I just had four frickin’ beers, dunce, and six before we started the shift.”

“So what, there’s nobody around,” Mintz said. “Yer not makin’ sense.”

“If we call this in, they’ll around. They find out I know the victim, they’re gonna sit me down for questions, and I don’t want no beer on my breath, okay?”

“All right, but we gotta call this in,” Mintz said. “We’ll get ya some mints when we go back. And yer not drunk anyway, so what da fuck ’er ya talkin’ about?”

“Listen,” DeGraw said, grabbing Mintz by the arms. “One time I was violent with my wife over the guy, and another time … I threatened this guy’s life.” Mintz’s jaw went slack again as DeGraw continued, pointing each word, “He was smackin’ her around, so I threatened him in front of half my friggin’ neighborhood in Gravesend. They all heard me threaten to cut Wild Willy’s balls off if he hit Sandy again in front of the baby.”

“Whoa,” Mintz said, breathing heavier. “When did this happen?”

“Couple weeks ago, Labor Day. I stopped in to see the baby. So I’m inside, and everybody’s outside drinkin’, and then he and she start to argue over something, I don’t know what, and things fly outa hand. So I go out, and he’s manhandlin’ her, and all of a sudden I’m handin’ the kid off and steppin’ in. Big friggin’ scene, right in the street.”

“And you don’t tell me this weeks ago?”

“Fuck you,” DeGraw said. “You gossip way too much.”

“And I just heard twelve too many details for one night, so shut the fuck up.”

DeGraw poked a finger at Mintz’s chest. “You and me, we gotta get on the same page here, or this thing’s gonna get nasty.”

“Oh, it’s already nasty,” Mintz said, half-laughing with a hysterical little whoop. DeGraw recognized it as Mintz’s nervous habit when he felt he was in over his head.

“I need ya, Lou. I ain’t sittin’ in a cell for somethin’ I had nuttina do with.”

“Hold on, just hold on and tell me something,” Mintz said, mustering his courage, taking a breath and squaring himself in front of DeGraw. “Did you ice this guy? … No, no, no, don’t tell me, please don’t tell me, I don’t want to know …”

“You fuckin’ hump,” DeGraw said, grabbing his hat from his head and swiping a meaty paw across his face and through his hair. “I mean, you really think …”

“It’s a proper question,” Mintz said, trying to beat back another whoop. “And if you can’t handle it comin’ from me, how you gonna do when they sit you down?”

DeGraw let his body go slack. He needed Mintz to be as cool as possible, for moral support at the very least, and maybe more than that. “Awright, listen, Mintzy. Everybody knows the world’s a little better now that this guy stopped breathin’. Cripes, I’d like to be able to say that I did do this guy. But it just so happens that I did no ice this muthuh. And now my footprints are down there in his friggin’ blood okay?”

“Oh shit.”

“Oh shit is right,” DeGraw said. “What am I gonna do with all this?”

“Wow, I don’t know, Frank. What do ya think?”

“Look, my footprints are down there. You think maybe you could walk down there too and put your footprints all over? Then we could maybe say you were the one who went down and not me, I stayed out here.”

“Geez,” Mintz said, trying not to hyperventilate. “You want me to say I’m the one who found him?”

“Now that I think about it,” DeGraw said, “there might be a lot of footprints down there, how you gonna step into all the ones that are mine?”

“Exactly.”

“And second, I already got his blood on my shoes, in my pants, and who knows where else. When somebody tells a detective how I threatened Willy on Labor Day, I’m an instant suspect. And when they test this uniform for Willy’s blood, I am screwed.”

“But I can still vouch for ya, Frank,” Mintz said. “We were together all night.”

“Which makes you a secondary suspect.”

“Well, then fuck it, the only thing I can do is read you your rights,” Mintz said, whooping as he removed handcuffs from their belt holster. “You are under arrest.”

“Just cut it out, all right?” DeGraw said as Mintz laughed. “You know, I hate it when you enjoy my predicaments.”

“Somebody’s gotta lighten this mood, Frank, ’cuz lemme tell ya, this mood sucks.”

DeGraw leaned back on the wall and eyed the bloody hand on the sidewalk, taking out cigarettes. He put one in his mouth, gave Mintz one, then lit them both.

“Awright, face it, yer screwed anyway,” Mintz said, fighting for control. “They gonna find out what you said to Wild Willy on Labor Day, so ya gotta figure goin’ in they’re gonna take a good hard look at you, at least as a formality. Holy shit, yer fucked.”

“Do me a favor and stop laughin’, ya prick.”

“Just nerves, Frank. You know I get this way. Don’t be mad at me.”

“It makes me frickin’ nuts, so stop it, okay? What am I gonna do here?”

“What do you mean, do?” Mintz said. “We gotta call this in.”

“I don’t know, is that true?”

Mintz contemplated his meaning for a second. “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute …”

DeGraw said, “Where are we?”

Mintz didn’t understand the question. “Red Hook.”

“Red Hook waterfront,” DeGraw said, like he was leading an idiot. “And what are those? Those things right over there, and all over here?”

“Metal drums.”

“Some rusted, with holes in ’em. And over there we got cinderblocks.”

“Oh no,” Mintz said. “Oh God, no, no, no.”

“Why not?”

“But, but, but, but …”

“But give me one reason.”

“How ’bout it’s against the LAW goddamnit!” Mintz said.

“We are cops,” DeGraw replied. “We’re on the right side of the law, my friend.”

“But you’re not guilty,” Mintz whined. “What would you be coverin’ up for?”

“Bear with me,” DeGraw said. “It’s clear this blood is fresh, and we’ve been together all night. So if I get jammed up for this, you do too, right? So, since you got a stake here, I say the freakin’ Mafia dumps so many bodies out there in the Buttermilk you can practically walk across to Governor’s Island—and don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. So let’s just pick up the pieces of Wild Willy, stuff ’em all in a barrel with cinderblocks, walk it out to the pier head there—and finish the frickin’ job.”

“Jesus,” Mintz said, gulping air and whooping again. DeGraw was speaking in earnest, but kept his tone even.

“What would be left to find? Blood? It’s gonna rain the rest of the night and tomorrow too. Guaranteed there’s no blood to notice between these two warehouses when the sun comes up. Then it’s a missing-person case at most and chances are it never goes beyond that.”

“Interesting theory,” Mintz said. “You willin’ to stake your career on that?”

“I’m willin’ to stake my freedom on that, and nobody would hate jail more than me, Louie. And we might as well face another fact while we’re at it—this thing ain’t no coincidence It’s aimed right at me.”

“Oh sure, like the world revolves around you,” Mintz said. “How ya figure?”

“The wallet. They wanted this guy found and identified.” Mintz began to pace back and forth while DeGraw held up the warehouse with his back and thought out loud. “I think chances are excellent that somebody, maybe some twisted individual right in Gravesend, who maybe witnessed me threaten this guy with murder and mutilation …”

“Not necessarily in that order,” Mintz said.

“And maybe that sick individual has one huge case of the hots for Sandy, which could be the key here …”

“She is pretty hot, if you don’t mind me sayin’, Frank.”

DeGraw went on, “And maybe he got in his mind that if he conks this Willy guy on the head, cuts him up and puts him exactly where he knew I’d be tonight, he can run with the opportunity I myself inadvertently provided on friggin’ Labor Day.”

“Wait, you’re sayin’ all this happens because the guy wants a shot at Sandy?”

“Smart move, ain’t it? With means, motive, and opportunity, the heat is right on me. I could go away for a long time off this or maybe even end up on Death Row.”

“I apologize for puttin’ it this way,” Mintz said, “but you yourself said many times in the past coupla years that a guy ain’t gotta murder nobody to get in Sandy’s pants. You call that woman a slut all the time. So who better than you would know that all it takes is a coupla seven-and-sevens and you’re in like Flynn.”

“I divorced her, didn’t I? How do you know she drinks seven-and-sevens?”

“You told me once, a long time ago. Anyway, so okay, so who needs to commit a murder and pin it on you to get a piece of yer ex-wife?”

New emotions began creasing DeGraw’s face. “’Tween you an’ me—my son don’t even look like me. I hate to say it. It kills me. But I can’t shake this feeling.”

“Stop it, stop it right now,” Mintz said. “The kid looks just like you and that’s that. If not exactly, then close enough. So put it all right outa yer head.”

DeGraw reined in his feelings and pushed on, “All right, I’ll give you another motive, Louie. We been doin’ too good a job around here, breakin’ up Wild Willy’s gravy train. Face it, they might even like Wild Willy, but if his corpse means they can get back to the way they were haulin’ hot shit outa here, Willy is dead. Or maybe they’re pissed off for some unrelated reason and want Willy out of the picture. So off of that alone, partner, maybe some enterprising mob wanna-be sees a chance to take Willy out and pin it on the very cops screwed things up on the waterfront, so he takes a shot.”

“Much as I hate to admit it,” Mintz said, “that one makes a certain sense. With both Willy and us gone, things go back to normal … But can we really do this?”

“Come on, partner,” DeGraw said, taking another pair of surgical gloves from Mintz’s pocket. “Nobody here. All we do is introduce what’s left of Mr. Wild Willy to the depths of the East River, where the little fishies will enjoy eating Italian once again. Then we’re home free: no murder, no suspects, no change on the Red Hook waterfront.”

“God help me,” Mintz answered, closing his eyes and trying to force a swallow through a dry throat, “but I just can’t do this. It’s too risky.”

Deflated, DeGraw slumped back against the building. “Okay, man. I understand.”

“Look, Frank, I’m sorry, but I just …”

“It’s okay, partner. I’ll handle it … how I handle it. Why don’t you just call it in.”

Mintz lifted the radio and hesitated, fingering the broadcast key without activating the call. “Wait a minute, what am I thinking? We have to do this.”

“No we don’t,” DeGraw said. “I’ll handle it.”

“No you won’t. You’re right about what they’ll do. They’ll investigate you.”

“Right,” DeGraw said, noticing that Mintz was calmer now.

“And you know, they might not find that you iced ol’ Willy, but if they nose around into your activities, they’re bound to find out about the boosted guns, don’t ya think?”

“That’s not for you, that’s for me to worry about. How many times do I …”

“I’m sorry for bringin’ it up, Frank, but you could end up stuck with gun charges off of Wild Willy bein’ found dead here, so we gotta do what you suggest, right? We gotta dump Willy in the channel. Just promise me, Frank, if this goes wrong, you’ll step up and protect me.”

“I got yer back from now till the tomb, partner,” DeGraw replied, slipping the gloves onto Mintz’s hands.

“Faster we’re outa here, better I’ll feel,” Mintz said. “Let’s go.”

Stomachs in knots, they collected all the parts of Wild Willy—including the Mafioso’s wallet—and packed them into a rusted barrel, which they topped off with cinderblocks. Then DeGraw used the side of his Glock to tamp down the metal tabs on the barrel lid until it was secure, and they rolled the barrel to the end of the pier where, without ceremony, they sent the creatures of Buttermilk Channel fresh Italian to eat.

This took longer than they expected. They were late, so they trotted out from the warehouses, heading along Wolcott, making a left on Richards, and sauntering into Red Hook Park.

A sector car was waiting for them.

Nico Dounis, a Greek patrol sergeant everybody called Nicky Donuts, got out of the car when they approached. “Don’t nobody answer the radio no more?”

Mintz looked down at his belt and found the radio turned off. “Shit, sarge, I guess I accidentally turned it off.”

“You two have a brawl?” Dounis asked.

“No,” DeGraw said. “Why?”

“You’re all sweaty.”

“Don’t know what yer talkin’ about, sarge,” Mintz said. “Not sweaty at all.”

“Climbing around the warehouses,” DeGraw said.

“Humid out tonight,” Mintz added. “Uh, horseplay, you know, boys’ll be boys.”

DeGraw recognized three too many excuses when he heard them.

Dounis did too. “Okay, what’s goin’ on?”

DeGraw could see Mintz’s mind go into overdrive, a panicky thought making its way toward the lips, so he took Mintz’s arm and turned him away, stepping forward himself to answer. “Little argument, that’s all. Nothin’, really. He don’t know a guy’s still got feelings for his ex-wife even if they get divorced, so I had to straighten him out.”

Dounis studied DeGraw through squinted eyes, but he stifled an urge to pursue it.

“Hey, it’s late,” Mintz said. “We should walk the park.”

“I walked it myself,” Dounis said. “It’s done.”

“But we’re not that late, are we, sarge?” Mintz asked, and again DeGraw wanted to pound him into unconsciousness, but resisted the urge.

“Forty-five minutes I’m callin’, and I got no word on the radio,” Dounis said. “What’s that on your knee, Frank?”

They all looked down and saw the purplish-red splotch visible even on DeGraw’s navy blue pant leg.

“Oil, I guess,” DeGraw said. “I knelt down to tie my shoe.”

“I ain’t no dope and I don’t appreciate bein’ treated like one,” Dounis said. “Yer late, ya don’t answer the radio, yer all disheveled like ya been fightin’, ya smell like a frickin’ brewery, and ya got blood on yer pants. Don’t tell me that’s oil, ’cuz I know the difference.”

The two patrolmen were stunned. Mintz was ready to speak again but DeGraw spoke first: “Yer absolutely right, sarge. We were negligent. We had a few beers at lunch and lost track of time. Then he insults my ex and I had to straighten him out. Only he don’t show proper respect, so we scuffled a little bit. I took a head butt to the nose and bled, after which I knelt in it when I went down to tie my shoe.”

DeGraw and Mintz waited a tense second while Dounis processed the new information.

“Over here,” Dounis said, walking Mintz about twenty feet away.

Much as he tried, DeGraw couldn’t make out what they were talking about.

Dounis then returned to DeGraw while Mintz stayed behind.

“Turn away from Mintz,” Dounis said, and DeGraw obeyed. “Exactly where was it you two went at each other?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” DeGraw answered. “What the hell did we ever do to you?”

“Where was it you bled? I need to know exact.”

“I don’t know, one of the piers.”

“The piers is your whole patrol, asshole. Which one?”

“How’m I s’posed to know? They all look alike. Like Greeks.”

“After two years, you know those piers like they was yer own pecker.”

“Somewhere around the railroad yard, I’m guessing. Can’t be sure, sarge.”

“That’s not what Mintz said.”

“What d’ya want from me? One of us is right and the other forgot. No big deal.”

“I gotta do somethin’ about this, don’t I?” Dounis said.

“Yer bein’ a hardass, Nicky Donuts. What’s wrong?” DeGraw said. “I never crossed you, not even once.”

Dounis turned to Mintz and said, “Don’t come over here and don’t you two talk to each other.” Then Dounis sat in the cruiser and made a call to the precinct while DeGraw and Mintz could only stare at each other, reading worry on each other’s faces.

When, within a minute, five police cruisers came tearing to that corner of Red Hook Park, Dounis had DeGraw and Mintz taken into custody.

* * *

Unfortunately for DeGraw, the forecast was wrong. It never rained that night. Wild Willy’s blood stayed on the pavement and was collected by the crime scene unit.

By noon, DeGraw had spent hours in an interrogation room at the 76th Precinct, where he was interviewed by Catucci and Bourne, two homicide detectives, and Gonzalez, an ADA who’d been summoned from the Brooklyn homicide bureau. Cho and Santos, of Internal Affairs, also watched through the two-way mirror.

To show good faith, DeGraw had waived the “forty-eight-hour rule,” which gives a policeman accused of a crime the chance to arrange for representation without having to answer questions. But he had invoked his right to have his Policemen’s Benevolent Association representative present, so Ken Stanley sat off in a corner.

Not hearing a radio check from DeGraw and Mintz, Dounis had sent other officers onto the piers to look for them. When they arrived, unnoticed in the thickening fog, they watched DeGraw and Mintz pack Wild Willy into the barrel with the cinderblocks and then roll it into the drink.

What was worse, DeGraw soon found out, was the fact that Mintz had turned on him under the pressure of the questioning and was offering his full cooperation against DeGraw in return for a clean walk—which he was granted. It left DeGraw dumfounded.

“But how?” DeGraw asked. “How can he say I did the friggin’ murder? I was with him the whole time, and I swear, we didn’t kill the guy, we just dumped him.”

“’Cuz you were scared you’d be a suspect,” Bourne said, and DeGraw nodded.

“Not a bad story, but not good enough,” Gonzalez said. “Mintz told us everything. And they just raised the barrel, so I got a slam-dunk case against you. Do yourself a favor, pal, cop to a plea and I’ll cut you the best deal I can.”

“Be smart, Frank,” Bourne said. “Wait for your lawyer before you cut any deals.”

DeGraw hung his head and wondered how it all could have gone so wrong so fast.

* * *

At that same moment, Lou Mintz was a free man, cruising the streets of Brooklyn in his brand new Lincoln Navigator while singing off-key to a Dean Martin CD.

He hung a right on Bay Parkway and stopped on the corner of Cropsey Avenue, half-dancing his way into Bensonhurst Park. His feet felt like they were barely denting the grass as he approached two men sitting on a bench. One was an older gentleman named Bonfiglio, although Mintz knew him only as Big Fig.

“Nice new car, huh?” Bonfiglio said. “Pretty flashy.”

“That’s my new baby,” Mintz said. “Ride’s like a dream.”

Bonfiglio reached into his inner blazer pocket as Mintz sat next to him, then stuffed a bulging envelope into a copy of the New York Post and placed it on the wooden bench slats. Mintz picked it up and held the newspaper open while thumbing through a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills.

“Count it if you want,” Bonfiglio said.

Mintz sat back, putting the newspaper down again. “Looks about right.”

“Suit y’self, but later, when you do count it,” Bonfiglio said, “you’ll find more than we bargained for, just to show how appreciative I can be for a job well done.”

“’Preciate that,” Mintz said, and leaned forward to look at the other man. “Ya get the same appreciation, Nico?”

“More,” Nicky Donuts replied. “I got more.”

“Why him and not me?” Mintz said to Bonfiglio.

“He set it up,” Bonfiglio answered.

“But I did all the work,” Mintz said. “And damn good work it was.”

“Management always takes less risk and gets a bigger cut,” Dounis said. “Ain’t you hip to that yet?”

Bonfiglio laughed. “God rest him, but Willy never knew that, and now look.”

“Shit, I still gotta testify,” Mintz said. “Hardly seems fair that I get less.”

“Don’t worry, kid,” Bonfiglio said. “Cashflow won’t be no problem once we’re back to business in Red Hook. You’ll get everything what’s comin’ to ya.”

“Know what? I believe ya,” Mintz said, sashaying back toward his Navigator with the Post and envelope clenched under his arm. “Have yerselves a great day, gents.”

Five minutes later, Mintz turned off Shore Parkway onto Bay 17th Street, parked in the driveway of a quaint little white clapboard house, and went in through a side door. Without a word, he went upstairs to a bedroom.

Entering, Mintz tossed the Post and envelope onto the bed. Sandy turned away from the bureau and folded herself into Mintz’s arms.

“Went off without a hitch,” Mintz said, nuzzling her neck.

Mintz, the neurotic weasel who’d shy away from a dicey situation and whine about the danger, was now gone. Sandy gasped as this new Mintz balled her hair in his fist, tilted her head back, and took the front of her throat in his teeth. Then he trailed his tongue to her ear and took the lobe between his lips, all while she rubbed up against him.

“I can’t get enough of you,” she said, and when he moaned, she added, “Shush, the baby’s down for a nap.”

“I won’t wake him up,” Mintz whispered, leading her into the baby’s room. Watching the ten-month-old sleep, Mintz couldn’t help but smile.

“Looks just like his old man,” Sandy whispered.

Mintz beamed, patted the kid’s foot, and led her out of the room.

In the hall, Mintz kissed her and said, “Dress up nice and call the sitter, I’m takin’ us out tonight, special celebration.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Where?”

“Carmine’s, Italian place in the city,” Mintz said. “Food is absolutely to die for.”

* * *

Back at Bensonhurst Park, Dounis and Bonfiglio were still enjoying the high sun and the salt air that was wafting in off Gravesend Bay.

“The case against DeGraw?” Bonfiglio said.

“As much of a sure thing you can have against a cop,” Dounis said.

“Even with just the word of the guys you sent in there?”

“They watched the whole thing,” Dounis said. “Their testimony is all we need.”

“I don’t like the attitude on this Mintz,” Bonfiglio said. “The cocky ones like that, they’re trouble.”

“And spreading money around? This flashy car all of a sudden?” Dounis said. “Fuckin’ idiot don’t even know he’s forcin’ us ta be responsible here. And it’s too fuckin’ bad, I don’t care if he did do us a good job last night. He’s now officially dangerous.”

“Okay, so since we don’t need him for the case,” Bonfiglio asked, “where’s he gonna be tonight?”

“He told me he’s eatin’ at Carmine’s. Upper West Side.”

“Shall I let him have his meal first, or make sure they do him on the way in?”

“Mintzy’s a good kid,” Dounis replied. “Let him eat, drink his wine.”

“You old softy,” Bonfiglio said, laughing. Dounis didn’t laugh.

“When it might be my time,” Dounis said, “I hope I get the same consideration.”

“Cripes, yer goin’ all emotional in your old age,” Bonfiglio said.

“Guess I am.”

“It’s kinda sweet.”

“He did good work for us, Fig, helped us get Red Hook back. Give the kid his last meal, I happen to know he loves eatin’ Italian.”

“Hell, who don’t?”

They both nodded and thought of their favorite Italian dishes.

* * *

That night at the 76th, DeGraw still hadn’t been arraigned or made bail, but he didn’t have to stay cooped in a cell. Instead, the detectives gave him the professional courtesy of letting him wait it out in the relative comfort of an interrogation room. They even brought him pizza from Mario’s Place down the block, just the way he liked it: piping hot Sicilian slices with extra mozzarella cheese and spicy Italian sausage. Much as it pleased DeGraw’s palate, it still left him with indigestion.

* * *

After a sweaty hump and a few hours’ nap on DeGraw’s ex-bed, the babysitter came over and Mintz drove Sandy to Carmine’s Restaurant, Broadway between 90th and 91st Streets on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The large upper room was crowded and festive, as usual. People flocked to this place that prepared such sumptuous Southern Italian fare and served it in great, heaping platters. Folks didn’t just grab a bite at Carmine’s place, they ate big and left feeling like they’d participated in an event.

Mintz fingered the wad of hundreds in his pocket and ordered up more bottles of Carmine’s best Montepulciano D’Abruzzo to go with the seafood antipasto that was as large and fulfilling as most normal meals. He and Sandy swooned over practically every sip of the red wine in between bites of the calamari, baked clams, baccala, whiting, muscles, bay scallops, and butterfly shrimp, the tangy red sauce sopped up with fresh homemade garlic bread.

A middle-aged gent at the next table couldn’t help but notice them. “Excuse me, but it’s my first time here and it’s great to see you two look like you’re enjoying yourselves. That food as good as it looks?”

“Better,” Mintz said. “You eatin’ alone?”

“Uh, well, blind date,” the professorial gent said. “Internet kind of thing. I guess either something went wrong or she got cold feet.”

“Tough stuff, buddy,” Mintz said. “Might as well go ahead and order. This shit’s too good not to eat once yer here.”

The gent shrugged and nodded with a sad smile.

“Fuck ’er,” Sandy added. “She don’t know what she’s missin’, does she? Might as well enjoy your evenin’.”

“I’d invite you to join us,” Mintz said, “but this is kind of a special occasion, and, well, you understand.”

“Oh, by all means,” the tweedy gent said. “Enjoy your meal.”

He thanked them with a nod when Mintz had the waiter put a glass of their Montepulciano on his table and then raised the glass in a silent toast.

After that, while the gent ate alone, he took sidelong glances to see Mintz and Sandy happily tucking into entrees of Lasagna Bolognese, Fettuccini Alfredo, penne in olive oil with broccoli, gnocchi, bragiole, veal Parmesan.

The gent was amazed when Mintz and Sandy ordered dessert: espresso, tiramisu, spumoni, and chocolate-covered mini-cannoli. Then they topped it all off with large snifters of Sambuca Romana, a sweet anise-tasting Italian liqueur sipped with three coffee beans floating in it.

They had of course ordered far more food than they’d consumed, and had the leftovers wrapped to take home with them, good Italian food always tasting even better the next day. The containers filled two shopping bags, which Mintz carried in one hand as they rose to take their leave. He turned to say goodnight to the gent, but the guy wasn’t at the table and Mintz couldn’t remember seeing him go.

The cool night air made their bodies glow with the alcohol and the great food, as Mintz and Sandy sauntered back around the corner toward where the new Navigator was parked. Just when the world seemed like a perfectly lovely place and Sandy hooked her hand around Mintz’s arm, the gent stepped out from behind a van, raised the gun with a silencer attached, and began pumping shots into them.

Head-shot, Sandy was dead before she hit the sidewalk. Unable to grab his off-duty gun and already hit in the chest, all Mintz could do was swing the shopping bags at the gent, who raised his free arm to fend them off. The bags burst open and the containers rained great food all over the sidewalk.

When Mintz also fell dead, the gent plucked a piece of penne from the shoulder of his cashmere overcoat and popped it into his mouth. Then he pocketed the handgun and walked away.

Within seconds, a big black stray mutt happened upon the bodies of Mintz and Sandy and straightaway began to enjoy the best Italian meal he’d ever had, although truth be told, he really didn’t care much for the broccoli.

THURSDAY

BY KENJI JASPER

Bedford-Stuyvesant

There’re a lot of ways to deal with what “The Stuy” doles out. Some drink. Some get high. Some beat the shit out of the spouse within closest reach. But me, I fuck. This is not to say that I do not engage in the act of making love. Nor is it to imply that I’m one of those dudes who suffers from that meeting-in-the-ladies’-room catch phrase known as emotional unavailability. I just know that when you’re bending her legs back as far as they go, aiming a stiff rod toward the uterus while her head indents the drywall, as your sweat lines the valley that runs from between her shoulder blades to the crack of her ass, that it cannot be considered an act of intimacy

They like it because what I have to give isn’t as watered down as what they get at home, the sum of what’s left after their men’s hard days at bullshit 9-to-5s. I don’t care if she leaves traces of my semen on her kids’ cheeks. I don’t care if she picks up another ten pounds from eating Doritos and watching Divorce Court. I only ask that she leave before I start caring.

* * *

“You got any more of that tea?” Jenna asks.

She’s the only one I’ve ever let stay, because I love her, or at least I used to, until she left me for another dude after she caught me in a three with Sarah and Dahlia, these two bi-broads I’d met at The Five Spot the night of one of my little book things. They were in the mood for dick and I had one, not to mention a dub of weed and a queen-size mattress with fresh sheets.

Jenna didn’t live with me but she had keys, the unavoidable side effect of my dislike for feminine whines and complaints. Nothing gets to me more, not even the inevitable loss of privacy that comes with giving someone carte blanche access to your home. One night she started missing me just as I wasn’t missing Dahlia’s g-spot, with Sarah adding a little tongue to the mix.

I can’t even say that I remember their faces, only a fleshy set of buttocks and thick nipples harder than granite. One Cuban, one Jewish, and both light on their feet when Jenna started swinging the antique coat rack.

My friends in other boroughs don’t believe me when I tell them stories like this one. They dismiss them as something like the fodder passed off as correspondence in the pages of Penthouse Letters But they don’t live in The Stuy. They don’t understand that anything out here is possible as long as you believe it is, a crisscross grid of blocks and corners waiting to be remade just the way you want them, as long as you got juice, dough, or even better, both.

I’m a writer, if you haven’t figured it out yet. The words are the way I live, except when the freelance checks come late, or sometimes not at all. Then I’m left to the mercy of the streets, and a pile of manuscript I’ll probably never sell. But this isn’t about writing, this is about money, money on a Thursday, and how I ended up with it. The “what” I needed it for comes six graphs away from this one.

Flakes of jasmine in the metal ball you drop into boiling water. Add exactly three tablespoons of honey and let it steep. This is what makes Jenna happy. She comes to see me whenever her man’s away, or when there happens to be a hole in my busy schedule, which is rather often. By the time I get the cup back to the bedroom, she’s already clasping the bra behind her lovely back.

“It’s gonna take a second for this shit to cool,” I say as she takes the cup. Her skin is the color of coal and without a single blemish. Narrow shoulders and torso spread into wide hips and delicious quads that could choke a small animal. I still love her, even though she ain’t mine no more.

“I might have to take it with me,” she says, tucking the cranberry blouse into jeans of the deepest blue. “I got people in the chair all day.”

Of all the women to fall in love with, I had to pick a braider. Twelve-hour days and one Saturday a month off. Her man sees less of her than I do, even though he works at the home where they now live, three blocks over on Marcy and Jefferson.

If you have to know, I stay on Halsey and Bedford, though everyone will say it’s Hancock and Nostrand, where the more famous author happens to live. We’re both the same age and from the same town, and yet we’ve never been in the same place at the same time. But perhaps that’s a good thing. I read his last book and would be really tempted to hurt his feelings if he happened to ask me for a critique.

“He wants to take me to Brazil next month” she says, after sucking the hot liquid down to half. Her tongue has always been made of fire-retardant foam.

She says this only to make me jealous, knowing that I hate when she goes away, not to mention with him. It is my punishment for that night two years ago. I can have her body for the rest of eternity, but someone else will always hold the title to her soul.

“I’m sure he wants to do a lot of things,” I say. “But that kinda trip costs the kinda cake he has to save up for a year for.”

She zips her bag and wraps the butter-smooth leather I bought her around the blouse, and then smiles. She knows something that I don’t.

“He doesn’t have to save anything. He put his tax return in a nine-month CD at seven percent. He’s gonna cash it in on Monday.” And after that bit of data she departs, down the three flights of stairs to the inner door, followed by the outer, and then to the street.

She still knows the tender spots, especially in the after-glow. Brazil was the only place she’d ever wanted to go that she hadn’t made it to yet. I’d sold a big article and used the check to get us advance tickets and a good hotel. I couldn’t even get a refund because she backed out too close to the departure date.

And now she is going with Mr. Right, a four-inch one-minute man who a few of my homegirls have sampled over the years, all less than impressed. She is doing it just to spite me. Jenna does everything just to spite me.

She has no intention of going on that trip in those weeks ahead. If that’s what she wants, she never would’ve told me about it. She knows how determined I am. And she knows that even though I write, I am also a man of action when it comes to handling my business. So she also has to know that there’s no way in hell I’m going to let her roll anywhere below the equator with that clown. I’ll have this sewn up by the end of the day, no problem.

* * *

“Twenty-three-hundred, forty-seven, ninety-six,” Winston utters, his eyes never leaving the calculator on his computer screen. “You want me to book it now?”

The Bogart Travel Agency is a custom-made 2000-megahertz computer system hacked into the DSL substation box at Fulton and Classon. In other words, Bradley siphons all his business and info from the big travel agency up the street. It’s nothing personal. They just happen to have what he needs for this season’s hustle. Come December he’ll be into something else, somewhere else.

I’ve got about six yards in my stash box over at Carver Bank, which is far from enough. Winston doesn’t have a layaway plan, nor does he accept bad checks. And his price is the best I’ll ever see on such short notice.

Winston’s almost forty years old and he still lives in the house he was born in, not far from the room he’s renting to accomodate his bootleg travel setup. Lewis and Madison used to be a whole lot worse than it is, which just means that you no longer need someone to cover you with a pistol every time you get the mail. He always talks about moving back to Guyana with his grandma, even though she’s on oxygen and hasn’t left the house for years.

“How long can you hold the fare?” I ask.

“End of the day, max,” he replies, his eyes now locked on Judge Hatchett’s new hairdo, which means it’s after 11 and I need to get moving.

“So that’s 5 p.m., right?”

“It’s actually 6 in the travel biz.”

“Then I’ll be here at 5:55.”

* * *

“White people got ahold of everything now,” Shango Alafia tells me between bites of french toast at the Doctor’s Cave, this little hole on Marcy where I take a meal every once in a while. Shango’s there every day though, mainly to eye Jean, the dreadlocked and beautiful better half of Tim, who prepares all of the meals he loves so much. Shango also happens to be Winston’s brother-in-law and third cousin twice removed. But that’s an entirely different story.

“I put in the best bid on that pair of brownstones down on Greene. Had the shit locked for like three days, and then eight hours before the cutoff some whiteboy coalition comes in and chops my head off.”

“Hey, real estate’s a cutthroat business,” I say. The frown on his face softens into a smile. He knows something I do not.

“You’re right. That’s actually why I called you down here.”

Shango and I never use land lines, cells, or even e-mail. If he needs to see me, the right corner of the front page of my Daily News will be missing. If it’s a little piece, I’ll find him at the gym over on Kingston. If it’s a lot, he’s over at Jean’s.

Shango’s sort of like my agent in this maze of a neighborhood, and has been ever since I moved here five years ago. He helped me out with a certain situation, involving certain people that you don’t need to know about, or at least not in the context of this particular tale.

“So what’s the deal?” I ask him.

“Reuben’s got a problem,” he says, dabbing his lips with one of the moist towelettes he carries everywhere he goes.

Reuben Goren owns a nice piece of Fulton Street, mostly storefronts that have been in the family for almost two generations. Needless to say, any problem he has is likely to be an expensive one.

“What kind of problem?”

“Yardies want that corner building he’s got on Fulton and Nostrand, you know the one with the optician and the furniture store up top?”

“I see it every time I go to the train,” I say. “So what, they’ve got him under pressure?”

“You could say that. But more importantly, they’ve got us under contract.”

“Under contract to do what?”

“A little FYI.”

“FYI?”

“We need to let him know they’re not fuckin’ around.”

“And let me guess, he wants me to come up with a plan.”

“Plan and execution.”

“For how much?”

“Five.”

“That’s a little low, isn’t it?” I say, knowing that it’s more than I need. Greed is the most deadly of all sins.

“It’s more than what you need for those Brazil tickets,” he says, signaling Jean for coffee just so she can show him her behind while she pours.

“Always ahead of my game, huh?”

“I gotta be to take fifteen percent.” My brain calculates options at the speed of light. Then my compass points me north. “I already took my fee out of the number by the way.”

“Figured as much,” I nod, still pensive. Then it comes to me. “I’m gonna need to see Sam.”

Shango smiles again. “I told him you’d be there in thirty minutes.”

* * *

“You know anybody that needs four .45s with no firing pins?” Sam asks, twenty-three minutes later.

He’s a barber by trade. But he picked up a few other skills during the early nineties, when that nappy ’fro trend kept a lot of his usual cake out-of-pocket. On the table before him are four lines of coke and a plate of short ribs. He snorts and chews in twenty-second intervals, using the nostril that isn’t outlined with crusted blood.

“I might,” I say, the most strategic answer to give.

The rear of Sam’s Shears is the local arsenal. You come to him for both offense and defense, for gaining ground and covering your ass. For pistols, rifles, hollow-tips, and even explosives, he’s the undisputed motherfuckin’ man, and the key element to my equation on this particular Thursday.

“But what I need,” I continue, “is something that blows. Compact with high impact.”

“What for?”

“It’s on a need-to-know basis, my friend,” I say with the wave of a finger. “Besides, curious cats end up in the carry-out.”

“You make any money from that writing shit?” he asks, just before doing another line, his gray t-shirt now smeared with barbecue sauce and pork grease.

“Sometimes,” I say.

“What about the rest of the time?”

“I do this. But look, Sam, I’m kinda on a schedule. Can you get me what I need?”

“Already got it. It’s right there under the blanket.” I remove the fabric to reveal a half-liter nitro glycerin charge with a twelve-second trigger. He makes them for a third of what seasoned pros might charge. A half-liter is a little much, but it’ll have to do.

“Did I hit the nail on the head?” he asks.

“More like a fly with a hammer. But I’ll take what I can get.”

Sam and I don’t deal in cash. Favors are our particular currency. So while such equipment would easily go for five figures on the Stuy market, I’ll take it off his hands for no money down, as long as I get him what he wants.

“You know, there’s only one cruiser in each precinct with a shotgun?” he asks, as if making small talk. But I know what’s next. I’m finally one step ahead of somebody.

“Nabors,” I begin. “He’s the dayshift patrolman for the Marcy projects. Pump-action Mossberg with a wood-grain slide. Takes a large curry chicken for lunch at 4:55 every day. Corner of Fulton and Nostrand.”

“Right across the street from the optician and the furniture store.”

“What a coincidence,” I grin. “That’s what you want?” He nods. For some reason the coke makes him subdued instead of hyper. He doesn’t want the gun to sell, but for something more inventive. Perhaps one of his clients would enjoy the irony of killing the officer with his own weapon.

“Yup, that’s it.”

“I’ll send my man by for the hardware,” I say on my way out. “And pencil me in for a shape-up tomorrow at 4.” Arsenal or not, Sam gives the best cuts in The Stuy.

* * *

“I miss jail,” Brownie tells me from the beanbag recliner by the window. He did six months in Otisville for intent-to-distribute before they gave him time served for rolling over on some whiteboys, one of whom, Brownie had discovered, was fucking his girl.

He is the clinical definition of a sociopath, a man who has raped and killed, six feet and 295 pounds of evil that just happens to deal the best weed in the neighborhood. Thus, I allow him into my home from time to time, for as long as the high lasts.

“What do you mean, you miss jail?” I ask, pulling on what that remains of the once-ample spliff. He is called Brownie because of his fudge-colored face. His real name can only be found on the lips of his elderly mother or on the rap sheet longer than my bedspread, or duvet, as Jenna describes it.

“A nigga like me needs some discipline,” he says. “I realize that now. In there they told me what to be and where to go. Kept me in a cage and made me follow the rules. Out here I just get into shit. Out here I’m a fuse ready to blow.”

Sam used to be married to Brownie’s older sister, but that was before she divorced him and moved back to Panama. Sam had apparently been tapping some high school girl. But Brownie and Sam are still like brothers. The local arsenal even had a chrome Desert Eagle with a filed serial number waiting for him the minute he got out of the clink.

“You sound like you’re itchin’ to get knocked,” I say, swigging bottled water to wash away the taste of smoke. “What you gonna do? Go out and fuck up on purpose?”

Instead of answering, he climbs to his feet and goes over to one of the windows to look down at the street.

“That’s the only thing I hate about the inside,” he grins. “You never get windows this big.”

“You don’t get to leave either. You don’t get to see your kids. You don’t—”

“Fuck my kids!” he explodes, turning to me. “Neither of them bitches won’t even let me see’em no how, unless I got some cash. Besides, it ain’t like I’m even close to bein’ a good daddy. I’m a street-nigga man. That’s the only shit I know.”

On any other day there might be a speech for me to offer, something about him not needing to go back to jail to find the happiness he seeks. It would be this existential rant about how what he does isn’t wrong, that he only does what God wants him to do. I would say it all with conviction just so he’d have that thirty-dollar bag for me every other Thursday. But I’m trying to cut down. And besides, I need him to play a part in my plan.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Shoot,” he says.

“If you were gonna get yourself knocked, how would you do it?”

He turns to me with a pensive look, like a child trying to solve a Sajak puzzle.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I been thinkin’ about it though. Why? You got an idea or sumpin’?”

I connect four just as he ends the question.

“I might,” I say.

* * *

“Where you goin’ with all that food?” Miel Rodriguez asks me, her bedroom eyes narrowed to slits outside of the Splash and Suds on the corner of Nostrand and Halsey. I am carrying two large bags of food from Yummy’s carry-out, a half-gallon of shrimp fried rice, three small wanton soups, four egg rolls, and a six-pack of grape soda.

Miel would dig me if I was all about the Benjamins, or if I drove an Escalade with twenty-two-inch rims like the one she’s seated in, compliments of her man of the moment. But I’m a writer, and she doesn’t read. So we only flirt every now and again. I wouldn’t mind getting my lips on those D-cups of hers. But intuition tells me that Jenna could outfuck her any day of the week.

Miel is beautiful though, with those dark brown eyes and golden flesh, long Indian hair shiny with oil sheen. The man of the minute is a lucky one, if he can hold on to what he’s got.

“I got some people in town,” I tell her.

“From where?” she asks.

“Atlanta,” I say. “I went to school there.”

“Oh,” she replies, interested in nothing beyond the five boroughs. Twenty-three years old and she suffers from the worst ailment of them all, Hoodvision, that inability to see past the blocks where she was born.

Behind the front seats are two different shopping bags, each topped off with a folded knit sweater. Beneath one is her current man’s stash of product, the other, his take for the week, to be dropped off at an undisclosed location at the end of the day. Heroin has been in short supply since the DEA raid on Jefferson a few days ago. Her boy was suspiciously the only one to make it out before the siege.

It’s not that I don’t know his name. I just choose not to use it. He’s an X-factor in the day’s proceedings, perhaps a catalyst, perhaps a not-so-innocent bystander. We’ll know soon enough.

“How come you never try and talk to me?” she asks, offering a sexy smile, her slight overbite gleaming in the sunrays from above.

“I’m talking to you right now.”

“That’s not what I mean,” she says.

“What about your man?” I ask.

“His days are numbered,” she says.

“What’s he doing in the laundromat anyway?”

“Droppin’ off his clothes. We gotta come back and pick’em up at 5.”

I glance at the bags in the rear again and know that Miel is carrying. There’s no other way this guy would leave her alone in the ride for this long. I see him starting out of the building and know it’s my cue.

“Well, lemme get this food, home girl. I’ll see you around.” I start away, knowing she’ll do anything to have the last word.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she says, just as her boy hits the sidewalk.”

“I know,” I yell back, picking up the pace. It’s almost 3:00. I have to move quickly.

* * *

The Le Starving Artist Café has barely been built, but there are already rats living in the basement. Not the disease-carrying rodents that infest the city, but four motherfuckers who I have a score to settle with. They are two sets of brothers, Trevor and Neville of Gates Avenue by way of St. Kitts, and Steve and Stacy of Harlem by way of grandparents that moved there from the Carolinas in the 1940s.

Weeks ago they took a stab at looting my crib while I was away at a speaking gig. They jimmied the front doors and came right up the stairs to the cheap wood my landlord assumed would keep out thieves. He was wrong. They made off with some DVDs and my 100-disc changer, ignoring the original Basquiat and twin lamps from Tiffany’s.

Tesa Forsythe saw them from across the street and told me about it. Now the time has come to make things right.

They live in the basement beneath this café. Blankets and space heaters have kept them alive since the autumn chill began. Various hustles keep them fed and functioning. But what’s money worth when there’s no product close by? And the prices in Crown Heights are already through the roof.

“Good lookin’ out,” Stacy yells, draped in the same Pittsburgh jersey he’s been wearing since Monday. They’re all short on costumes since most of the dough vanishes into the good veins they have left.

Food won’t make their jonesing any easier. But it’ll give them more energy, which they’ll be needing shortly. They immediately tear into what I’ve offered.

“Anything I can do for my peoples,” I say. The “peoples” part is not fully untrue since we all used to play ball together in the summer, before they started sniffing and shooting, before the Internet crash that killed their entrepreneurial dreams. But that’s another story. Seems like everybody in The Stuy has a story.

“Besides, I know y’all sufferin’ right now.”

“What you talkin’ about!” Trevor demands, pulling a sleeve down over the arm he punctures most often.

“It ain’t like he don’t know,” Neville argues between mouthfuls of shrimp fried rice. “The man looks like he got somethin’ to say.”

“Only if you want to hear me,” I reply, watching them tear into the food.

“We want to hear you,” Steve assures me as he slurps his soup. The warm liquid returns the yellow to his fair skin.

“You need powder and I need money,” I say. “Somebody’s got both less than a block from here.”

“Who?” Trevor demands.

“I can’t say. But I can say what he drives. ’03 Escalade. Twenty-two-inch rims. Two shopping bags in the backseat. He’s picking up his laundry at 5. Just him and his girl.”

“How do you know?” Neville asks.

“I know the girl,” I say. “And she says this dude’s days are numbered, if you know what I mean.”

They all look at each other, some trembling with the shakes, others shivering from the chills. Like most addicts, they don’t think things through. They just react, moths drawn to the proverbial flame.

“But we ain’t got no heat,” Stacy laments. “I mean, we can’t just run up on the car with nothin’. You know he’s gonna be strapped.”

“Yeah, and ain’t no way to get four gats in a hour and a half.”

I clear my throat. “I might be able to help you there.”

* * *

It is a quarter to 5 when I get the urge for something to drink. It happens every once in a while during Texas Justice and today is no different. But for some reason I’m also in the mood for yoga. So I grab the carrying case for my mat on the way out the door, but forget the mat itself.

Both sides of Nostrand are packed with beings headed in every rush-houred direction. From their trains to their homes, from those homes to stores for the ingredients to make meals in time for the best that TV has to offer. Kids of all ages journey from one block to the next to bond with friends and more-than-friends alike.

I see patrolman Nabors enter the Golden Krust carry-out at the corner. I see Miel Rodriguez and her man pull up to the laundromat between Halsey and Macon. I see a gypsy cab slow to a halt in front of Reuben Goren’s precious storefront. Then it all unfolds.

Brownie emerges from the cab’s rear with a half-liter nitro glycerin charge. He kicks a hole in one of the storefront windows and tosses it in. The boom all but deafens everyone in a four-block radius and coats the entire street in shattered glass. The blast knocks Brownie to the ground, but he gets up quick-ly and begins to run down Fulton Street and into patrolman Nabors’s field of vision, knocking over a grandma and a pack of teenage moms with an endless supply of strollered kids.

Officer Nabors IDs the perpetrator and calls for backup, dropping his large container of curry chicken to the ground as he begins to chase the man on foot. Fulton Street, or at least the people on it who are not still climbing up from the explosion, cheer both men on as the chase moves westward.

I then turn around to see four armed men surrounding the Escalade that’s just pulled up in front of the laundromat, their .45 pistols trained on the driver and passenger. Moments later they are chased off by the loaded weapons of those inside of the vehicle.

The thieves are shocked to find that the pistols they’d gotten on loan from a man called Sam were without firing pins. They should’ve known better though, especially since the quartet stiffed the very same man for a pair of Glocks the previous summer, having sprayed him with mace before making a run for it with the merchandise. Addicts don’t think. They just react.

Backup units arrive to aid Nabors, and some splinter off to chase the armed men fleeing from the laundromat. But none of the blue boys notice that the driver’s-side window on Nabors’s squad car is down. Nor do they see the young writer reach through the opening to commandeer the Mossberg shotgun in the holster next to the shifter. The writer slides the weapon into a nylon sleeve normally used for his yoga mat and slings it over his shoulder before disappearing into the local Bravo supermarket for a bottle of Snapple Peach Iced Tea. People see him, but they are not the kind to snitch to the authorities.

* * *

Brownie is tackled, clubbed, stomped, kicked, and then arrested by several white officers who don’t have the brains to make it in any other profession. Trevor and Steve take one for the team as they too are apprehended by officers with few other career options.

Twenty minutes later the fire department is taming the blaze. Three men are on their way to Brooklyn central booking and the young writer is on his way back down Nostrand to his residence, having never earned as much as a glance from the authorities during the entire mêlée.

Sam has his Mossberg by 5:35 p.m. Shango has my money fifteen minutes later. Reuben Goren has a concussion and a cake of shit in his pants. And by five to the hour, Winston will be handing me my tickets.

I am smiling on the inside as I turn onto Madison, anticipating the surprise I’ll find on Jenna’s dark and lovely face. It’s the last house on the left at the end of the block. She lives with a thirty-eight-year-old man who still rents. Tsk tsk.

But then I notice the taxicab in front of the rented residence they share, the place she moved into to remind me of my past transgressions. Perhaps he’s heading into the city to buy some testicles, or maybe a rug for that hairline that keeps going back. Then I see that he’s carrying bags. And she’s right behind him, holding what appears to be a pair of plane tickets.

That’s when I know that the trip to Brazil begins today. The whole “next month” thing was a screen of smoke to throw me off. She knows me so well. She still knows how to make me suffer.

Another rock rolled up that long steep hill, another show of cunning and strength, before I stumble and fall, bouncing all the way back to the beginning. Jenna and I are the only loop I can’t escape, the only checkmate that always evades me. She is like the sound Coltrane chased in his dreams, never to be had, never to be held, never to be won, in a season of games that lasts forever.

ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD

BY ROBERT KNIGHTLY

Greenpoint

Officer David Lodge stumbles when he attempts to enter the blue and white patrol car triple-parked in front of the 94th Precinct, dropping first to one knee, then to the seat of his pants. His nightstick, which he forgot to remove from the ring attached to his belt, is the most immediate cause of his fall. When it jammed between the door and the frame, Lodge had one leg in the vehicle with the other just coming up. From that point, there was nowhere to go but down.

Lodge ignores the guffaws of his colleagues, the eleven other cops of the midnight-to-eight tour, the adrenalin pumping as they mount up to ride out to patrol their assigned sectors. For a moment, as he struggles to gather himself, he stares at a full moon hanging over Meserole Avenue. He wonders if the moon’s bloated appearance is due to the brown haze and drenching humidity trapped in the atmosphere. Or if it’s just that his eyes won’t focus because he passed the hours prior to his tour at the local cop bar, the B & G, just a few doors down from the precinct. Lodge has reached that stage of inebriation characterized by powerful emotions and he stares at the moon as if prepared to cradle it in his arms, to embrace a truth he is certain it embodies.

“Yo, spaceman, you comin’ or what?”

The voice belongs to Lodge’s partner, Dante Russo. Lodge works his way to his feet, then yanks his nightstick free before getting into the car. He is about to address his partner, to offer a halfhearted apology, when the radio crackles to life.

“Nine-four George, K?”

Russo fires up the engine, shifts into gear, and pulls away. “That’s us, Dave,” he reminds his partner.

Lodge brings the microphone to his mouth. “Nine-four George, Central.”

“George, we have a 10–54 sick at one-three-seven South 4th Street. See the man. A woman unconscious in the hallway.”

“That’s in Boy’s sector, Central.”

“Nine-four Boy is on another job, K.”

“Ten-four, Central.”

Russo proceeds down Metropolitan Avenue at trolling speed, passing beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, before turning onto Morgan Avenue. The job on South 4th Street is now far behind them.

“Where we goin’, Dante?” Lodge adjusts the louvers on the air-conditioning vents, directing the flow to his crotch. “The job’s in the other direction.”

“We’re goin’ where we always go.”

“Acme Cake? You serious?”

Lodge steals a glance at his partner when his questions go unanswered. Dante’s thin nose is in the air, his jaw thrust forward, his lips pinched into a thin, disapproving line.

Not for the first time, Lodge feels an urge to drive his fist into that chin, to flatten that nose, to bloody that mouth. Instead, he settles his weight against the backrest and faces the truth. Without Dante Russo, David Lodge wouldn’t make it through his tours, not since he started having black-outs. Nobody else will work with him, he knows. Shitkicker is what they call him. As in, You hear what the shitkicker did last night?

“What about the job?” he finally says. “What do I tell Central if they wanna know where we are?”

Russo sighs, another irritating habit. “C’mon, Dave, wise up. We both know it’s gonna be some junkie so overdosed her buddies dumped her in the lobby like yesterday’s garbage. Now maybe you wanna go mouth-to-mouth, suck up that good HIV spit, but me, I’m gonna let the paramedics worry about catchin’ a dreaded disease. They got a better health plan.”

* * *

When Lodge and Russo finally roll up on the scene twenty minutes later, two Fire Department paramedics are loading a gurney into an ambulance. A woman strapped to the gurney attempts to sit up, despite the restraints.

“You see what I’m sayin’?” Dante Russo washes down the last of his frosted donut with the last of his coffee. “Things worked out all right. No harm, no foul.”

* * *

Three hours later, Russo breaks a long silence with an appreciative whistle. “Well, lookee here, just the man I want to see.”

Lodge brings a soda bottle to his mouth and takes a quick sip. The one-to-one mix of 7-UP and vodka lifts his spirits. He is on the verge of a blackout now, and predictably reckless.

“What’s up?”

“The Beemer.” Russo jerks his chin at a white BMW trimmed with gold chrome, stopped for the light at the intersection of Metropolitan and Kingsland Avenues.

“What about it?”

“That’s our boy.”

“What boy?”

Russo pauses long enough to make his annoyance clear. “That there car belongs to Mr. Clarence Spott.”

“Who?”

“Spott’s picture is hangin’ in the muster room. He’s one of the bad guys.” Dante’s mouth expands into a humorless smile. “Whatta ya say we bust his balls a little?”

“Fine by me.”

When Russo momentarily lights up the roof rack and the BMW pulls to the curb, both cops immediately leave their car. They are on Metropolitan Avenue, a main commercial street in the northside section of Greenpoint. The small retail stores lining both sides of the avenue are long closed, their gates down and padlocked, but several men stand in front of an after-hours club across the street. David Lodge stares at the men till they turn away, then he joins Russo who stands a few feet from the BMW’s open window. Lodge knows he should approach the vehicle from the passenger side, that his job here is to cover his partner on the driver’s side. But David Lodge has never been a by-the-book officer, far from it, and knowing his partner won’t object, he settles down to enjoy the show.

“Why you stoppin’ me, man?” Clarence Spott’s full mouth is twisted into a pained grimace. “I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Step outa the car,” Russo orders. “And that’s officer, not man.”

“I ain’t goin’ no place till I find out why you stopped me. This here is racial profilin’. It’s unconstitutional.”

Russo slaps his nightstick against the palm of his hand. “Clarence, you don’t come out, and I mean right this fuckin’ minute, I’m gonna crack your windshield.”

The door opens and Spott emerges. A short, heavily muscled black man, his expression—eyes wide, brows raised, big mouth already moving—reeks of outrage. Lodge can smell the stink from where he stands. And it’s not as if Spott, who keeps his hands in view at all times, isn’t familiar with the rules of the game. There’s just something in him that doesn’t know when to shut up.

“Ah’m still axin’ the same question. Why you pull me over when I’m drivin’ down a public street, mindin’ my own damn business?”

Russo ignores the inquiry. “I want you to put your hands on top of the vehicle and spread your legs. I want you to do it right now.”

Spott finally crosses the line, as Lodge knew he would, by adding the word pig to his next sentence. Lodge slaps him in the face, a mild reprimand from Lodge’s point of view, but Spott sees it differently. His eyes close for a moment as he draws a long breath through his nose. Then he uncoils, quick as a snake, and drives his fist into the left side of David Lodge’s face.

Taken by surprise, Lodge staggers backward, leaving Spott to Dante Russo, who assumes a two-handed grip on his nightstick before cracking it into Spott’s unprotected shins. When Spott drops to his knees on the pavement, Russo slides the nightstick beneath his throat and pulls back, choking off a howl of pain.

“How you wanna do this, Clarence? Easy or hard?”

As Spott cannot speak, he indicates compliance by going limp and crossing his hands behind his back.

Russo eases up slightly, then pushes Spott forward onto his chest. “You all right?” he asks his partner.

“Never better.”

David Lodge brings his hand to the blood running from a deep cut along his cheekbone. Suddenly, he feels sharp, even purposeful. As he watches his partner cuff and search the prisoner before loading him into the backseat, he thinks, Okay, this is where it gets good. His hand goes almost of itself to the soda bottle stuffed beneath the seat when he enters the vehicle. He barely tastes the vodka as it slides down his throat.

“You got any particular place in mind?” his partner asks as he shifts the patrol car into gear.

“Not as long as it’s private. One thing I hate, it’s bein’ interrupted when I’m on a roll.”

* * *

Lieutenant Justin Whitlock sets the precinct log aside when David Lodge and Dante Russo lead Clarence Spott into the nine-four. Both sides of Spott’s face are bruised and he leans to the left with his arm pressed to his ribs. His right eye, already crusting, is swollen shut.

Whitlock is seated at a desk behind a wooden railing that runs across the nine-four’s reception area. He glances from the prisoner to Russo, then notices the blood on David Lodge’s face and Lodge’s blood-soaked collar.

“That your blood, Lodge?”

“Yeah. The mutt caught me a good one and we hadda subdue him.”

Whitlock nods twice. The injury is something he can work with.

“I want you to go over to the emergency room at Wyckoff Heights and have that wound sewn up. Count the stitches and make sure you obtain a copy of the medical report. Better yet, insist that a micro-surgeon do the job. Tell ’em you don’t wanna spoil your good looks.”

“What about the paperwork on the arrest, loo? Shouldn’t I get started?”

“No, secure the prisoner, then get your ass over to Wyckoff. Your partner will handle the paperwork.” Whitlock’s expression softens as he turns to Russo. “How ’bout you, Dante? You hurt?”

Russo flicks out a left jab. “Not me, loo, I’m too quick.”

Whitlock glances at the prisoner. “I see.” When Russo fails to respond, he continues. “Did the mutt use a weapon?”

“Yeah, loo, that ring. That’s what cut Dave’s cheek.” Russo lifts Spott’s right hand to display a pinkie ring with a single large diamond at its center. “You know what woulda happened if Dave had gotten hit in the eye?”

“He’d be out on the street with a cane.” Whitlock’s smile broadens. He and Russo are on the same track. “Charge the hump with aggravated assault on a police officer. That should keep the asshole busy. And make sure you take that ring. That ring is evidence.”

Spott finally speaks up. “I wanna call my lawyer,” he mumbles through swollen lips.

“What’d he say?” Whitlock asks.

“I think he said something about your mother, lieutenant,” Russo declares. “And it wasn’t complimentary.”

Russo leads Spott through a gate in the railing, then shoves him toward the cells at the rear of the building. “Hi ho, hi ho,” he sings, “it’s off to jail we go.”

Smiling at his partner’s cop humor, David Lodge trails behind.

* * *

Five minutes later, Dante Russo emerges to announce, “The prisoner is secure and Officer Lodge is off to the hospital.”

“You think he’s sober enough to find his way?”

Russo starts to defend his partner, then suddenly changes tack with a shrug of his shoulders. “Dave’s out of control,” he admits. “If I wasn’t there tonight, who knows what would’ve happened. I mean, I been tryin’ to straighten the guy out, but he just won’t listen.”

“I coulda told you that when you took him on as your partner.”

“What was I supposed to do? When I was told that nobody wanted to work with him? I’m the PBA delegate, remember? Helping cops in trouble is part of my job.”

From David Lodge, the conversation drifts for a bit, finally settling on the precinct commander, Captain Joe Hagerty. Crime is up in the precinct for the second straight year and Hagerty is on the way out. Though his replacement has yet to be named, the veterans fear a wholesale shake-up. Dante Russo, of course, at age twenty-five, is far from a veteran. But he’s definitely a rising star within the cop union, the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, a rising star with serious connections. Dante’s uncle is the trustee for Brooklyn North and sits on the PBA’s Board of Directors.

They are still at it thirty minutes later when Officers Daryl Johnson and Hector Arias waltz an adolescent prisoner into the building. Dwarfed by the two cops, the boy is weeping.

“He done the crime,” Arias observes, “but he don’t wanna do the time.”

“Found him comin’ out a window of the Sung Ri ware-house on Gratton Street,” Daryl Johnson adds. “He had this TV in his arms, the thing was bigger than he was.” Johnson gives his prisoner an affectionate cuff on the back of the head. “What were ya gonna do, jerk, carry it all the way back to the projects?”

“Put him in a cell,” Whitlock says, “and notify the detectives. They’ll wanna talk to him in the morning.”

“Ten-four, loo.”

Within seconds, Daryl Johnson returns. Johnson is a short, overweight black man long renowned for his deadpan expression. This time, however, his heavy jowls are lifted by an extension of his lips unrelated to a smile. “That mope locked up back there? I mean, it’s none of my business, but who does he belong to?”

“Me,” Russo responds. “Why?”

“Because he’s dead is why. Because somebody caved in his fucking skull.”

* * *

The evidence implicating David Lodge in the death of Clarence Spott is compelling, as Ted Savio explains in the course of a fateful meeting on Rikers Island several months later. Ted Savio is Lodge’s attorney, provided gratis by the PBA.

Although Savio’s advice is perfectly reasonable, Lodge is nevertheless reluctant to accept it. Lodge has been ninety days without a drink and the ordeal of cold turkey withdrawal has produced in him a nearly feral sense of caution. Alone in his cell day after day, he has become as untrusting as an animal caught in a snare. At times, especially at night, the urge to escape the inescapable pushes him to the brink of uncontrolled panic. At other times, he drops into a black hole of despair that leaves him barely able to respond to the demands of his keepers.

“You gotta face the facts here, Dave,” Savio patiently explains, “which, I note, are lined up against you. You can’t even account for your movements.”

“I had a blackout. It wasn’t the first time.”

“You say that like you maybe lost your concentration for a minute. Meanwhile, they found you passed out in the basement. Holding a bottle in your hands.”

“I knew that’s where it was kept,” Lodge admits. “But just because I was drunk doesn’t mean I killed Spott.”

“You had the victim’s blood on your uniform and your blood was found on the victim.”

“That could’ve happened when we subdued the mutt.”

“We?”

“Me and my partner.”

“Dave, your partner didn’t have a drop of blood on him.” Savio makes an unsuccessful attempt at eye contact with his client, then continues. “What you need to do here is see the big picture. Dante Russo told Lieutenant Whitlock that he had to pull you off Clarence Spott. He said this before the body was found, he repeated it to a Grand Jury, he’ll testify to it in open court. That’s enough to bury you all by itself, even without Officer Anthony Szarek’s testimony.

“The Broom,” Lodge moans. “I’m being done in by the fucking Broom.”

“The Broom?”

“Szarek, he’s a couple years short of a thirty-year pension and the job’s carrying him. He spends most of his tour sweeping the precinct. That bottle they found me with? That was his.”

“Well, Broom or not, Szarek’s gonna say that he was present when you and Russo brought Spott to the holding cells, that he heard Russo tell you to go to the hospital, that he watched Russo walk away …”

“Stop sayin’ his name.” Lodge raises a fist to his shoulder as if about to deliver a punch. “Fucking Dante Russo. If I could just get to him, just for a minute.”

“What’d you think? That you and your partner would go down with the ship together? Maybe holding hands? Well, Dave, it’s time for you to start using your head.”

Lodge draws a deep breath, then glances around the room. Gray concrete floor, green cinder-block walls, a table bolted to the floor, plastic chairs on metal legs. And that’s it. The room where he confers with his attorney is as barren as his cell, as barren as the message his attorney delivers.

“Face the facts, Dave. Take the plea. It’s not gonna get any better and it could be withdrawn.”

“Man-one?”

“That’s right, first-degree manslaughter. You take the deal, you’ll be out in seven years. On the other hand, you go to trial, find yourself convicted of second-degree murder, you could be lookin’ at twenty-five to life. Right now you’re thirty seven years old. You can do the seven years and still have a reason to live when you’re released.”

Though Lodge believes his lawyer, he still can’t bring himself to accept Savio’s counsel. At times over the past months, he’s literally banged his head against the wall in an effort to jog his memory. Drunk or sober, he feels no guilt about the parts he can vaguely recall. Yeah, he tuned Spott up. He must have because he remembers Russo driving to a heavily industrial section of Greenpoint, north of Flushing Avenue, remembers turning onto Bogart Street where it dead-ends against the railroad tracks, remembers yanking Spott out of the backseat. Spott had resisted despite the cuffs.

But Spott deserved his punishment. He’d committed a crime familiar to every member of every police force in the world: Contempt of Cop. You didn’t run from cops, you didn’t disrespect them with your big mouth, and you never, under any circumstances, hit them. If you did, you paid a price.

That was it, though, the full extent as far as Lodge was concerned. To the best of his knowledge, he’d never beaten a prisoner with any weapon but his hands. Never.

“What if I’m innocent?” he finally asks his lawyer.

“What if there’s a million black people residing in Brooklyn who already think you’re guilty?”

* * *

One week later, suspended Police Officer David Lodge appears before Justice Harold Roth in Part 70 of the Criminal Term of Brooklyn Supreme Court. Lodge is the last piece of business on Roth’s calendar late this Friday afternoon. It’s a cameo shot, posed in front of the raised dais where Roth sits—Lodge, his lawyer Savio, and the deputy chief of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau—nobody is in the audience in the cavernous courtroom.

Justice Roth is not one to smile unduly or waste words. “Well, counsellor?”

“Yes, your honor,” Savio marshalls his words. “My client has authorized me to withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and now offers to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree, a class-C violent felony, under the first count of the indictment, in satisfaction of the entire indictment.” Savio stops then, but does not look at Lodge, who is three feet to his right, standing ram-rod straight, staring fixedly at the judge. Lodge heard not a word Savio said.

“Is that what you want to do, Mr. Lodge?” Roth asks, not unkindly.

Mister Lodge. The words rock him like a blow to the body. Yet he remains transfixed, mute.

A full minute has passed. Roth has had enough. “Come up.”

The lawyers hasten up to the bench, huddling with Roth at the sidebar. Savio earnestly explains that his client is unable to admit guilt because he was in the throes of an alcoholic blackout when he allegedly bludgeoned the victim, and so has no memory of the event. After several minutes of back-and-forth, Roth ends the debate.

“He can have an Alford-Serrano. Step back.”

At Lodge’s side, Savio explains their good fortune. In an Alford-Serrano plea—normally reserved for the insane—Roth will simply ask Lodge if he is pleading guilty because Lodge believes that the evidence is such that he will be found guilty at trial. Savio whispers urgently in Lodge’s ear, an Iago to his Othello.

Suddenly, David Lodge’s body goes slack, his gaze falters. Lodge has an epiphany. He sees the faces of all the skells he’d ever arrested who’d whined innocent, and for the only time in his life he’s flooded with a compassion, till the fear takes hold—the fear of a small child upon awaking alone in the dark in an empty house.

PART IV

Backwater Brooklyn

TRIPLE HARRISON

BY MAGGIE ESTEP

East New York

She was wearing her t-shirt but she’d shed her jeans and her bleach-stained panties. She had me pinned down by the shoulders and her long dirty hair was tickling my cheeks as she hovered over me. I kept trying to look into her eyes but she had her face turned away. Even though her body was doing things to mine, she didn’t want me seeing what her eyes thought about it.

“Stella.” I said her name but she wouldn’t look at me. She took one hand off my shoulder and started raking her fingernails down my chest a little too violently.

“Hey, that hurts, girl,” I warned, trying to grab at her hand.

“What?” she asked.

“You’re hurting me,” I repeated.

Her eyes suddenly got smaller, her mouth shrank like a flower losing life, and she slapped me.

“Hey! Shit, stop that, Stella,” I protested, shocked. I didn’t know much about the girl but what I’d seen had been distinctly reserved and nonviolent.

“What’s the matter?” I asked her.

She slapped me again. I tried to grab her hands but she made fists and pummeled my chest.

“You fuck!” she screamed.

I was pretty baffled. I’d been seeing Stella for a couple of months. She never said much, but up until now, she’d seemed to like me just fine. She would turn up on my door-step late at night, peel off her clothes, and get in my bed. I’d bought her flowers once and taken her out to dinner twice. I’d never said anything but nice things to her and I didn’t think I’d done anything to incur her fists.

“What’s the matter, Stella?” I asked again, finally getting hold of her wrists and flipping her under me.

“Get offa me, Triple,” she spat, wiggling like an electrified snake.

I released her wrists and slid my body off hers. I lay there, panting a little from the effort of the struggle.

I watched Stella scramble to her feet, then pick her panties and jeans off the floor. She yanked her clothes on. She was so angry she put her pants on backwards.

“I don’t get it, what’d I do, Stella?” I asked her, as she furiously took her pants back off then put them on the right way. She ignored me.

I was really starting to like Stella. Maybe that’s what got her mad.

She zipped her pants, slipped her feet into her cheap sneakers, then went to the door and walked out, slamming it behind her.

“What the fuck?” I said aloud. There was no one to hear me though. My dog had died of old age and the stray cat I’d taken in had gotten tired of me and moved on. It was just me and the peeling walls of the tiny wood-frame house. And all of a sudden that didn’t feel like much at all.

Ever since Stella had come along, I hadn’t dwelled on any of it. On being broke and close to forty and living in a condemned house that was so far gone no one bothered to come kick me out of it. But now, for mysterious reasons, Stella probably wouldn’t be back and there wasn’t much to distract me from my condition. I only had one thing left that gave me any hope, and that was my horse. As it happened, it was just about time to go feed her, so I put on my clothes and went out, heading for the barn a hundred yards down from the house. I don’t suppose too many Brooklynites have horses, period, never mind keep them a hundred yards from the house. But real estate isn’t exactly at a premium here at the ass-end of Dumont Avenue, where Brooklyn meets up with the edge of Queens.

It was close to dawn now and the newborn sun was throwing itself over the bumpy road. Two dogs were lying on a heap of garbage ten yards down from my house. One of them, some kind of shepherd mix, looked up at me. He showed a few teeth but left it at that.

* * *

Our little neighborhood is technically called Lindenwood but most people call it The Hole. A canyon in a cul-de-sac at the edge of East New York. It had been farmland in the not-so-distant past, then, as projects sprung up around it, it became a dumping ground. A few old-timers held on, maintaining their little frame houses, keeping chickens and goats in their yards. I don’t know who the first person to keep a horse here was, but it caught on. Within five years, about a dozen different ramshackle stables were built using old truck trailers and garden sheds. Each stable had its own little yard, some with paddocks in the back, all of it spread over less than five acres. Now, about forty horses live in The Hole, including my mare, Kiss the Culprit. I brought her here six months ago. It’s not exactly pastoral but we make due.

I reached the big steel gate enclosing the stable yard, unlocked it, and pushed it open. The little area looked like it usually did. A patch of dirt with a few nubs of grass fight-ing for life in front of the green truck trailer that had been converted to horse stalls. Beth, the goat, butted me with her head. The six horses started kicking at their stall doors, clamoring for breakfast, their ruckus waking up the horses in the surrounding barns so that, within a few minutes, the entire area was sounding like a bucolic barnyard in rural Maryland and, in spite of my troubles, I suddenly felt good all over. Particularly as I took my first look of the day at Kiss the Culprit. She had her head hanging over her stall door and was looking at me expectantly. She looked especially good that morning in spite of the fact that, by most standards, she’s not considered a perfect specimen of the Thoroughbred breed. She’s small with an upside-down neck and a head too big for the rest of her. She’s slightly pigeon-toed and, back in her racing days, she’d run with a funny gait that only I thought resembled the great Seabiscuit’s.

“Hey, girl,” I said, putting one hand on her muzzle and leaning in close to catch a whiff of her warm creature smell. She wanted breakfast though, not cuddling. She pinned her ears and tried to bite me.

“All right, then,” I laughed, and walked off to the little feed room.

* * *

I fed all six horses even though only Culprit is mine. I keep her here free but I have to look after other people’s horses in exchange. Which suits me fine. The only job I have right now is working as a lifeguard at a pool in Downtown Brooklyn. No way I could afford to pay board for my mare.

As the horses ate their grain, I started raking the stable yard’s nubby dirt, trying to make the place look presentable despite the fact that there were ominous puddles in front of the stalls and the lone flower box near the tack room had a propensity for killing anything we planted in it. This week it was working on terminating some hapless petunias.

I was raking pretty violently, trying to keep Stella out of my mind. The way her black hair fell in her face. The way her ass had hung out of her crappy cutoffs that first night I’d met her at the bar. I started focusing harder on the rake I was using and how it was falling apart. I envisioned a trip to the Home Depot out at Coney Island to get a new one. I imagined the brightly lit aisles full of useful items. Then I imagined Stella in there with me. I stopped raking.

I was standing there half-paralyzed by my thoughts when the front gate rattled and Dwight Ross suddenly appeared in the stable yard.

I wasn’t glad to see him and the feeling was obviously mutual.

“Triple Harrison, I want my fucking horse back,” Ross said.

Dwight Ross had always been on the thin side, but now he looked like a whisper would knock him down. His red hair needed cutting and, as he came close, I could see that his navy blue suit had pea-sized pills all over it.

“You stole my mare,” Dwight hissed, coming to stand two inches away from me. “Don’t fuck with me, Triple, took me six months to find you and I’m not leaving without my horse.”

“She’s mine now,” I said, trying to seem calm even though I was anything but. I pulled air into my lungs, trying to make myself huge. Dwight backed up a little and started looking around at the horse stalls. He located Culprit’s and started unlatching it.

“Don’t go in there, Ross,” I said. “Don’t touch that horse.” I felt myself getting hysterical.

“You want to take this to the law?” Dwight asked, as he got the latch undone and went to stand next to my mare.

“I don’t think you do,” I warned. Six months earlier, I’d been working as a groom, looking after Dwight Ross’s string of horses at Aqueduct Racetrack. One day about a month into my tenure there, I caught Dwight trying to inject E. coli into Kiss the Culprit’s knee. Of course, I hadn’t realized what was in the syringe at the time, but I could tell by the way Dwight jumped when I walked in that the massive syringe did not belong in Culprit’s knee. I’d already been suspicious about some of the stuff he was doing to his horses, though it wasn’t till that moment that I fully realized he was one evil motherfucker. He was trying to kill the mare to collect the insurance and split the proceeds with the owner.

I happened to have a pitchfork in my hand and I didn’t hesitate to use it. I pinned Ross to the wall and made him hand the syringe over and get out. He issued a few choice threats as he backed out of the stall. I figured it wouldn’t take long for him to make good on the threats, but for that moment, he had hightailed it away from the barn. I had skipped bail on a beef in Florida two years earlier so I wasn’t in a position to go to the authorities. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving the horse there unprotected though, so I decided to take her. I went into Dwight’s office and forged the paperwork, then I loaded the mare into Dwight’s horse trailer. She walked into the trailer without fussing. It seemed to me she knew I was saving her. As I passed through security and drove the trailer away from the Aqueduct backside, I kept expecting to hit a snag and get caught. But I made it. I stashed Culprit at a little stable near Prospect Park while I figured out what to do. I was now unemployed and broke with a horse to take care of. I figured I’d make do though. All my life I’d been taking care of things, stray cats and dogs and crazy women.

After a week, I got the lifeguard job—swimming was the only thing I was good at apart from taking care of horses—and, not long after I’d made arrangements for keeping Culprit at The Hole, I’d moved into one of the abandoned houses just down the road. I hooked into the electric at one of the stables, and ran a hose in from the yard for water. Culprit and I had settled into a nice daily routine and we’d both been doing just fine. Until now.

* * *

Dwight Ross was still standing in my mare’s stall.

“Come on, Ross,” I said in a quiet voice, “get out of there. Now.”

At that he smiled. I didn’t see what was funny though.

“I had the crazy idea you’d be reasonable about this,” Dwight said, leveling a gun I didn’t know he had at me.

“That was a crazy idea, all right,” I told him. I could see worry in his eyes even though he was the one with a gun.

“I’m taking my mare back and I will hurt you if I have to,” he said in a shrill voice. He stepped out of the stall to reach for Culprit’s halter.

I didn’t think. Just grabbed for something. Turned out to be a shovel. Ross had his back to me. He heard me move but not in time. I slammed the business end of the shovel into the side of his head. He went down face first. Culprit spooked and her eyes got huge.

I walked over and put my palm over the end of my mare’s nose and brought her big head against my chest.

“It’s okay,” I told the horse as I scratched her muzzle.

I looked down at Ross. He wasn’t moving. I pushed on his shoulder, trying to turn him over. His body felt funny. His eyes and mouth were open. There was blood matted into his red hair. I realized he wasn’t just unconscious.

I started feeling dizzy and I couldn’t get myself to move. Culprit was looking at me with curiosity, her ears pricked forward.

“What do I do now, girl?” I asked. She just kept looking at me though.

It was getting close to 7 a.m. Pretty soon, people would be arriving at the other barns.

I left Dwight’s body in the stall but led my mare out and tied her up in the yard. I didn’t want her looking at the body.

I walked back to my house to get the car keys. My stomach was doing backflips. I went inside and it smelled a little like Stella. That didn’t help any.

I got my keys and went back outside. My ’86 Chevy Caprice Classic had once been blue but now it was just dirt-colored. It still ran though. The engine coughed to life and I drove to the front of the stable yard. I opened the big metal gates wide enough to get the car in, nosing it ahead slowly so as not to alarm Culprit. She stared at the car but she didn’t spook.

I dragged Dwight’s body out of the stall, pulling it by the feet. The head bounced along the dirt making a funny sound that made me sick.

I had to shuffle the shit in my trunk around. There were some empty feedbags, a small cooler, a horseshoe, and a pair of Stella’s panties. I made room, then hoisted the body in. Dwight Ross was much heavier in death than he’d ever been in life. I had to bunch him into a fetal position to get him to fit. I put the empty feedbags over his body, then closed the trunk. My heart was beating too fast.

I went and put Culprit back into her stall. I stood for a few minutes leaning my head against her muscular neck, getting strength. My mare just stood there, seeming to understand.

I made sure all the horses had enough water before getting in the car, driving it out, and locking the stable gates behind me.

The minute I pulled out onto Linden Boulevard, I found that I needed a cigarette. I hadn’t had one in four years. I drove a few blocks through thickening morning traffic. The sun was up high now, a glowing yellow ball in a faultless blue sky. The brightness made me need that cigarette even more.

I pulled off the road when I came to a little grocery store. Nosed the Chevy near the front door of the place and ran in. Asked for a pack of Newports. I was dying for a smoke but I didn’t want a brand I actually liked. I paid the thin old man at the counter and took the wrapping off the pack.

“No smoking in here,” the old man said. I nodded, pulled one cigarette from the pack, and stepped outside to light it. I figured I would smoke it there so as not to stink up the car. But my car wasn’t there. I looked left and right and ahead, to the thick traffic of Linden Boulevard. My car was gone.

I went back into the store.

“Yeah?” the old man said, cocking his chin at me.

“You seen my car?”

“What?” He sounded angry.

“My car, it was right there,” I said, motioning to the store’s tiny parking lot.

The old man just looked at me like I was a fool.

I went back out. Looked around some more. I felt my body getting heavier. I couldn’t stand up anymore. I sunk down to the lip of the sidewalk and held my head between my hands. Eventually, I lit the cigarette. It scorched my lungs and felt nice. A car pulled into the tiny lot and went right where my Caprice had been. Two teenaged girls got out. They both had oil in their black hair and the sun made it shine.

I smoked.

I’d had a lot of problems in my thirty-nine years of life, but never this many. I lit a second cigarette. I coughed a little but kept smoking anyway. The girls emerged from the store, both clutching bottles of Yoo-hoo. Seemed to me Yoo-hoo would be unpleasant at 7:30 in the morning.

Eventually, the thin old man came out of his store and told me to leave. I guess for the price of a pack of smokes, I was entitled to twenty-some minutes on his sidewalk, but no more. I got up and walked.

The air was getting warmer and the sun looked too big looming above Linden Boulevard. I imagined the giant orb swelling so much it got too heavy for the sky and came plum-meting down, plunging the world into darkness.

As I walked the few blocks back to The Hole, I kept glancing over at the cars that passed by on the busy avenue. None of them were mine.

When I got to Dumont Avenue, I stood there for a minute, at the periphery of The Hole, looking at the newly constructed houses that had recently sprung up all along the edge of the little canyon. Square cement boxes that already looked depressed, even though they were brand new and hadn’t killed anybody’s dreams yet.

I walked on down the dip where paved road gave way to dirt. The barns were humming with activity now. Feed was being dispensed, stalls were being mucked. These were comforting, normal sounds, but I didn’t feel comforted.

I went into Culprit’s stall and started currying her. Taking extra care with every aspect of the grooming procedure, knowing maybe this was the last time.

* * *

Two weeks passed. There was fear in me but I didn’t cultivate it. All I kept thinking was how I hadn’t meant to kill the guy. I’d never killed anything in my life. Not even a goddamned bug.

Now that I had no car, I had to take the bus to work. It was a long ride but I used the time to read some horsemanship books I’d picked up. I studied these books, and every afternoon, when I got off my shift at the pool, I’d take the bus back to East New York, take my mare out, and work with her in the tiny paddock behind the barn. I wasn’t even riding her much, mostly just worked her on a lunge line, getting her used to my voice commands. There were pure moments when it was just me and my horse and we saw into each other. Then worry would creep in and sully the joy.

One afternoon, I was in the paddock with Culprit, working on some things. I called out “Canter,” saying it slow and drawn out. I said it a few times, and then she threw her head around a little, protesting awhile before finally transitioning into the canter. Something red caught my eye and I looked over my shoulder and saw Stella sitting on a barrel outside the paddock. She was wearing a red sweatshirt and she’d cut bangs in her hair. I told Culprit to halt. My mare looked surprised and then obliged and came to a standstill.

“What’s up?” Stella said like it was nothing at all.

“Hi Stella,” I said in the same way, even though I’d never expected to see her again.

She watched as I finished up with Culprit then put the mare back in her stall. As I took care of barn chores, Stella sat on a trunk and didn’t say much. I didn’t ask.

When I’d finished feeding and watering the horses, Stella followed me back to the house.

“Where’s your car?” she asked as we walked up the two crooked steps to my porch.

“Stolen,” I said.

“You reported it?”

“What for?” I shrugged, not wanting to share the details with her.

“They turn up,” she said. “I had one stolen before. Cops found it two months later. You gotta report it.”

“Nah,” I said, not knowing why she cared about the damned car. She kept on about it too. Asking how I was getting to work and whatnot. She’d never asked so many questions before, about anything. Maybe she was turning over a new leaf.

I was hungry but I’d run out of food, so instead of eating, Stella and I went to bed.

I had some questions for her, but they’d keep.

I put my hands on her hips. She was wearing cutoffs even though it was chilly out. She looked up at me but there was nothing to read in her eyes. She wore a small smile but even that wasn’t saying much. I moved my left hand from her hip and up under her t-shirt, tracing her nipple with my fingertip. I lifted the shirt up and bit a line from between her breasts down to her shorts. She wiggled a little, responding, coiling, ready. I peeled her shorts down over her ass. She wasn’t wearing panties. She turned around then, showing me her pale and pretty ass. I bent her over the bed and entered her. There was some violence in it.

* * *

Stella and I had gone at it twice already and had both passed out on the floor, exhausted. I’m not sure how long I’d been sleeping when she woke me by putting her mouth on me.

Then we were making love again. After a few minutes, I pulled back from her and cupped her dark head in my hands.

“Where’ve you been, Stella?” I asked softly.

“I was mad,” she said.

“At what?”

“At you, Triple.”

“You wanna tell me why so I don’t do it again?”

“Not really,” she said with a small shrug. Her shoulders were narrow. They looked cute shrugging.

Okay. I picked her up and carried her into the kitchen. Propped her ass up against the sink and fucked her there. I’d never fucked anyone against a sink before. It got Stella pretty worked up. Her black eyes showed fire. Something close to passion. And, at the same time, she was nicer than usual. Almost tender.

In the morning, she didn’t leave. Was still lying in my bed as I got dressed. I felt a little conflicted about it. Half of me wanted her to stay as long as she pleased, but the other half didn’t want to go through the changes when she left me for good.

“I gotta go to work soon,” I told her.

“Okay,” she said.

“Don’t you?”

“What?”

“Have to go to work?”

“I got fired,” she said casually.

She’d been working at a convenience store over in Howard Beach. I couldn’t really imagine how anyone could get fired from that kind of job.

“What happened?” I asked her.

“I got mad,” she said, leaving it at that.

“And now you’re moving in with me?” I asked.

“If that’s all right,” she answered, looking at me, not showing anything.

“I guess it is,” I said.

I’d had a few women move in with me before. For various reasons having little to do with love or affection. One to get away from a rough husband. Another to be closer to work. I hadn’t had one move in out of poverty though. Always room for a first.

I told my new roommate I was heading out to the barn.

“Okay,” she said.

I put my clothes and boots on and went out. Fed the horses and mucked their stalls. The sun rose up from its hiding place and another bright day came on like a curse.

I walked back to the house to get some money out of my drawer before heading in to work. I did this in plain view of Stella. If she wanted to hit my little stash then so be it. As I stuffed a twenty in my pocket, Stella actually got up off the bed and kissed me goodbye like an old wife.

I walked to the bus stop.

I sat lording over the pool, reading my horse books. Once in a while Stella would come into my mind, but I didn’t let her stay there. Thinking about her too hard might make her vanish.

At the end of my shift, I got the bus back to The Hole. I wanted to spend a good hour working with Culprit. I went into the house first to see if Stella was still there. She was lying on the floor, wearing a pair of baggy gym shorts, reading a tractor manual that for some reason I’d held onto from my days working on a horse farm in Maryland.

She glanced up and smiled. She looked so sweet and good. I got a hard-on and had to do something about it.

We were rolling around against the filthy carpet when I heard the car and saw the flash of cherry lights against the window.

“What’s that?” Stella asked.

“Police,” I said. I’d been expecting it so long it was almost a relief.

“What do they want?” Stella asked, standing up.

“No idea,” I said.

A few heartbeats later they were knocking on the door. I put my pants on, gave Stella a minute to go in the other room, then opened the door.

One cop was white, the other black. They were both wide but built low to the ground. They looked like shrubbery.

“Yes?” I said.

“Triple Harrison?” the black one said.

“Yes?”

“’86 Chevy Caprice Classic? Blue?” the white one asked.

“Yeah, it was stolen,” I said. My insides felt funny.

“Right, we got the report,” the white one again. What report? I wondered.

“Vehicle was abandoned in the Rockaways. It’s at the tow facility near JFK. You’ll have to deal with it,” the black cop said.

“Oh,” I replied, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t.

The black cop had me sign some papers and wished me a nice day. I stood in my doorway, watching them get back in the patrol car. Mrs. Nagle from next door had her head sticking out of her house.

“They found my car!” I shouted over to Mrs. Nagle. She cocked her head but said nothing. She was mostly senile.

“Your car turned up?” Stella asked as I closed the door. She hadn’t found a reason to put her clothes back on. “Yeah, my car,” I said, frowning.

“I reported it stolen,” she said proudly. “I went and filled out the forms while you were at work. They found it fast.” She smiled, showing teeth.

“Oh,” I said, deciding not to tell her this might lead to my being locked up for life.

“Let’s go get it,” Stella suggested, her face lighting up like we were planning a trip to Disneyworld.

“In a minute,” I said. “I got some business with you first.” I pressed my body against hers, ran my hands down her sides, then tucked them under the slopes of her ass cheeks.

A half hour later I told her I was going to get the bus over to the tow place. She wanted to come but I told her no, without offering an explanation. She pouted a little. She’d never done that before.

I went and gave the horses an early supper. Figured I’d use my one phone call to tell Cornelius, the cowboy who owned the stable, that he’d have to feed and muck in the morning.

I walked up the slope of 78th Street and out to North Conduit Avenue to head to the bus stop.

The sky was still violently blue.

* * *

The people at the tow facility didn’t do anything quickly. There was a lumpy white woman who was mad to be alive. By the time she’d gone through all my paperwork and I’d been taken to my car, night was coming on like a headache. My skin felt cold even though it was hot out.

I got into my car and saw that all the trash was gone. I’d had empty soda cans and candy wrappers in there and they were no more. There was one big muddy boot print near the gas pedal.

I pulled the car out onto the road. Expecting some kind of ambush. Dozens of cops, maybe even the feds. Nothing happened. I drove two miles, then finally, when it seemed certain no one was following me, I pulled off onto a side street not far from Aqueduct. It was a narrow road choked with vinyl houses. American flags stood guard over flatline lives. Some kids were throwing a ball at each other. I drove a ways, till the residential area surrendered to a strip mall. Went around the back of the shops and parked the car. Got out and unlocked the trunk. There was nothing there. Not only was Dwight’s body gone, but so was all my crap. The empty feedbags, the horseshoe, the cooler, and the panties. I closed the trunk, got back in the car, and drove. I decided to head on over to the upscale stables off the Belt Parkway. Whenever I felt rich, I went there to buy nice alfalfa hay for Culprit.

For once, I had plenty of room in the trunk.

FADE TO … BROOKLYN

BY KEN BRUEN

Galway, Ireland

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.

Man, isn’t that a hell of a title. I love that. Pity it’s been used, it’s a novel by Thomas Boyle. I read it years ago when the idea of moving to Brooklyn began to seriously appeal. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going, got a Gladstone bag packed. Just the essentials, a few nice shoirts. See, I’m learning Brooklynese, and it’s not as easy a language as the movies would lead you to believe. I’ve had this notion for so long now, it’s “an idée fixe.” Like that touch of French? I’m no dumbass, I’ve learned stuff, not all of it kosher. I don’t have a whole lot of the frog lingo, so I’ve got to like, spare it. Trot it out when the special occasion warrants. Say you want to impress a broad, you hit her with a flower and some shit in French, she’s already got her knickers off. Okay, that’s a bit crude but you get the drift.

I’m hiding out in an apartment in Salthill. Yeah, yeah, you’re thinking … but isn’t that, like, in Galway, Ireland? I like a challenge.

Phew-oh, I got me one right here. If only I hadn’t shot that Polack, but he got right in my face, you hear what I’m saying? So he wasn’t Polish, but I want to accustom myself to speaking American and if I don’t practice, I’m going to be in some Italian joint and sounding Mick. How the hell can you ask for linguini, fried calamari, cut spaghetti alla chitarra, ravioli, scallops with a heavy sauce, and my absolute favorite in terms of pronunciation, fresh gnocchi, in any accent other than Brooklyn? It wouldn’t fly. The apartment is real fine, huge window looking out over Galway Bay, a storm is coming in from the east, and the waves are lashing over the prom. I love that ferocity, makes me yearn, makes me feel like I’m a player. I don’t know how long this place is safe, Sean is due to call and put the heart crossways in me. I have the cell close by. We call them mobiles—doesn’t, if you’ll pardon the pun, have the same ring. And the Sig Sauer, nine mil, holds fifteen rounds. I jacked a fresh one in there first thing this morning and racked the slide, sounds like reassurance. I’m cranked, ready to rock ‘n’ roll. Sean is a header, a real headbanger. He’s from South Armagh, they grow up shooting at helicopters, bandit country, and those fuckers are afraid of nothing. I mean, if you have the British Army kicking in your door at 4 in the morning and calling you a Fenian bastard, you grow up fast and you grow up fierce.

I was doing a stretch in Portlaoise, where they keep the Republican guys. They are seriously chilled. Even the wardens give them space. And, of course, most of the wardens, they have Republican sympathies. I got to hang with them as I had a rep for armed robbery, not a very impressive rep or I wouldn’t have been doing bird. Sean and I got tight and after release, he came to Galway for a break and he’s been here two years. He is one crazy gumba. We had a sweetheart deal, no big design—like they say in twelve-step programs, we kept it simple. Post offices, that’s what we hit. Not the major ones but the small outfits on the outskirts of towns. Forget banks, they’ve got CCTV and worse, the army does guard detail. Who needs that heat?

Like this.

We’d drive to a village, put on the balaclavas, get the shooters out, and go in loud and lethal, shouting, “Get the fuck down, this is a robbery, give us the fucking money!”

I let Sean do the shouting, as his Northern accent sent its own message. We’d be out of there in three minutes, tops. We never hit the payload, just nice, respectable, tidy sums, but you do enough of them, it begins to mount. We didn’t flash the proceeds, kept a low profile. I was saving for Brooklyn, my new life, and Sean, well, he had commitments up north. I’d figured on another five jobs, I was outa there. Had my new ID secured, the money deposited in an English bank, and was working on my American.

Sean didn’t get it, would say, “I don’t get it.”

He meant my whole American love affair. Especially Brooklyn. We’d been downing creamy pints one night, followed by shots of Bushmills, feeling mellow, and I told him of my grand design. We were in Oranmore, a small village outside Galway, lovely old pub, log fire and traditional music from a band in the corner, bodhrans, accordions, tin whistles, spoons and they were doing a set of jigs and reels that would put fire in the belly of a corpse. I’d a nice buzz building, we’d done a job three days before and it netted a solid result. I sank half my pint, wiped the froth off my lip, and said, “Ah, man, Fulton Ferry District, the Brooklyn Bridge, Prospect Park, Cobble Hill, Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Coney Island.”

These names were like a mantra to me, prayers I never tired of uttering, and I got carried away, let the sheer exuberance show. Big mistake, never let your wants out, especially to a Northerner, those mothers thrive on knowing where you’re at. I should have heeded the signs—he’d gone quiet, and a quiet psycho is a fearsome animal. On I went like a dizzy teenager, saying, “I figure I’ll get me a place on Atlantic Avenue and you know, blend.”

I was flying, seeing the dream, high on it, and he leaned over, said in a whisper, “I never heard such bollixs in me life.”

Like slapping me in the tush, cold water in my face. I knew he was heavy, meaning he was carrying, probably a Browning, his gun of choice, and that occurred to me as I registered the mania in his eyes. ’Course, Sean was always packing—when you were as paranoid as him, it came with the territory. He’d always said, “I ain’t doing no more time, the cunts will have to take me down.”

I believed him.

The band were doing that beautiful piece, “O’Carolan’s Lament” … the saddest music I know, and it seemed appropriate as he rubbished my dream, when he said, “Cop on, see that band over there, that’s your heritage, not some Yank bullshit. You can’t turn your back on your birthright. I’d see you dead first, and hey, what’s with this fucking Yank accent you trot out sometimes?”

I knew I’d probably have to kill the cocksucker, and the way I was feeling, it would be a goddamm pleasure.

Clip

Whack

Pop

Burn

All the great terms the Americans have for putting your lights out.

Sean ordered a fresh batch of drinks, pints and chasers, and the barman, bringing them over, said, “A grand night for it.”

I thought, little do you know.

Sean, raising his glass, clinked mine, said, “Forget that nonsense, we have a lot of work to do. There’s going to be an escalation in our operation.”

I touched his glass, walloped in the Bush, felt it burn my stomach, and wanted to say, “Boilermakers, that’s what they call it. You get your shot, sink the glass in the beer, and put a Lucky in your mouth, crank it with a Zippo, one that has the logo, ‘First Airborne.’”

What I said was, “God bless the work.”

And got the look from him, supposed to strike fear in my gut. He asked, “You fucking with me, son?”

Son … the condescending prick, I was five years older, more probably. I raised my hands, palms out, said, “Would I do that? I mean, come on.”

Sean had the appearance of a starved greyhound, all sinewy and furtive. He didn’t take drugs, as the Organization frowned on it, but man, he was wired, fueled on a mix of hatred and ferocity. He belonged to the darkness and had lived there so long, he didn’t even know light existed anymore. He was the personification of the maxim, retaliate first, always on the alert. His eyes bored into mine and he said, “Just you remember that.”

Then he was up, asking the band for a request. I was pretty sure I could take him, as long as his back was turned and preferably if he was asleep. You don’t ever want the likes of those to know you’re coming. They live with the expectation of somebody coming every day, so I’d act the dumb fuck he was treating me as. The band launched into “The Men Behind the Wire.” Sean came back, a shit-eating grin in place, and as the opening lines began, “Armored cars and tanks and guns …” he joined with, “Came to take away our sons …” Leaned over, punched my shoulder, said, “Come on, join me.”

I did, sounding almost like I meant it.

* * *

Maybe he’s found out by now dat he’ll neveh live long enough to know duh whole of Brooklyn. It’d take a life-time to know Brooklyn t’roo an’ t’roo. An’ even den, yuh wouldn’t know it at all

Thomas Wolfe said that in “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.”

I’d never been out of lreland but I was getting to know Brooklyn. I had a pretty good notion of it. In my bedroom there is a street map, place names heavily underlined in red. I’ve pored over it a hundred times, and with absolute joy. Using my finger, I’d take a few steps to the corner of Fulton and Flatbush, check the border between Downtown and Fort Greene, I’d glance at Brooklyn’s tallest building, the Williamsburg Savings Bank, smile at the idea of taking it down, but I’d be a citizen then, running a small pastry shop, specializing in babka, the polish cake. I learnt that from Seinfeld. Then maybe stroll on Nassau Street to McCarren Park, heading for the south end to the Russian Church of the Transfiguration, light a candle for the poor fucks whose money I stole.

As well as the books on Brooklyn, I managed to collect over a long period the movies. Got ’em all I think.

Whistling in Brooklyn.

It Happened in Brooklyn

The Lords of Flatbush

Sophie’s Choice

Moscow on the Hudson

Waited ages for the top two to come on TV, I mean those were made in 1944 and 1942.

* * *

Saturday Night Fever? … Bay Ridge, am I right or am I right? Last Exit to Brooklyn, book and movie, yeah, got ’em. Red Hook, a fairly barren place is … lemme see, give me a second here … Ah, that’s easy, On the Waterfront.

Writers too, I’ve done my work.

Boerum Hill? Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper lived there. I’m on a roll here, ask me another. Who’s buried in Greenwood Cemetery? Too easy, Mae West and Horace Greeley.

When I was in the joint, other guys did weights, did dope, did each other. Me, I read and reread, became a fixture in the library. I didn’t get any grief from the other cons. Sean had my back, better than a Rottweiler. What happened was, he’d got in a beef with the guy running the cigarette gig, the most lucrative deal in the place. I heard the guy was carrying a shiv, fixing to gut Sean in the yard. I tipped off Sean only as this guy had come at me in my early days. He was trailer trash, a real bottom-feeder—if it wasn’t for the cigs, he’d have been bottom of the food chain. Mainly I didn’t like him, he was a nasty fuck, always whining, bitching, and moaning, bellyaching over some crap or other. I hate shivs, they’re the weapon of the sneak who hasn’t the cojones to front it. Sean hadn’t said a whole lot when I told him. He nodded, said, “Okay.”

Effusive, yeah?

The shiv guy took a dive from the third tier, broke his back, and the cigarette cartel passed to Sean’s crew. From then on, he walked point for me.

* * *

Back in the eighties, a song, “Fade to Gray,” blasted from every radio—it launched the movement, “New Romantics,” and guys got to wear eyeliner and shit. You knew they always wanted to, but now they could call it art.

Gobshites.

But I liked the song, seemed to sum up my life, those days, everything down the crapper, a life of drab existence as gray as the granite on the bleak, blasted landscape of Connamara. That’s when I met Maria.

Lemme tell you straight up, I’m no oil painting. My mother told me, “Get a personality ’cos you’re fairly ugly.”

I think she figured the “fairly” softened the blow.

It didn’t.

Nor was I what you’d call a people’s person. I didn’t have a whole lot of them social skills.

I was at a dance in Seapoint, the massive ballroom perched on the corner of the promenade, the Atlantic hurling at it with intent. Now, it’s a bingo hall. That night, a showband, eight guys in red blazers, bad hairpieces, with three bugles, drums, trombone, and a whole lot of neck, were massacring “Satisfaction.” They obviously hated the Stones. Those days, there was a sadistic practice known as “ladies’ choice.”

Jesus.

Pure hell. The guys used it to nip outside and get fortified with shots of Jameson. I was about to join them when I heard, “Would you like to dance?”

A pretty face, gorgeous smile, and I looked behind me to see whom she meant. This girl gave a lovely laugh, said, “I mean you.”

Hands down, that is the best second of my life. I haven’t had a whole line of them, but it’s the pinnacle, the moment when God relented, decided, “Cut the sucker a little slack.”

’Course, like all divine gifts, he only meant to fuck with me later. That’s okay, I’ve lived that moment a thousand times. And yeah, you guessed it, she was American … from Brooklyn. I loved her accent, her spirit; hell, I loved her Miracle two, she didn’t bolt after the dance, stayed for the next one, “Fade to Gray.” A slow number, I got to hold her, I was dizzy.

Walked her back to her hotel. I stood with her, trying to prolong the feeling, and she said, “You’re kinda cute.”

Put it on my headstone, it’s all that counts. She kissed me briefly on the mouth and agreed to meet me at 7 the next evening.

She didn’t show.

At 10:30, I went into the hotel, heard she checked out that morning. The clerk, a guy I went to school with, told me her surname, Toscini, that she was traveling with her mother. I palmed him a few notes and he let me see the register—the only address was Fulton Street, Brooklyn, New York.

I wrote letter after letter, all came back with, “Return to sender, address unknown.” Like that dire song.

I began to learn about Brooklyn. I’d find her. Her not showing or leaving a note, it was some awful misunderstanding. Her mother had suddenly decided they were leaving and Maria had no way to contact me. Yeah, had to be that. I made it so. Got to where I could see her pleading, crying with her mother, and being literally dragged away. Yes, like that, I know

Mornings, like a vet, I’d come screaming, sweating outa sleep, going, “Maria, hon, I’m on my way!”

Shit like that, get you killed in prison. They’re not real understanding about screamers, though there’s plenty of it.

No more than any other guilt-ridden Catholic Irish guy, I’m not superstitious. But I tell you, the omens, they’re … like … there. You just gotta be open to them.

Listen to this: A while ago, there was a horse running at the Curragh. I’m not a gambler but read the sports pages, read them first to show I’m not gay. At 15/1, there was one, Coney Island Red. How could I not? Put a bundle on him, on the nose.

He lost.

See the omen? Maria wouldn’t want me gambling, lest I blow the kid’s college fund. Over the years, if I was asked about girlfriends, I’d say my girl was nursing in America, and came to believe it. She was caring and ideal for that. ’Course, when the kids arrive, she’ll have to give up her career—I wouldn’t want my wife working, it’s the man’s place to do the graft—know they’ll appreciate those old values in Brooklyn.

* * *

Sean came to see me about the new plan. He was wearing one of those long coats favored by shoplifters or rock stars. The collar turned up to give him some edge. I made coffee and he said, “Nice place you got here.” I sat opposite him and he launched: “We’re going to do the main post office.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, said, “Don’t like the sound of that.”

He gave the grin, no relation to warmth or humor, said, “It’s not about what you like or don’t like, money is needed and a lot of it. This Thursday, there is going to be a massive sum there, something to do with the payment of pensions and the bonus due for Social Benefit. It’s rare for them to handle such a large amount so we have to act now.”

I went along with it, there wasn’t a whole lot of choice, he wasn’t asking me, he was delivering orders.

We went in hard and it was playing out as usual, when I took my eye off the crowd, distracted for one second, and that’s when the guy came at me, grabbed my gun, and it went off, taking half his face. Then we were out of there, running like demented things, got in the stolen car, then changed vehicles at Tuam and drove back into town, the exact opposite of what would be anticipated. Sean was breathing hard, said, “You fucked up.”

“Hey, he came at me, it was an accident.”

He gritted his teeth, a raw sound like a nail on glass, said, “This is going south.”

He was right. The dead man was a cop, in plain clothes, and the heat was on. Sean called me that evening, went, “You wasted a fucking policeman, there’s going to be serious repercussions. I’ve a meet with my superiors and I’ll let you know what’s going to happen.”

He slammed down the phone. So I waited, checking my travel arrangements. I’d fly from Shannon to New York, and hell, splurge a little, grab a cab all the way to Brighton Beach, because I liked the sound of it. Then I’d find Maria.

I’d already packed and was trying to decide what movies to bring, when Sean called. “It’s bad.”

“Tell me.”

“We can’t have a cop-killer on our hands, the pressure is enormous.”

I took a deep breath, said, “You’ve given me up.”

For the first time, he sounded nervous, then, “I’m giving you a chance, I wasn’t even supposed to call you.”

“You’re all heart, Sean. So what’s the bottom line?”

Deep breath, then, “They’re sending two guys to pick you up, they’ll be there in twenty minutes, so get the fuck out and run like hell.”

Curious, I asked, “And these guys, they’re not bringing me to the authorities, are they?”

“You’re wasting time, get moving.”

Click.

I’ve poured a Bush, opened a beer, and am going to have a boilermaker. The Sig is in my lap and I have that song playing, here comes my favorite riff: “Fade …”

DUMPED

NICOLE BLACKMAN

Fort Greene

I met her at this party on Clinton Street. When I’d see her around the neighborhood I’d just stare at her, like she was unreal. I saw her in the deli, talking on her cell-phone, so I followed her around the store just to listen to her talk. She just seemed, I don’t know, special, you know? I guess I had a crush on her. One night we both end up at this party, we started talking and I was just blown away. We talked about everything and I kept bringing her drinks just to have something to do. She was smiling and laughing like she thought I was funny, and I think I’m doing really good here, so I’m not going home any time soon. We stayed really late and the sun was coming up and a couple of people were passed out on the couch, so we just crashed on the floor with some blankets and stuff. I’m lying there with my hand on her thinking maybe I’ve got a shot. I didn’t think it would become anything, I thought she was messing with me, you know?”

Brian just listened as Sean spoke. The light cast stark, flickering shadows on his face as the cargo van rocked slightly. They’d been on the road for a few hours or more and they still had no idea where they were going.

“Anyway, so she comes over the next night, and then she wants to see me three, four nights a week, and I didn’t know how to handle it, or, like, handle her, you know? I guess I was just … afraid of her. I mean, why was she dating me? It’s like you dream about something for so long … a girl, a car, a new job, whatever. Then if you get it, you still don’t think you deserve it. It’s a mistake, or someone’s playing a trick on you like that movie Carrie when they dump pig’s blood on her head and it’s all a joke.

“She just … wasn’t like anyone I’d ever dated before. The girls I usually dated worked at indie labels or were somebody’s assistant or read manuscripts and fucking hated their jobs, and we’d go out for pizza and see some special effects movie where stuff blew up, you know? We’d get drunk and they’d wake up at my place, hung over and ugly, and maybe we’d see each other again, maybe we wouldn’t. I had a system and she didn’t fit the system. At all.”

Sean sighed, silenced for a moment by the memory of her. He seemed to forget he was sitting in the back of a van, his wrists and ankles bound in gaff tape, arms tied behind him to the van’s wall bars, with two other guys he didn’t know.

“I mean, I do ad sales and I do okay, but she made a lot more money than me, you know? I didn’t know where to take her. We’d go out to dinner and she’d order stuff I couldn’t pronounce much less pay for. Dating her was like dating a movie—she’d show up at my place in a black town car, wearing a trench coat with nothing but black lace panties underneath, and dare me to fuck her in the car. I mean, she wanted to go down on me in a taxi as we were going across the Brooklyn Bridge, like she thought it would be a huge turn-on, and I … I just couldn’t do it.”

“A woman wants to blow you in the back of a cab and you flinch?” Brian spat.

“I know, I know, but the only thing I could think of was, what if the driver saw? What if other people saw?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Brian really didn’t like him now. Besides, he was short, and short guys were usually weird, like they needed to compensate.

“I cared! It was … I guess I just chickened out.” Sean was flustered now. “Come on, she knew all kinds of stuff, everywhere we went she had a story about something cool that happened there, and she’d run into people she knew wherever we went. On Sundays I’d wake up and she’d be sitting on my couch reading the New York Times Magazine. I didn’t know girls like that. Then there’s the morning I wake up and she’s laughing her ass off.”

“About what?”

“She looked at my bookshelf, and she saw a whole row of paperbacks on the shelf facing backwards so you couldn’t read the titles. So she started turning them around and burst out laughing.”

“What were they, porn?” Brian snorted.

“Nah. Worse,” Sean muttered to the floor, glum.

“What’s worse than porn?”

Star Trek novels.”

“Dude …” Brian exhaled a long, pitying sigh.

“I know, I know. Whatever. I like them,” he pleaded.

“So why’d you turn them around on your shelf then?” Brian leaned as far forward as he could.

“Because it’s embarrassing. I didn’t want people to know that’s what I read. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t going to last. At first, it was like Christmas every day. I mean, I’d had my eye on her for months, and I’d have fantasies about her when I’d jack off in the shower. The first time I fucked her in that shower I nearly passed out. Come on, she’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s up for anything, and she wants to be with all the time. I’m thinking, you’re kidding, right? After a week or two, I was like, how do I do this? I don’t know how to order off a menu with her, much less make conversation, she’s going to get bored of me fast. I knew that! Shit, even my friends were like, ‘She’s so out of your league, enjoy it while it lasts, pal.’ So I did what any guy would do to keep a woman hooked on him.”

“What, spent all your money on her?” Brian rolled his eyes and leaned against the van wall. They’d spent a long time trying to figure out what they had in common—he couldn’t believe it was a woman.

“Uh uh, I went down on her every chance I had. I knew her pussy better than her gynecologist.” Sean grinned, sitting back. “I’d look up at her and there would be nail polish streaks on the wall over the headboard. Fucking streaks the wall I’d work on her for like twenty minutes and she’d come so hard she’d push my head away and just twitch like she was electrocuted …”

Brian thought he saw him wink. God, this guy was such a tool. He wished the blond guy passed out in the corner would wake the fuck up.

“… Then I’d start all over again. I’d make her come three or four times and she’d be pulling me to her, begging me to fuck her. Now she needed me for something, now I had something she wanted really bad …”

Brian chuckled softly and smirked at Sean, knowing he couldn’t possibly have anything she wanted. Brian slid his feet as far forward as he could to stretch his legs. He tried to figure out how long they’d been in this van. They had to have been sitting here talking for two hours, another hour or two on top of that when they were passed out. So, three … four hours, maybe? When he tried to rub his wrists together he realized his watch was gone. They took his fucking watch.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“… Sure, I’d fuck her occasionally,” Sean said, carried away by the memory. He could smell her now, feel the curve of her waist. “Really slow, so she’d be moaning for it. I’d get her really worked up and then sometimes I wouldn’t finish her off. It was like a control thing, totally passive aggressive, you know?”

Brian was bored. This kid was such a fucking amateur. “Cut to the chase.”

Sean had thought about it a lot, he just never said it out loud.

“After two or three months, we went out to dinner and I had it all planned out. It was going to be farewell sex, like a last meal before an execution, you know? In the morning, I just bit the bullet and as soon as she woke up, I told her we needed to talk, and she wrapped herself around me in bed. She got nervous like animals do when they know they’re going to be killed, you know? The worst part was she held my hand while I told her all this, like she thought I couldn’t be cruel to her if she was holding my hand.”

They sat in silence in the windowless van, listening to the sounds of cars and trucks on the highway.

“I told her that I wasn’t interested anymore, it was me and not her, this isn’t what I wanted, you know, standard dump speech. But I kind of twisted it a little and said I didn’t like how she was always doing stuff for me, buying me things and taking me places like she just thought she was just being nice when it was actually a control thing of hers.”

“Nice touch. How’d she take it?”

“She just curled up in a ball and cried for an hour. I was in the other room watching TV when she suddenly comes out with her stuff in a bag. She’d called a car service and didn’t even look at me, she just grabbed her shit and left. I mean, I felt awful, it was a shit thing to do, but I’d rather have her angry at me than drag everything out.”

The silence hung in the air, cold and thick.

“You want to know the truth?” Brian said gently.

Sean nodded, hesitant.

“You were a pity fuck,” he spat.

Sean’s face hardened.

“She told me about you,” Brian continued. “She laughed that you were Transitional Guy, like you were a comic book character, except you didn’t know how it was supposed to end. She was supposed to end it, not you. So, yeah, it fucked her up and she had serious damage, but what can I tell you? That’s my thing, so I moved in.”

“What do you mean?” Sean said, chilled.

Brian sized him up carefully, to see if he was worth telling. “I bartend over at the Alibi by the park. This was, like, three years ago. September … a couple months after you dumped her. She came in one night with two or three other girls and I just zeroed in on her, ’cause she looked like she hadn’t been out in a while. You could tell that her friends took her out to cheer her up, so I kept making eye contact with her when I was at the other end of the bar. I gave her some quarters for the jukebox, asked her to go pick out some Tom Waits, kept her glass filled. Lot of attention, just kept looking at her and then looking away like she caught me. I’m good, right? By the end of the night, her friends are gone, the bar’s empty, and it’s just the two of us talking.

“She’s smiling and playing with her hair, looking up at me, stroking her collarbone and fiddling with her necklace, leaning forward on the bar, it’s all body language. You know the thing about showing their palm, right?”

Sean shook his head, his light brown hair falling in his eyes, making him look even younger. This was a master class, and he tried to keep up. He couldn’t believe guys like this actually existed and this was what he was up against.

“When a woman shows you the palm of her hand, she’s open,” Brian explained patiently. “It’s a major sign. It means she’s vulnerable and she’ll probably show you something else, know what I mean? So anyway, I’ve got her, I’ve totally got this chick. It’s classic … classic. Everyone has one thing they’re born knowing how to do, right? This is it. This is what I do better than anyone else.”

Brian tried to move his arms.

“Fuck, my arm’s asleep. Anyway, I know what to talk about: stories about my family, what kinda pets I’ve had, how much I like to travel, where I’ve been and where I want to go next. Always say Morocco or Thailand, by the way, just trust me. It gives her a way to size me up, decide if I’m a quality guy, right? And she’s just glowin across the bar at me. She even says I’m not like the other guys and, you know, I do the blushing thing. You know the blushing thing, right?”

Sean shook his head, confused.

“You have to do it like this,” Brian confided, as he leaned forward a bit on the box and looked down at the floor of the van. “When she gives you a compliment or you ‘confess’ something, you look down like you’re a little embarrassed or trying to hide a smile. Then you keep your face down and look up with only your eyes, like this.”

He demonstrated, his eyes peeking up shyly through his lashes. “Slays them every time, I’m telling you.”

Brian’s expression morphed seamlessly from innocent and charming to cold and hard again, and then he grinned as he leaned back against the van wall. With his black hair and sharp eyes he looked even colder. “The best part was she thought she was the one pursuing me because I was acting like I had a serious crush, like it was love at first sight and this had never happened to me before.

“We talk about artists we like, so l ask for her number like I’m real shy, say there’s this Bill Viola show she might like to see. She’s actually blushing, like she’s already thinking of how to tell our grandkids how we met. I just knew it.”

Brian was smug. “I’ve never hooked a woman so easy, so fast. Never

“So what did you do?”

“I didn’t even touch her that night, total gentleman. Called her the next day, said I couldn’t wait to talk to her, that I’d been thinking about her all day, and she’s totally charmed, right? So we made plans to see the gallery in the afternoon and I kind of kept it rolling to dinner and finally back to my place to hang out. We started talking about ecstasy and how she hadn’t done it in so long, so I said I had some at my place and we could share it, right?

“She was so wrapped up in the moment,” Brian snorted, “thinking I was so easy to talk to, that we had so much in common … Fuck, I could have gotten her to do anything … I probably could have gotten her to shoot heroin I mean, my place is kind of a dump and she’s going on about how amazing the view is and how cool the paintings are and whatever. She’s totally delusional at this point, she thinks it’s karma, like we’ve really connected.

“So we have sex and she says it’s spiritual and amazing, you know, but it’s just E-love. Sex on ecstasy just fucking bonds you, except she’s never had sex on E before so it’s new to her and she thinks this is chemistry. Yeah, it’s chemistry, it’s fucking lab chemistry. So now we’re rolling and I love this part, this is where the head-fuck gets deep

“Then it just became a question of how little could I do and still have her want me? It became a game and I stretched it out for months Little by little I pulled away, real small stuff like I stopped kissing her, wouldn’t hold her after sex, never went down on her. No foreplay, no talking, it was just fuck her and go to sleep, like when I’m done, we’re done. I wouldn’t even kiss her when she’d cry. I’d roll over with my back to her, and I swear I’d just be lying there, grinning in the dark. She’d sob for a while then finally she’d go to sleep. The next morning I wouldn’t say a thing, act like nothing happened. I know, cold, right? But you know what?”

“What?” Sean asked nervously. This is who she ended up with after him?

“She’d call me that night, want to come over, act like nothing ever happened,” Brian said, incredulously. “And I’d always blow her off, wouldn’t call her back for like a week! I’d wait for the voicemail to pile up and she’d get panicky, thinking it was something she’d done. I’d be out with the guys and we’d brag about who has the craziest phone messages from a woman, who can string some bitch along the longest, right? And there was no question, I won. I was the king of this, I had proof right here. I’d save the messages and play like a dozen of them to everybody, and they’d start with her all sweet. ‘Hi, it’s me,’ became annoyed, like, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ and then she’d get concerned, ‘Are you okay?’ and finally, after a week, it’s, ‘I’m sorry you’re so upset at me, I miss you, please forgive me.’ She didn’t even know what she’d done to make me disappear but she was already begging me to take her back! The next time I’d see her, and I’d always wait like at least a week or two, she’d apologize to for being such a basket case, and promise it’d never happen again!”

“Jesus …”

“I know! Totally fucked up, right?” He was on a roll now, and his dark eyes flashed. “But here’s the thing: If a woman thinks she’s worthless, if she’s been dumped by enough guys and her self-esteem is that low, she’ll excuse anything to keep you. I was so under her skin, she was dependent on me like a drug, she was hooked just like a junkie and she’d put up with whatever she had to.”

Brian was grinning hard now. He’d never had an office job, never made serious money, kept getting fired, and had the shittiest credit of anyone he knew, but in this one sport, he was a champion. “Here’s the secret, and I know it’s so fucking wrong, but the worse you treat them, the more they want you. It’s totally fucked up, but the sooner you understand that, the better off you’ll be. I’m telling you.”

Sean was quiet and let Brian’s story sink in. He was colder now, inside and out. The van hadn’t stopped once and they still had no idea where they were going or why. The back of his head was throbbing from where he had pounded his head into the van wall to try and get someone’s attention. He looked over to his left and saw the blond guy’s eyes were still closed, though he wasn’t slumped over anymore.

“Hey, look at him,” Sean whispered to Brian. “Is he awake yet?”

“Hey, buddy! You awake?” Brian barked.

Blond guy’s eyes opened, suspiciously, like he’d been awake and listening to them for a long time.

“Yeah, Brian,” he sneered. “I’m awake.”

“How do you know my name?” Brian accused.

“You and your pal, Sean, have been using up all the fucking oxygen in this van for the last hour or two, that’s how, genius.”

“So who are you, asshole?”

“The name isn’t Asshole, it’s Frank.”

“Do you know why we’re here?” Sean said flatly, now a good cop to Brian’s bad cop.

“We must all have something in common, right?” Frank smiled. “I’ll save you two some time: I’m a trader for Pettigrew Dean and I live on the Upper East Side in the city. I’m forty-one, single, I don’t gamble, I don’t owe anybody money, I don’t deal with the mob, I don’t have a criminal record, I don’t go to the Alibi, although I own some property in Fort Greene and Park Slope, and I don’t read Star Trek novels …”

Frank was kind of enjoying this.

“… And, oh yeah. I know her too.”

The air in the van went ice cold as Sean’s eyes shot quickly to Brian, then back to Frank. This was seriously fucked up now.

“I heard all about you guys.” Frank narrowed his eyes at Sean. “The time she brought a glass of fresh orange juice and a clean towel to you as you were stepping out of the shower and you just walked right by her. That fucking slayed her. She never forgot it.”

Sean crumbled at the memory; he’d never told anyone about that. He felt nauseous.

Frank turned to Brian. “And you? Yeah, she told me all about you and how you twisted her inside out like a game. How cold you were, how you used her for fun and then fucked her over. She didn’t see anyone for almost a year after that, she just holed up in her apartment and didn’t go out. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Brian admitted quietly, as the bravado slid off his face like he’d been caught by his mother. He leaned back, away from the light of the van’s harsh bare bulb. It never occurred to him that there would be real dam-age. Everybody played hard, it was part of the game.

“Yeah, guess not,” Frank said coolly, his pale hair and pale eyes seeming to soak up the light. “Did you know she six different anti-depressants that year? Did you know she started having a hard time leaving her apartment? Did you know she thought everything was her fault, that she was a terrible person? She thought there had to be something wrong with her for everyone to keep treating her like this, right? By the time I met her, she was so fucking fragile, I thought I’d break her if I held her hand.”

Frank was furious now.

“How did you meet her?” Sean asked quietly, staring at the floor. Was that blood?

“At a dinner party.” Frank’s voice quieted at the memory. “We were sitting next to each other and she was just starting to go out again, but she was so gun shy, she was really having trouble talking to me. It took an hour to even drag a conversation out of her. She couldn’t function at all, so I asked her about what she did, and then we talked about movies, cool flea markets, what we were reading, all kinds of stuff.

“I liked her,” Frank recalled, moving his head from side to side. His neck was cramped from leaning over for hours. “She seemed sweet and, I don’t know, textured in some way. She wasn’t glossy at all and I could tell by the way she hunched her shoulders and shuffled when she walked that something bad happened to her, she’d been thrown away. She seemed really hurt and tired when she finally told me about it all. It made me furious, and sad, like, how dare they? How dare … you?

Frank seemed larger now, and Sean and Brian had lost their swagger, shamed.

“So I kissed her hand goodnight, really gently, and I gave her my phone number so she could decide if she wanted to talk to me. I left it up to her, we’d talk when she was ready. I wasn’t going to press her. It was two or three weeks before she called me, and she was so nervous that I knew she’d been practicing what she was going to say. I’ve gotta tell you, it was so sweet it tore my heart out. She said she had to find a bedside table and did I want to go scout some places on Washington Street? Saturday afternoon, easy enough, no pressure, so I said, yeah, sure. I got there and she was dressed up more than usual, like she’d really thought about what she was going to wear. She had this flared black-and-white tweed skirt and black shoes with a strap across them, like showgirls wear, with this burgundy coat that had a fur collar, and this dark red lipstick sort of smudged like it was an accident. She looked like an old-fashioned movie star on her day off. Adorable, totally adorable.

“We started dating and I spent a lot of time with her. She was real cautious and warned me to go slow with her, that she needed time to work some things out and could I deal with that? I said, sure, she was worth it. So we started talking every day, then we were traveling together, like she’d come out to my place in the Hamptons for the weekend and she’d stay over at my apartment a few nights a week. We were going to the opening of a new club, Plush, you know that one? I took her shopping for a dress, and I guess that freaked her out because she wasn’t used to being treated well. Do you believe no guy had even sent her flowers? I mean, fuck.”

Sean looked at Frank and Brian across from him. He wondered who was thrown in the van first.

“So I took her on as kind of a personal project. Get her out, get her to take some classes … We started to take trips together, she got more social, and I started seeing a real difference in her. We’d go to art openings, I took her to some dinner parties, and I’m thinking she could be a good corporate wife, like do charity work during the day and take care of the house stuff. Plan the vacations and take care of the kids—I mean, I’ve got to start thinking about that because I’m not going anywhere without the wife and family thing … Company’s not going to promote someone who doesn’t fit the picture. Clients don’t trust a guy handling their money who’s not like them. Like, if you’re forty-five and still running around? Forget it. Doesn’t matter how good you are.

“Now it’s been a few months and I’m thinking she might be the one. So I start training her like they trained me at PD—I start teaching her about my job, how to make chitchat at a charity event, negotiate with antiques dealers … had to get her out of that place in Fort Greene. I’m thinking if it works out, I just might marry her, but we never talked about it.

“Anyway, we’re out at a club for some party and we end up barhopping all over town with friends. It’s really late and she says she wants to go to this one bar by her place, some shithole on Myrtle Avenue, so we end up there and she’s drunk, really drunk. She’s wearing this little foufy lavender dress and the place is pretty crowded, it’s hot, she’s almost cross-eyed she’s so plowed. She wants to dance, and I’m like, forget it, but she drags me downstairs to the basement, it’s like this private VIP room, real dark, no bouncers, couple of guys in suits getting smashed at a table, two or three people smoking, whatever. She starts dancing with whoever, but she keeps looking back at me to see if I’m watching her, like it’s a private show for me, like it’ll turn me on or something.”

Frank’s legs were pressed tightly against each other, as though he needed to push against something, but he could only push against himself.

“She doesn’t get the response she wants from me, like she’s trying to punish me, get me jealous, see how much I really care about her. So she gets on a table to dance and she can barely stand up, and everybody’s looking at her. Her hair’s all over the place, and her makeup’s smeared and she’s glistening like she’s sweating to death or her body is trying to push all that fucking booze out, and I look at her. I just look at her, horrified. This is who she is No matter how much I try to do for her, how much I try to teach her, she’ll never be what I need. She’s not marriage material, she’s a fucking mess and now she’s looking uglier and uglier. I kissed that? I thought I could love that? And I start getting pissed off, she wasted my time, I tried to her and this is how she humiliates me?

“Now, I’m not that buzzed, and when I see this going on, I sober up real quick. She’s dancing with any guy in the room and rubbing up against them, rubbing her ass against their crotch like she’s a fucking stripper and she wants me to watch. She wants me to watch her. She hasn’t had sex with me because she says she needs ‘time,’ and I’m fine with that. For fuck’s sake, I’m patient as hell because I think she’s worth it—and she ends up rubbing her pussy up against some drunk guy in a bar?”

Frank’s eyes were blazing now.

“The place empties out and it’s just us and these four guys in suits, and they’re out celebrating a birthday or big promotion or something, and they are nasty drunk. They all take turns dancing with her—well, it’s more like dragging her at this point, she’s so dizzy. She keeps looking around like this isn’t fun anymore, and she’s trying to find me so I can save her, but I’m just sitting in this one shadowy corner and she doesn’t see me. The other guys don’t know we came in together, and they can’t see me either, so they think it’s just them and her. Like, time for a private show, okay?

“Then she falls over backwards on a cocktail table, knocking all the glasses on the floor, and she’s yelling, ‘Frank! Frank!’ but she’s slurring so bad they think she’s yelling, ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ And one guy says, ‘Whatever the lady wants, right?’ and they all start laughing as they unzip their pants. Now she’s screaming and crying and trying to push them off, and they turn her over so she’s face down on the cocktail table, and the ashtray flips over and a glass breaks on the floor, and one by one they all fuck her. They fuck her till she throws up. She’s covered in come and sweat and vomit and she’s moaning, her eyes are rolling in her head. Her dress is shredded and her panties are twisted around one leg like they just got ripped off the other, and there’s blood on her leg …”

Horrified, Brian and Sean couldn’t take their eyes off Frank as he spoke, but they didn’t see him. All they saw was their own picture of her, helpless and screaming on a table, like a still photo from their own personal film.

“… And all I can think is: You fucking whore. I mean, we never even slept together! When she said she needed ‘time’ to work some things out, I was fine with that, but hey, give it away to some guys you meet in a bar? Go ahead! I’ve gotta tell you, though, when I saw her face all blurry and mashed on that table, slumped over like a rag doll, I thought, ‘Well, guess you worked it out, huh?’

“After they all left, I dragged her out of there to her apartment and she was moaning and crying the whole way. It was around 5 a.m., and I left her in front of her apartment. I was done with her. Done. This was the fourth time I had to teach some woman a lesson and I was sick of it. After everything I do for them and they … Why can’t they just … Yeah, I dumped her. I fucking dumped her on the sidewalk.”

Frank sat back, satisfied. Sean and Brian stared at each other with their mouths slightly open, knowing their rankings had changed.

For a long time, they sat in silence in the windowless van. No one knew what to say. Close enough to talk but not to help each other. Sean wondered why they weren’t gagged too? Why would someone want them talking to each other? What were they supposed to figure out?

As the van slowed and finally stopped, they looked at one another anxiously, listening to the sound of water in the background. Ocean? Lake? River? They couldn’t tell. Then the clang of equipment, metal and heavy.

“I know why we’re here,” Sean gasped, his voice crumbled like soft charcoal. He was always the last to figure everything out.

“It’s our turn to get dumped.”

SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS

BY C.J. SULLIVAN

Bushwick

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this—not here. What was she doing on this filthy block back in Bushwick? This was not how it was supposed to play out.

She shook her head as she thought about her parents’ warnings. She had been taught—over and over—to stay away from ghetto gangsters, those who lived to pull down their own kind who try to get ahead. She had been raised to be a striver and an achiever—a woman who would reach and attain the American Dream, and bring pride to her Puerto Rican ancestors and family name.

Rosa Lima silently cursed herself as she made her way up Knickerbocker Avenue. At the corner of Himrod Street a bone-chilling winter wind ripped through her suede coat. She shivered as she thought of her parents. They had been right. Every last frightful thing they ever told her had come true. The longer she lived the smarter they became. But since she was little, Rosa always had to test limits. She took nothing on face value. Now it was all right in her face.

A few months ago everything was going so well. Maybe too well. And she let her guard down and let him into her life. It felt right. He was smooth and handsome—looked and styled himself after the actor Benjamin Bratt. She liked that he was a Latino on the fast track to a better life. As her mother would say, “He cleaned up well.” And she liked his recent pedigree. He went to NYU, was pulling down good grades and talked a good game.

Now she saw just how blind she had been to who he really was. The warning signs were all there. She just hadn’t seen them. Or didn’t want to. It was like she saw only his shadow. She knew he was rough around the edges and had a temper. When she rode around Brooklyn with him in his leased Acura he was always getting into arguments with other drivers. She’d seen the sawed-off baseball bat under his seat, but he’d never attacked anyone—at least while she was around. She wrote it off to his Latino temper. More telling—and how she ignored this was still a mystery—was that he was always getting called on his cellphone and whispering to whomever was on the other end. Then he had to rush off and end their dates because, “I got some business I gotta go to take care of.”

But she found it easy to go light on him. Rosa felt bad for him because she realized he was up against being born and raised on the rough streets of Bushwick, and the ghetto was stronger than any emotion Rosa could muster. The darkness of these streets couldn’t be cracked by sunlight or love. But Rosa believed that she would get him out of this and they could start a new life.

Now the whole script was flipped. She was being pulled into his world. A world her parents had invested a lifetime of savings to keep her out of.

His left arm was hanging around her shoulders and he was getting heavier. She took a deep breath and hoisted him up. He gasped and said, “Rosa, Rosa, easy, please. It hurts but keep moving. Just don’t stop.”

“I got you. Don’t worry.”

She held him tight as she waited for the light to change. An old woman in a worn cloth coat stood on the curb staring at them. The woman took a hesitant step away and said, “Child, that man he is bleeding. Bleeding bad.”

Rosa wanted to scream and run. She said, “Yes, I know … I know. He had an accident at work. We’re going to the doctor.”

“You should call an ambulance.”

“The doctor is on the next block. We’re fine, thank you.”

The woman walked away shaking her head. Rosa crossed the street as two Latino youths walked by leering at her. One kid looked her up and down, licked his lips, and then kissed at her. The other one laughed and said, “Yo, mami, you got some fine high-water booty. Drop that dope and come with me.”

Rosa shot them a dirty look and hissed, “Punks. Get out of here, you little maricons.”

The kids kissed at her and walked away laughing as they bopped into a pizzeria. Rosa kept moving. She let out a long sigh and realized he was getting heavier and she didn’t know if she could drag him the whole way. She wanted to stop for a moment and lean against a car. Get her breath and strength back.

“Rosa, come on. Keep going. Don’t stop! I’m bleeding, dammit. It hurts. It’s burning my gut. Oh, man, it hurts. Oh, it hurts so bad. Damn. I’ma get that punk-ass Chino. He dead. He a dead man!”

Rosa put her head down and pushed on. She turned to look behind and saw drops of blood in the dirty slush and snow on the avenue.

“Carlos, listen baby,” she said, “you’re bleeding bad. Real bad. That wound could kill you. You have to get a doctor to take care of it. We should go to Wycoff Hospital. It’s just around the corner.”

Carlos hissed, “Dammit, woman! Listen to me. Just get me to Mama’s! No hospital. What do you think, they just going to stitch me up and not call the cops? Mama will take care of it. She always does. Come on, hold my weight and let’s step.”

Rosa and Carlos hobbled down the street as shoppers passed by, staring at the attractive girl holding onto a grimacing young man with a hand to his stomach, thick blood dripping through his fingers.

* * *

Rosa had been raised in Bay Ridge, the only child of an accountant father and a mother who worked as an administrator for the Parks Department. Her parents had saved for many years to leave Bushwick and buy a two-story brick on Colonial Road near the water at 91st Street. They always joked with Rosa that they were “cash poor and house rich.”

Rosa loved running through the sprawling home but she’d been lonely in Bay Ridge. She was the only Puerto Rican child on her block, and the other kids—and most of the parents—shunned her. She was teased constantly. As she walked home from school, a clique of older girls on her block would chant, “Mira, mira, on the wall, is Rosa the biggest spic of all?”

She would pass them and not even blink. Kept her eyes straight and acted like she didn’t hear a thing. Her mother told her that they were nothing more than a pack of barking dogs.

“Would you get mad at a dog in a yard behind a fence yapping at you? You ignore it and walk away. Treat them the same way.”

Rosa’s mantra as a child was, “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never harm me.” But that only worked until she reached her room, where she would fall on her bed and scream into her pillow. She knew her mother didn’t want to hear it. She was on her own as most children are. Adults forget to ease the pain of youth. Wiping her eyes, she would look up at her wall at her favorite poster of Lou Diamond Phillips posing as Richie Valens for his role in La Bamba She would stare into his face for hours until she would hear him sing softly, “Oh, Rosa.”

Rosa’s parents dealt with her lack of friends and empty social life by enrolling her into scores of after-school activities. At one time or another, Rosa had studied karate, gymnastics, soccer, trumpet, French, modern dance, ballet, and chess. None of these stuck except for dance. That she loved. As she got older Rosa excelled at school. Her parents took out loans to pay for a private all-girls school in Downtown Brooklyn. Her teachers were pleasantly surprised that a Latina could be so smart and dedicated to her studies. Because of this, the principal saw to it that the white kids left her alone.

She blossomed as a teenager and was thought to be the prettiest girl in her school. The older girls who once taunted her on her block had moved on. Now the white kids in Bay Ridge wanted to hang out with her. She was becoming cool and her ethnicity was no longer an issue. She was one of the most popular girls at her school.

In her junior year she aced her SATs, and as senior she was given a full scholarship to NYU to study Political Science. Her career goal was to work at the UN. As a freshman in college Rosa pulled down a 4.0 index, but she did find some time for socializing. She dated a few boys at school—she lost her virginity to an Irish boy from Bay Ridge whose older sister had once taunted her. To Rosa it seemed that all the boys at NYU wanted was a hot Spanish chick who would put out for them. Rosa wanted more than that. She wanted to fall in love. Crazy love like when she was a kid and had that crush on Lou Diamond Phillips. She knew that someday somewhere she would find that. She had to. It was what she had always dreamed of.

Rosa grew tired of the dating scene in college and decided to just concentrate on her degree. And then it hit her. Like a thunderbolt she knew that the promise of love might have walked into her life, and his name was Carlos.

They met in Loeb cafeteria. Rosa was sitting by herself munching on a tuna sandwich when this handsome man sat down next to her and started a conversation. He told her his name was Carlos Hernandez and they bonded right away over their Brooklyn and Puerto Rican roots. Rosa liked that Carlos was a self-assured junior going for a degree in Business. After her last class that day he took her out to Lusardi’s Restaurant—an upscale Italian joint on the Upper East Side. The owner treated him like an old friend and set them up with the best seat in the house. Carlos ordered the food and wine like a veteran.

After dinner they went down to the Roosevelt Island tram, and as the car inched over the East River, Carlos took her hand and gently kissed her. She felt her body jolt. They walked around Roosevelt Island and watched a group of men fish for striped bass. They stood on the promenade and watched the New York skyline as Carlos told her how he was going to knock the city dead. Rosa hung on every word and told him about how lonely she had been. He looked into her eyes and told her he knew all about loneliness, he had felt it his whole life.

The next week Carlos took her home to meet his parents in Bushwick. While his mama and papa were sweet, they lived on a dark and dangerous block and were first-generation o New York. Mama stayed home and kept their railroad apartment and Papa was the super of the building. Papa t-shirts and khaki jeans and grunted and nodded. Mama was a short, chubby woman who always wore house-dresses. She had a pleasant face but had what Rosa’s mother would say was “the look of a peasant.”

They were poor and Carlos was their only child, not because of any birth-control choice but because of poverty. That made Carlos even more attractive to Rosa. He was the one. He was raising himself out of the ghetto and would take the strength he had to be a success in business. Rosa thought that no one could stop Carlos but Carlos. On that she was right.

She fell hard for him and he seemed to love her right back. He took her to every hot nightclub in the city and everyone seemed to know him and like him. He was always walking off meeting people and telling her he had to do a little business. Carlos told her he did computer-hacking for cash and some of the folks he worked for were a little seedy, so she would be better off not getting to know them.

* * *

Then today it all came down on her. After Rosa’s morning International Law class, Carlos met her in the hallway and told her to come with him. Said he had a little deal he had to make and then they would go over to Mama’s for lunch. They walked up Broadway to 14th Street and huddled to keep warm from the bitter winter chill. They took the L train to Bushwick and then walked down Knickerbocker Avenue. Carlos told her he had to pick up some serious money from an up-and-coming Latino rap star who Carlos had developed a website for. Carlos had Rosa wait outside Rico’s Bodega as he walked across the street to talk with two young Latino men.

Rosa saw that Carlos was getting angry at the men and then—as if Rosa was watching this in a dream—Carlos pulled out a gun. A gun? A gun! Why would a computer programmer need a gun? One man ducked and rolled on the sidewalk and then she heard a shot and Carlos fell to the ground. Carlos landed under a car as Rosa ran across the street screaming. A gypsy cab screeched to a stop, just missing her. As she reached the sidewalk she saw Carlos weakly stand and let off a round at one of the men running away. The man fell to the ground as the other man shot back. Carlos grabbed Rosa and threw her down to the ground.

As she pushed herself up from the cement, it went quiet. Carlos stood and grabbed her, saying, “Get me to Mama’s house.”

“Carlos, Carlos, what happened?”

Three schoolkids stood on the corner staring at her and Carlos as they staggered up the block.

“I’m hit. Damn, he shot me,” Carlos moaned.

“What was that?” Rosa was crying. “Why do you have a gun? Why were you shooting at that man?”

“Because he was going to shoot me, Rosa. This here is Bushwick, not Bay Ridge.”

“Why would he shoot you over a website?”

Carlos laughed as a clot of blood spilled out of his mouth, “Website. Oh, baby, I don’t do websites. I deal. You know, drugs. Perico and chiva, like that. It pays for college.”

“You deal coke and heroin?”

“I do. And now ain’t the time to judge me. Do that later. I got to get to Mama’s. Get me there. Help me.”

“Carlos, you’re shot! We got to get you to an emergency room.”

“Shut up and take me to Mama’s.”

* * *

How could she not have seen it coming? Everyone was giving him cash. He was always getting calls on his cellphone and having to grab cabs to take care of business. How could she be so stupid? Who needs a website at 2:30 in the morning?

As Rosa turned onto Harmon Street—Mama’s house was now 200 feet away—she realized she had believed Carlos because she wanted to. She wanted to believe he wanted out of the ghetto even though he kept going back to it.

“Hold on, Rosa. We’re almost there.”

Rosa reached the front stoop and rang Mama’s bell. Carlos’s eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. Mama opened the door and looked at her son.

“Díos mío! Mi hijo, mi bebe!”

“Mama, he got shot.”

“Inside. Avanza!”

Mama grabbed Carlos’s other arm and the women led him down the hallway.

“See, it was meant to be that we live on the ground floor,” Mama said as she kicked the door open and then yelled, “Papa! Carlos has a balazo. Put all the towels down on the couch. Cover it. Your hijo is hurt.”

Papa walked up the narrow hallway and ignored Mama and Rosa. He gave his son a sour look and grabbed a stack of towels from a hall cabinet and piled them on the couch in the front room. Mama and Rosa gently let Carlos down, and he slumped on the couch.

“Mal hijo!” Papa hissed as he looked at his son.

“Go! Get out!” Mama yelled at him.

Papa scowled at her and turned and walked quickly down the hallway. He slammed the door as he left.

“Papa’s flojo … You know, a weak man. Carlos takes after his mama. Strong. Fuerte. Like steel.”

“What do we do now?” Rosa asked.

Carlos moved and pulled out his gun from his pants and groaned, “Mama, Mama, get rid of this.”

Mama nudged Rosa and said, “Grab the pistola and bring it to the kitchen.”

Mama waddled down the hallway and Rosa followed her, holding the gun like it was a wild animal. Mama held out a plastic bag and Rosa dropped it in.

“Rosa, we have to stop the bleeding. Go and hold the towels to his wound till I get out there.”

“Mama, we need to get him to a hospital.”

“Hospital? That is where people go to die. My bebe no die. Not today. I know his death day. I saw it in a dream when he was two. He stays here and we take care of him. Stop the sangre. His blood has to clot. He’ll be fine. Be a good novia and help him.”

Rosa watched Mama place the gun in a drawer and then reach into one of the pockets of her red house dress and pull out two small strips of tinfoil.

“Rosa, go. Carlos has a herida de bala Stop the bleeding. Avanza.”

Rosa turned and ran down the hallway. In the living room she saw that Carlos was leaning back on the couch holding his stomach. She moved his hand and put a towel on the wound and pressed.

Carlos grimaced and turned his head. Rosa held the towel and then pulled it off when it became full of blood. She put it on the floor and picked up a clean one. She jumped when Mama silently touched her shoulder.

“Let me look.”

For a little old woman, Mama was strong. She gently moved Carlos forward and looked at his back.

“This might not be so bad. The bala went right through him. First we take away his pain. Here, Carlos, sniff.” Mama patted Carlos on the face as she held a line of white powder on her thumb.

“What’s that?” Rosa asked as Carlos took a long snort.

“Chiva … for the pain. Here, bebe, take another.”

“Heroin? You’re giving him heroin?”

“Rosa, you know what you read in your school books. Chiva is the best thing for pain and this chico is going to have pain when I clean this wound.”

Carlos leaned back on the couch and looked like he was sleeping. Mama took out some more white powder, lifted the towel, and poured it on Carlos’s stomach, inside the small hole where the bullet had entered.

“Now this, Rosa, is perico, which will freeze the nerves.”

Rosa watched with her mouth open.

“Now hold him by the shoulder.”

Rosa moved behind the couch and held onto Carlos.

“Tighter. Strong. He’s going to jump like a fish on a line.”

Rosa grabbed Carlos’s shoulder as Mama poured peroxide into the wound. Carlos’s body jolted and he screamed. He collapsed back on the couch.

“Just sit with him,” Mama said as she went into the kitchen. She came back in a moment stirring a glass of cloudy water.

“Now we use this dropper and put penicillin down his throat for infection. Hold his head back and open his mouth.”

Rosa tilted his head back, and Mama squirted the mixture from the dropper into his mouth.

“Now sit him up and hold the towel. The blood is slowing down. He’ll be fine and so will you.”

Rosa looked down at the wound and saw that the bleeding had slowed to a trickle. She sat down on the couch and gently held the towel as Mama went into the kitchen.

* * *

Rosa sat up on the couch, afraid. The room was dark. Had she slept? She blinked and saw Carlos leaning against her, breathing slowly. She heard a tapping on glass and saw the silhouette of a man trying to look into the window. The shadow moved, and then silence. She just sat there not moving—hardly breathing—when someone banged on the front door. In the hallway she could see Mama opening the door and say, “Sí?”

Then Mama flew back against the wall as a young Latino man stormed into the apartment, yelling, “Where’s that cobarde Carlos?”

The man looked down the hallway and came at her. She saw he had a gun, and Rosa closed her eyes. This is what Carlos has given me. A cheap, stupid death in a ghetto apartment. Rosa jumped as a shot rang out. She heard a moan, and then another shot. She opened her eyes and saw Mama standing over the body of the man. Mama held a black revolver in her hand.

“There, that’s for you! You come into my house to kill mi bebe You pendejo. Cheap-ass bandido …” Mama kicked the man, then smiled at Rosa. “How’s Carlos?”

“Is he dead?”

“Him, yeah. Come help me drag him into the bañera.”

“Why are you taking him to the bathtub?”

“Why you think? Think I want to clean him up? We got to get rid of this body. Come on.”

Mama grabbed the man’s feet and Rosa stood up. She stared at Mama. Mama dropped the feet and walked over and slapped Rosa in the face.

Mama yelled, “You do as I say! You hear me? You brought this here, and you will help me. Now!”

Rosa bent down robotically and took the man by his boots as Mama grabbed the arms. They dragged him down the hall, leaving a trail of blood on the linoleum. Rosa looked down into the dead face and saw he’d been no more than a boy—maybe eighteen. Why was he dead? What was she doing here?

“In here.” Mama motioned to the bathroom door. Rosa kicked it open, and with great effort she and Mama lifted the man into the tub and dropped him.

Mama smacked her hands and said, “Got to get rid of this body.”

Rosa wanted to scream and run, but she just said, “No.”

“Go and get Papa. He’s down in the bodega playing dominos. Tell him we need to turn up the furnace all the way. We have something to burn.”

Rosa didn’t move and just stared at Mama.

“Rosa, go. Now! Avanza! And come back. Don’t think of going to the cops, because you touched the gun. Your finger-prints are all over that gun. You’re one of us now. I hope mi hijo picked a good one.”

Mama reached into a hall closet and smiled when she turned. “What, you want to watch?” She had a small axe in her hand. She motioned with the hatchet for Rosa to get going. Rosa dully nodded, put on her coat, and opened the door. She moved out of the apartment and floated down the hallway. She opened the lobby door and stepped out into the cold night air and stood on the stoop staring out at the Bushwick street. A gypsy cab cruised by and the driver stared at Rosa. She turned away and saw a shadow move in the alley across the street.

Rosa let out a long sigh and walked down the block, feeling like her body and soul were dying. She would never get out of this neighborhood.

LADIES’ MAN

BY CHRIS NILES

Brighton Beach

She was lush like an old-time movie star in black patent-leather shoes, fishnet stockings, and a fur coat. Her hair had been blonded, rolled, sprayed, and teased so that it stiffly circled her face like a halo on a medieval Madonna. She had Angelina Jolie lips and her heavy-lidded eyes were shaded aqua and rimmed with kohl. Crimsondipped nails grasped fake Louis Vuitton. She didn’t look anything like Ana, but that didn’t stop me staring.

The rhythm of the train tempted her to doze. Her head dipped. She woke, glanced around, trying not to look anxious, yet tightening her grip on her bag. Falling asleep on the subway. Not a good idea. It was late. The car was filled with a typical assortment of booze-and drug-fueled crazies, myself included. I’d spent the previous few hours with a couple a friends of the family—Eric Ambler and Comrade Stolichnaya.

Brighton Beach, end of the line. She got out. I did too. I stumbled down the steep steps, my eyes blurry from the booze, but my ears sharply focused on the clip-clip of her stilettos She walked west on Brighton Beach Avenue, long strides. It was cold, few people around. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, fingers searching for the Marlboro I knew was lurking somewhere. My head was fuzzy, the cold seemed to be making me drunker. I lit the cigarette and kept pace.

I liked Brighton Beach, it reminded me of my old life. I liked the stores selling canned fish, the babushkas hawking homemade trinkets on the sidewalk, the signs in Russian, the shabby exuberance. After years of exile, the extravagance of Manhattan made me feel ill. Out near the sea, where the choices seemed simpler, I could think again.

She turned left onto a side street lined with nondescript brick apartment buildings. Clip-clip. My cigarette was ashes and the promise of cancer by the time we reached the board-walk. I tossed the butt, dodged dogshit. It was spring, but a vindictive wind taunted my exposed skin. I turned up my collar and wondered what shape she was under that big fur coat, what her voice sounded like, what she whispered when having sex.

We passed the handball courts. For an instant my attention was diverted by an old guy in a t-shirt sprinting along the boardwalk. In as long as it took me to think, Don’t these people ever feel the cold? the woman had gone. I spun around, looking, listening. She was nowhere.

Shrugging, I headed to Ruby’s for a drink before my shift began.

* * *

People don’t tell you this about New York: The reason some never leave is because you can burn up on re-entry. It was almost that way with me. I had tried to make my fortune, or at least my name, as a foreign correspondent, and had failed. Eastern Europe worked for a while and then it didn’t, so I headed to Southeast Asia for some professional relaxation. I could have stayed, I suppose, lolling on a beach in Thailand, but there were too many reminders there of the kind of person that I would become—a fat, feckless ex-pat who couldn’t have survived a day in any city of consequence. Eventually there was no choice but to make things hard for myself again. So I came back to New York.

I hit the tail end of the 1990s and found it was a very, very different city from the one I had left almost a decade ago. It was as if real journalism had died and nobody had given it a decent funeral. CEOs were now celebrities and all celebrities were gods. The scary thing was, nobody seemed to have noticed. In some sort of crazy bait and switch, all the vicious, crazy, thrilling, real live New Yorkers had been replaced by a bunch of plastic people. The women were a discombobulating combination of perky and dull. The men talked about business school as the high point of their existence. All of them believed that every so-called obstacle in their trivial lives could be overcome if only they put in enough hours at the office and hired a personal trainer.

I did not fit. I missed real people. People who know that life’s often unfair. That sometimes, through no fault of your own, things just don’t work out. So I shunned Manhattan and my old life. I took a job copy-editing, overnights. The pay was crap and the hours were worse. I didn’t care.

* * *

“Why don’t you just fucking go back, man?” Paul Schneider, my companion in hell, asked as he assigned me yet another story about Donald Trump’s sex life. “So you hate it here, so leave.”

“Can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You buy a ticket. You get on a plane. Have a crappy meal, drink too much wine, and wake up in Budapest or Bucharest or wherever the fuck you’d rather be. People do it all the time. I’d lend you the money if I had any.” Paul was expecting a baby, or at least his wife was, and he was working double shifts so they could afford to move out of their 400-square-foot apartment.

“I’d steal it if you had any. But I can’t go back.”

The newsroom was quiet. We were both smoking. We’d stuffed a screwdriver in the smoke detectors and bribed Bart, the security guy. Smoking was the only thing that made this bullshit job even close to bearable.

“Why?”

I sighed, pretending to be annoyed at his persistence. “After the Berlin Wall fell, organized crime became the new growth industry in Eastern Europe. I made some trouble. Wrote some stories that made a few gangsters decide I deserved a whole new face.”

“So what? Aren’t journalists supposed to be fearless?”

“Very funny.”

“And what else?”

“Nothing else.” I reached for the cigarettes, Paul withdrew them.

“What else?” He held the packet up between two fingers just out of my reach, a practiced move. My lousy pay didn’t even come close to covering all my vices. Paul was used to me bumming off him.

“Fuck you.”

“Ah, a woman.” Paul handed the packet to me after taking one for himself, desperate for a story, anything that would distract him from the numbing hours that stretched before us. “Do tell.”

“Ana,” I sighed. “Her name was Ana.”

“And she broke your heart.”

“If you want to put it like that.” I struck a match, it snapped in two. I struck another one and the same thing happened. My hands were shaking. Ana could do that to me still, after all these years. Paul took the box from me and deftly lit the match. I started talking to smother my embarrassment. “She decided one day that she didn’t want to see me anymore I used to pick her up after work—she worked nights—and so I’d sit in this bar in Budapest and wait for her to finish and then walk her home.” I shook my head. “And one night she’d reassigned the job. That was it. No explanation, no nothing. I had no idea what I’d done wrong. Still don’t. She wouldn’t speak to me.”

“So no closure.”

“No.”

“Bummer,” Paul said.

“Yeah.” Maybe all those yuppies who paid 150 bucks an hour for a shrink were onto something. I hadn’t talked to anybody about Ana, I guess I’d been enjoying my own private hell a little too much. But now I felt as if a small burden had lifted. “All the time I was in Hungary it was as if I had an evil cloud hanging over me. Because before Ana, there was Mike McIlvaney.”

“He broke up with you too?” Paul stubbed his cigarette out on his shoe and flicked the butt into the bag we used to remove evidence of our illegal habits from the office.

“In a manner of speaking.”

* * *

They called it the Highway of Death for a very good reason. A two-lane stretch of asphalt between Vienna and Budapest where bunches of flowers, crosses, and stuffed animals bore witness to its incapacity to deal with the enormous daily volume of traffic.

The problem was this: Food and wine were cheap in Budapest and the Viennese were fond of getting into their late-model German automobiles and making a bargain-shop-ping day of it. Racing the other way for a taste of the West were their less fortunate Eastern European cousins, shaking behind the wheels of their unreliable, two-stroke Trabbants. Most American lawnmowers have more power than the Trabbant, and there were no passing lanes on the Highway of Death. The Austrian drivers, spoiled by superior technology and frustrated at having to sit behind an aerodynamically challenged global-warming machine, took frequent, stupid risks. Trabbie drivers, too, pushed their impotent cars past what they were capable of.

Mike had a Fiat. He, like me, was freelancing, building a name for himself. He had dark hair, a rangy build, and although his parents were American, he’d been raised in Brisbane and had an Australian accent. We’d become friends.

It was a quiet week when we made our decision. The Hungarians had just elected a democratic government and the transition had been fairly smooth. There were rumblings of trouble between Romanians and ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania, and between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Pristina, but not enough for us to warrant a trip to either place just yet.

“Man cannot live by beer alone, mate,” Mike said one night, slightly drunk in a Pest bar. Food in Budapest was good but mostly limited to what the Hungarians could grow—peppers, cherries, tomatoes, meat, bread. “I feel like avocados. Can’t remember the last time I had an avocado. Let’s go to Vienna.”

The next day we set off.

Trouble met us on the way home. Dark had fallen and we’d just crossed the Austrian border when the Fiat choked a couple a times and died. Mike pulled over, popped the hood, took off his seatbelt, and reached into the glove compartment for a flashlight to check it out.

There’s not a day that I don’t think about what happened next. It was timing that Satan would have been proud of. The nano-second after Mike unbuckled, a Mercedes hit us from behind. It was a heavy car, going fast. I later found out the driver was drunk. The Fiat shunted forward and the impact popped Mike through the windshield, just like that. If he’d had his seat belt on, like me, he’d still be alive.

* * *

“Christ,” Paul said, sucking deep on a new cigarette when I’d finished.

“Yeah,” I said. “Watching someone die, it messes with your head. Between Mike and Ana, I guess I went to pieces.”

He studied me, eyes narrowed through smoke. “I guess you did.”

* * *

This woman had dark hair cut in a bob, dyed ruby red, and glowing olive skin. She was wearing tan pants tucked into knee-length boots and reading a library book in Cyrillic. Someone who’d got on the wrong train asked her for directions and she replied, smiling, in a softly accented voice. I sat across from her from Atlantic Avenue. I caught her eye at Avenue J and smiled. She looked away. I’d been considered good-looking once, but personal grooming wasn’t high on my agenda anymore. It was months since I’d had a haircut and I’d become a haphazard shaver.

She got off at Brighton Beach, walked north, and turned left on Coney Island Avenue, clutching her suede coat closely to her even though the evening was mild. She went into a restaurant, ordered two chicken kebabs and a can of Sprite. Food seemed like a good idea for me too, so I had some, although I didn’t notice what I ate. She sat silently at her table and didn’t look my way, not once. Then she went to the bathroom, where I guess she must’ve made a phone call or something, because a few minutes later, a guy joined her. She said something to him and he glanced my way and frowned. I could see his pecs flexing under his thin white shirt.

I avoid trouble these days. I called for the check.

* * *

“So why don’t you start freelancing some articles or something?” Paul asked over our customary breakfast beer at the end of our shift. “You know, get back in the saddle.”

“There’s nothing to write about.”

“That’s defeatist crap.”

“All right, I can’t be bothered.” That wasn’t quite true. Once, just after I got back and was desperate for cash to make the deposit on my new rental apartment, I had dashed off a travel article about the grand old cafés of Budapest. It didn’t require any research, it bored me to write it, but the airline magazine paid promptly and the money was sweet.

Money. For a minute the thought pleased me.

“It’d be better than this crappy shift,” Paul said.

“Nah,” I said. “It’s not my thing,” I looked at our glasses, both of which were empty. “Besides, I like the company on this crappy shift. Fancy another?”

“Gotta go, Amanda’s having an ultrasound this morning. For some reason she wants me there.” Paul stood up, throwing some money on the bar. “You should get some sleep. You look like death.”

“Sure.” I signaled the bartender for another beer.

* * *

The gangster placed his passport, open at the correct page, in front of the immigration officer at John F. Kennedy Airport. The name on the passport wasn’t the one his parents had given him, but he thought the photo nicely captured his likeness. “Good afternoon,” he said in only slightly accented English.

The officer nodded as he checked the paperwork. “How long will you be staying in New York, sir?”

“Just one week.”

“Is this your first visit to America?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have friends or relatives here?”

“Some business acquaintances.”

“So this is a business trip?”

The gangster smiled. “I hope also to have a little enjoyment in your great city.”

* * *

He looked like any other guy, he thought, as he checked his reflection in the automatic doors. Any American guy. He wore Levi’s, Adidas running shoes, and a t-shirt that said “Just Do It.” His thick black hair and goatee beard were neatly trimmed. A tiny gold earring in his left ear was a new addition and the lobe was still slightly swollen. He put his hand to touch it, and remembering the piercer’s advice, stopped. He didn’t want an infection.

There was a line for taxis. He waited patiently, feeling exhilarated despite jetlag. He was in New York! For him, the greatest city in the world.

It wasn’t until the yellow cab was speeding toward Manhattan that he unfolded the magazine article that was the reason for his visit. A story about Budapest café society, and, at the bottom, a biographical line that said the author lived in New York City. The gangster believed strongly in fate. Why else would he have chanced upon the year-old copy of an airline magazine while on holiday in the Costa del Sol? He’d gone into an English pub to escape the heat of midday, and seeing a picture of his hometown, had idly turned the pages while waiting for his Guinness to be pulled.

And it was there that he had found him: the shit-fuck guy

“Got you,” the gangster had whispered softly as the bar-man slapped the beer down on the bar and demanded an extortionate amount. For once, the gangster, who was careful with money, having been raised in a household where there wasn’t much, was happy to pay. “Got you,” he said again, and raised the drink in a toast to the goddess of fortune.

* * *

He checked into an anonymous hotel near Times Square and went out in search of a payphone. Times Square was a dazzling disappointment; he’d expected a smorgasbord of vice, not toy stores and “family” restaurants. He located a phone and called his contact, making a note to ask him, once business had been conducted, what a family restaurant was and how it differed from a regular one.

* * *

“Glock 9mm, as ordered,” his contact said, sliding the bag across the park bench. “Plus ammo. Price as agreed. U.S. dollars, no fucking kopecs or whatever it is you people use.”

“We use dollars, same as you,” the gangster murmured, handing him the money. He decided this guy probably wasn’t the one to ask about restaurants. He didn’t seem that friendly.

“And here’s the address. Tracked him through the DMV. Everything was like you said. It was a good guess.”

The gangster shrugged. “It’s what I would have done,” he said. “If I was little bit lazy.” He took the piece of paper and looked at the address. The words meant nothing to him.

“It’s Brighton Beach,” his contact said. “Plenty of Russians out there. You’ll feel right at home.”

“I’m Hungarian,” the gangster replied.

A woman passed on rollerblades wearing tight little white shorts. The gangster could see dimples of cellulite in her butt as she pushed herself forward. Her mouth was set in a grim line.

“She looks like the devil is after her,” he remarked sadly.

“Nobody in this town’s having any fucking fun,” his contact said.

* * *

He caught a taxi to the apartment, which was on the ground floor of a tired street so close to the sea that he could smell salty air. He let himself in. He didn’t plan to kill the shit-fuck guy right away, he wanted to have a little fun first. He was thinking about trashing the place, sending a message, like they did in the movies. Not usually his style, but he felt like being a little expressive for once. This was a special case, after all.

The apartment was a single room. There was no furniture to speak of, just a folded-out futon with a gray sheet screwed up on top of it. A small, old-fashioned television sat unsteadily on a wooden crate. A single poster was tacked to the wall. The gangster recognized it as the original election poster for the Hungarian Democratic Forum. It featured the back of a large, thick-necked Russian military officer. The copy read, in Russian, “Comrades, it’s over!” The gangster smiled as he remembered simpler days. How happy they had been to get rid of the fucking Russians.

He stepped on tiptoe through the crap on the floor—fast food cartons, empty beer bottles, dirty laundry, newspapers, odd shoes, even a tube of toothpaste. Stacks of crusty dishes filled the sink. The refrigerator door stood ajar and rusty brown liquid leaked onto the linoleum. The smell in the room was stale and thick—a hopeless, exhausted musk of despair. The gangster shuddered in disgust and wiped his hands on his neatly-pressed jeans. It was a waste of time to trash the place, the shit-fuck guy wouldn’t even notice.

* * *

“You are foreign correspondent?” Lana asked skeptically.

I tried to look mysteriously modest. “Yeah, just got back into town a few days ago, from Bosnia.”

“I don’t trust journalists.”

“Well, you shouldn’t trust me, that’s for sure.” I grinned wolfishly. Her eyes narrowed. Perhaps the lovable-roué routine had worked better when I had a decent haircut and wore a suit. I went to straighten my tie and remembered I wasn’t wearing one. “Another drink?” We were sitting in a restaurant a block or two from the beach. The food was Uzbeki, which is to Russians what Mexican is to Americans—cheerfully ethnic, but not too threatening. Arresting pictures of downtown Baku were showing on the television set. The pictures focused on a large building of Soviet design and a wide empty street. The visual tedium was relieved every few minutes by a passing Lada.

“Ever been to Baku?” I put my hand on her knee. It was plump and warm.

“No.”

She glanced at me and looked away, staring, so it seemed, at the stuffed animal heads mounted on the wood-paneled walls.

“How long have you lived in the States?”

“Thirteen years.”

“Like it?”

“It’s okay.”

“Got family?”

“Why are you asking me all these questions?”

“Just trying to get to know you.”

“What’re you doing out here if you’re big-time foreign correspondent? Why aren’t you at Stork Club or something?”

“I’m not sure the Stork Club is still in business. Anyway, I prefer Brighton Beach. It’s got character.” I swallowed some vodka, trying to pinpoint the place where the evening had gone south. She had seemed friendly enough when I’d picked her up in a bar an hour or so ago.

“Character,” she snorted.

“Is that so wrong?”

“You’re liar,” she said. “You think I live in the fucking Soviet Union for fifteen years and not learn how to tell?”

“Hey, that’s a bit steep,” I protested, holding up my hands.

“I met too many men like you.” She grabbed her handbag and stood up, spilling the last of her wine. “Fucking Americans. They think every Russian girl is slut. Tell her big story to sleep with her, then gone.”

I followed her out of the restaurant.

“Hey,” I said, plucking at her sleeve. “I like you. I’m not spinning you a line, honest. I really am a journalist. Don’t you want to come back and talk about this?”

She shook my hand off.

“Come on. Don’t be like that. Let’s grab a coffee and start over. We won’t—”

She cut me off, saying something in Russian.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“She’s telling you to get lost. Even you don’t need any Russian to understand that.”

I recognized the voice. I turned. Istvan Laszlo was standing about ten feet away. Lana glanced at him and then took off. I didn’t blame her.

“Mr. McIlvaney.”

“Mike McIlvaney is dead,” I said evenly.

The gangster smiled. “I’m sure you’ve told people that, but the truth is, Richard Churcher is dead, Mr. McIlvaney. And you took his name because you thought if you did that, I would never find you.”

“I didn’t know you were looking.”

“Maybe not me specifically, but you knew someone would, sometime.” He passed me the article I had written to make my apartment down payment. “A small miracle. Richard Churcher wrote a magazine article about Budapest years after he died in a freak car smash. It’s enough to make you believe in God.”

I said nothing.

“So I read the story and I have an idea. I have been looking for Mike McIlvaney for many years and I can’t find him. He’s vanished off the earth. But Richard Churcher has risen from the grave. Then I call a guy in America and he explains all about the Social Security number. I found out that Churcher was an American citizen. He was born here. Not too difficult to put it all in place. You get a Social Security number with his name and you live as him. You looked a little alike. And you grow your hair and a beard and think maybe nobody will notice. Maybe nobody would have …” He moved closer and lowered his voice. “Except for this.” He folded the article up and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Too bad for you I like to travel.”

“It’s not a crime to change your name. What do you want?” My voice shook. I could see the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, under a blue jacket, and my life that I’d previously thought of as sub-standard suddenly seemed shining and rare, a precious, precious thing.

“I want to walk,” the gangster said. “Let’s go to the beach.”

Rain threatened and the beach was empty. Seagulls dove and screeched, fighting over a ragged piece of food. The gangster looked out to sea.

“The Duna flooded this year. They found Ana’s body buried in a field.”

Ana. My chest tightened.

“She had been beaten to death. Cops were able to tell that, even after all this time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“What’s this got to do with me?”

“The day she went missing, I felt it in my gut that she was dead.” The gangster put his fist to his stomach. “And that you had killed her. You’d beaten her before and threatened her. That’s why she no longer wanted you as a client. She was frightened of you.”

“Isn’t this a little far-fetched?”

“You were hanging around at nights waiting for her to finish work, so I had Peter walk her home. But the night she disappeared Peter got held up and he didn’t meet her. And the next day she doesn’t turn up for work. I think immediately of you and your threats. I came to your apartment and you had also gone, rather suddenly, the landlord said.”

“I got called away on a job. This is stupid, Istvan. I can understand that you’re upset at losing one of your working girls, but I didn’t kill her. I loved her. I love her still. Look at me, my life’s a wreck because of her.”

“You were obsessed with her,” the gangster said. “Not quite love, something else. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, but you did it. And your life’s wrecked because you can’t live with yourself.” He pulled the gun casually out of his jeans.

“Please,” I said. “Even if what you say is true, this isn’t going to bring her back.”

“No. But what I’m doing is for the living, not the dead.” He raised the Glock and pointed it at my forehead. “You see, I loved her too. I guess you didn’t know that.”

He gently squeezed the trigger.

I could have run, I suppose. Or tried to fight him. Could have at least made an attempt to do something. But a strange thing happened: When that bullet began its deadly journey, I had a flash of clarity, the first of my whole life. Time slowed, and then slowed some more, and I could see the bullet speeding toward me, right toward my brain. Life is love. That’s it, there’s no other point, I thought, as I watched the bullet smash into my head. Saw myself fall onto the wet, hard sand. Heard myself think, Perhaps I’ll see her now, and perhaps she’ll forgive me.

* * *

A gust of wind carried the sound of the gunshot out into the Atlantic. The seagulls scattered, wings beating. The gangster walked away. He didn’t look back. He didn’t see the body being claimed by the rising tide.

INTRODUCTION

WELCOME TO A DARK CITY

The City.

See, that’s what we call it. The rest of the world calls it the Apple, or, more formally, the Big Apple, and we don’t object to the term. We just don’t use it very often. We call it the City and let it go at that.

And, while the official city of New York is composed of five boroughs, the City means Manhattan. “I’m going into the City tonight,” says a resident of Brooklyn or the Bronx, Queens or Staten Island. Everybody knows what he means. Nobody asks him which city, or points out that he’s already in the city. Because he’s not. He’s in one of the Outer Boroughs. Manhattan is the City.

A few years ago I was in San Francisco on a book tour. In conversation with a local I said that I lived in the City. “Oh, you call it that?” he said. “That’s what we call San Francisco. The City.”

I reported the conversation later to my friend Donald Westlake, whose house is around the corner from mine. “That’s cute,” he said. “Of course they’re wrong, but it’s cute.”

* * *

The City. It’s emblematic, I suppose, of a Manhattan arrogance, of which there’s a fair amount going around. Yet it’s a curious sort of arrogance, because for the most part it’s not the pride of the native. Most of us, you see, are originally from Somewhere Else.

All of New York—all five boroughs—is very much a city of immigrants. Close to half its inhabitants were born in another country—and the percentage would be higher if you could count the illegals. The flood of new arrivals has always kept the city well supplied with energy and edge.

Manhattan’s rents are such that few of its neighborhoods are available these days to most immigrants (though it remains the first choice of those fortunate enough to arrive with abundant funds). But it too is a city of newcomers, not so much from other countries as from other parts of the United States, and even from the city’s own suburbs and the outer boroughs as well. For a century or more, this is where those young people most supplied with brains and talent and energy and ambition have come to find their place in the world. Manhattan holds out the promise of opportunity—to succeed, certainly, and, at least as important, to be oneself.

I was born upstate, in Buffalo. In December of 1948, when I was ten-and-a-half years old, my father and I spent a weekend here. We got off the train at Grand Central and checked in next door at the Hotel Commodore, and in the next three or four days we went everywhere—to Liberty Island (Bedloes Island then) to see the statue, to the top of the Empire State Building, to a Broadway show (Where’s Charlie?), a live telecast (The Toast of the Town), and just about everywhere the subway and elevated railway could take us. I remember riding downtown on the Third Avenue El on Sunday morning, and even as my father was pointing out the skid row saloons on the Bowery, a man tore out of one of them, let out a bloodcurdling scream, turned around, and raced back inside again.

I think I became a New Yorker that weekend. As soon as I could, I moved here.

“Why would I want to go anywhere?” my friend Dave Van Ronk used to say. “I’m already here.”

* * *

Manhattan Noir.

While I might argue Manhattan’s primacy (assuming I could find someone to take the other side), I wouldn’t dream of holding that everything worthwhile originates here. Even as so many Manhattanites hail from somewhere else, so do many of our best ideas. And the idea for this book originated on the other side of the world’s most beautiful bridge, with a splendid story collection called Brooklyn Noir.

It was that book’s considerable success, both critical and commercial, that led Akashic’s Johnny Temple to seek to extend the Noir franchise, and it was Tim McLoughlin’s outstanding example as its editor that moved me to take the reins for the Manhattan volume.

I sat down and wrote out a wish list of writers I’d love to have for the book, then e-mailed invitations to participate. The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today’s literary world; there’s precious little economic incentive to write one, and the one I was in a position to offer was meager indeed. Even so, almost everyone I invited was quick to accept. That gladdened my heart, and they gladdened it again by delivering on time … and delivering what I think you’ll agree is material of a rare quality.

My initial request wasn’t all that specific. I asked for dark stories with a Manhattan setting, and that’s what I got. Readers of Brooklyn Noir will recall that its contents were labeled by neighborhood—Bay Ridge, Canarsie, Greenpoint, etc. We have chosen the same principle here, and the book’s contents do a good job of covering the island, from C.J. Sullivan’s Inwood and John Lutz’s Upper West Side, to Justin Scott’s Chelsea and Carol Lea Benjamin’s Greenwich Village. The range in mood and literary style is at least as great; noir can be funny, it can stretch to include magic realism, it can be ample or stark, told in the past or present tense, and in the first or third person. I wouldn’t presume to define noir—if we could define it, we wouldn’t need to use a French word for it—but it seems to me that it’s more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.

Noir doesn’t necessarily embody crime and violence, though that’s what we tend to think of when we hear the word. Most but not all of these stories are crime stories, even as most but not all are the work of writers of crime fiction, but the exceptions take place in a world where crime and violence are always hanging around, if not on center stage.

Noir is very contemporary, but there’s nothing necessarily new about it. In cinema, when we hear the word we think of the Warner Brothers B-movies of the ’30s and ’40s, but the noir sensibility goes back much further than that. When I was sending out invitations, one of the first went to Annette and Martin Meyers, who (as Maan Meyers) write a series of period novels set in old New York. Could Maan perhaps contribute a dark story from the city’s past? They accepted, and in due course the same day’s mail brought Maan’s “The Organ Grinder” and a present-day story from Marty.

Every anthologist should have such problems. Both stories are here, both show the dark side of the same city, and both are far too fine to miss.

Most of our contributors live in New York, though not necessarily in Manhattan. (It’s hard to afford the place, and it gets harder every year. New York is about real estate, and Justin Scott’s “The Most Beautiful Apartment in New York” illustrates this fact brilliantly.) Jeffery Deaver lives in Virginia and John Lutz in St. Louis, yet I thought of both early on; they both set work in Manhattan, and reveal in that work a deep knowledge of the city, and, perhaps more important, a New Yorker’s sensibility.

* * *

It seems to me that I’ve nattered on too long already, so I’ll bring this to a close. You’re here for the stories, and I trust you’ll like them. I know I do.

* * *

Lawrence Block

Greenwich Village

January 2006

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

BY CHARLES ARDAI

Midtown

Rain battered the sidewalk and the storefronts. The wind played games with people’s umbrellas, teasing in under the ribs and then whipping them inside out and back again. One umbrella handle and shaft, discarded by its owner, skittered along the curb in an overflow from the gutter.

* * *

There were hardly any people on the street. Those there walked quickly, heads bent, shoulders hunched forward, buckling umbrellas held before them like shields. A few sought refuge under awnings and in doorways. One stood bravely in the street, a hand held high in a desperate attempt to hail a taxi.

Harold Sladek sat where he always sat this time of night: in the shadow of the service entrance to Body Beautiful. The doorway offered little protection from the rain since it was less than a foot deep, but it was better than sitting out on the sidewalk itself. At least he wasn’t completely surrounded by the elements; at least Harold could feel concrete behind and beneath him. Solidity—that was something.

It was also a matter of habit: He always slept in the doorway at Body Beautiful, even though it was no better than any of the other service entrances up and down the avenue. It was part of his routine, forged over the course of many years, many rainstorms. Solidity of a different sort, but no less important.

Harold held a copy of Cosmopolitan, spread open at the center, over his head. He felt water trickle down between his fingers. After a few minutes, the glossy paper become waterlogged and slick, and eventually the magazine pulled apart in his hands. When this happened, Harold threw it into the street and pulled another issue out of the plastic bag next to him. He had found the stack of magazines tied with string next to a trash can on the corner of Lexington and 79th. His original thought had been to sell the magazines for a quarter apiece further uptown, on Broadway where all the booksellers were. But if the magazines could keep him dry, or even just a little bit drier, that was worth giving up a quarter or two.

The second issue started dripping ink-stained water onto his forehead. Harold threw it away, wiped his hands on his drenched pants, and started on a third.

He didn’t notice immediately when someone approached the doorway and stopped next to his bags. The magazine cut off much of his line of sight, and the rain, spraying him in the face with every fresh gust of wind, cut off the rest. But at one point, between gusts, he glanced beside him and saw a pair of legs in ash-gray trousers and, next to them, a dripping, folded umbrella.

Harold put the magazine down behind him. It wasn’t quite soaked through yet, so it was too valuable to throw away. But he wasn’t going to sit with a magazine over his head while another man stood next to him with an umbrella he wasn’t even using.

He looked up, squinting against the rain. The other man was bending forward, sheltering his head under the overhang. The rest of him was exposed. The rain blew on the man’s suit and he just stood and took it, one hand in his pants pocket, the other on the handle of his umbrella.

“Mister,” Harold said, “don’t you mind the rain?”

The man shook his head. “Just water,” he said. “A little water never hurt anyone.”

Harold had shouted; the other man had spoken at a normal level, or maybe even a little quieter. So even though Harold had leaned into it, he hadn’t caught the words. “What?” he said.

The man bent at the knees. He stuck the umbrella straight out in front of them and pressed the release. It opened up enormously, suddenly cutting them off from the storm. “I said, a little water never hurt anyone.”

He still spoke quietly but now the storm was muted behind the umbrella, and Harold heard him. “I don’t know,” Harold said. “But I’m not going to argue with a guy’s got an umbrella.”

The man smiled. He took his hand out of his pocket and brought with it a slightly battered pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” The man thumbed the pack open and extended it.

It was suddenly dry and quiet—relatively dry and relatively quiet—and a man Harold had never seen before was offering him a cigarette. Why? Harold tried to read the answer in the man’s eyes. They didn’t reveal a lot. They were ordinary eyes in an ordinary face. They had wrinkles at the corners and were overhung by untrimmed gray eyebrows. They were not cruel, or cloudy, or cold, or anything else in particular. Just eyes. Just a face. Just a man doing his fellow man a good turn.

Harold plucked a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it between his lips. Then he looked up again, to get another read on those eyes. Whatever he thought he might see, he didn’t.

You’re on the street, you can’t be too careful, Harold told himself. Careful keeps you alive. But there are limits. When a guy comes by and offers you a cigarette, you take it and say thank you. It doesn’t happen every day.

Harold reached back to take another, for later, or maybe two or even three as long as the guy was offering. But the pack of cigarettes was gone now, replaced with a brass lighter. At least it looked like brass—hard to tell in a dark doorway.

Harold leaned into the flame. It took three tries for him to catch it on the tip of the cigarette. He dragged deep when it caught, let the warmth rush into his throat and lungs. First cigarette in … how long? Hard to say. You lost track of exact time living on the street. But it had to have been at least a month.

“Thanks,” Harold said.

“Don’t mention it.” The man straightened up, lifting the umbrella and stepping around so that he was standing in front of Harold. “Make the night a little easier to get through.”

“You’re a mensch,” Harold said. “You know what that is, a mensch?”

The man nodded. “What’s your name?”

Harold coughed, a wet, rattling sound he brought up from deep in his chest. “Harry.”

“You take care, Harry,” the man said.

“Don’t you worry about me. I been through storms would make this look like pissing in a can. You take care—you got the nice suit.” Harold made himself smile up at the man. He thought, Maybe the guy will leave me the umbrella. Then he thought, What, and walk out in the rain without it? Next he thought, I could probably take it away from him. But finally he thought, The guy gave you a cigarette, talked to you, passed his time with you, kept you dry for a while, and you mug him for his umbrella? Schmuck.

He thought all this in the time it took him to take two more drags on the cigarette.

“I hate to ask,” Harold said, not quite able to get the umbrella fantasy out of his mind, “but would you mind standing there while I finish this? A little easier without the rain in my face …” He let his words trail off. The man was shaking his head.

“Sorry. I have to be somewhere.”

“Nah, that’s okay, I understand.” Harold raised the cigarette. “Thanks for the smoke.”

“My pleasure,” the man said.

* * *

“Sladek, Harold R. R for Robert.” The detective flipped through the creased wallet he’d retrieved from Harold’s pocket. There was a long-expired driver’s license from New Jersey; a photograph of Harold, when his hair had been brown; another photograph of Harold and a woman standing next to a white-iced, pink-flowered cake; a stained dollar bill with one corner missing; and an ancient business card, smudged and bent, listing Harold Robert Sladek as Assistant Manager for J.C. Penney, New York.

The detective nudged his partner with his elbow. “Check the bags.”

The younger man bent to look through the plastic bags, still standing in a puddle of water.

At the curb, a uniformed officer, the one who had found Sladek’s body, was coordinating getting the covered corpse into the EMS van. He had radioed for EMS instead of the morgue because he had thought Sladek was still alive.

“… four, five, six magazines, a pullover, a comb, half a … a … I don’t know, I guess it’s a baguette,” the partner said. “A French bread. Whatever.” The detective took notes. “A couple napkins. Bag of Doritos. A WKXW-FM baseball cap.”

“He must have got that at the Turtle Bay street fair,” the detective said. “They were giving them away on Saturday. I got one.”

The partner looked up.

“Never mind,” the detective said. “Go on.”

“One sneaker, no laces. One copy of The Dark Half by Stephen King, paperback, no cover. One plastic cup. A roll of toilet paper. A disposable razor. Three, four, five soda cans, empty. One pocket Bible.” He stopped, glanced around. “That’s it.” The partner noticed the issue of Cosmopolitan that was lying in the corner. He picked it up, shook off a cigarette butt, and held it out to the detective. “One more magazine.”

The detective added it to the list, then flipped his notebook closed and dropped the wet magazine back where it had been lying. He slipped the photos and the business card back into the wallet. “Poor bastard. Guy had a good job once. Had a place to live. Had a family.”

“Once upon a time. What he had now was a baseball cap and six copies of Cosmopolitan magazine. Seven, excuse me.”

“What the hell’s wrong with this city? An old man like this lying dead in a doorway, nobody even calls it in.”

“It’s New York, what do you want?”

“The man’s lying there, dead. An old man, dead on the street, and people just walk past him.”

“This is news to you?”

The detective walked back to the prowl car waiting at the curb. “You know, my father’s name was Harold.”

“Lots of people’s name is Harold, man. Snap out of it. This guy’s not your father. It’s a homeless man was out in the rain too long. Sad story. Unhappy ending. Life goes on.”

“Not for him,” the detective said.

* * *

Angela’s finger hovered over the cigarettes, lined up in three neat rows. Finally, her hand darted out and came back with one clamped between thumb and forefinger.

The man closed the pack, returned it to his pocket, and took out his lighter. Angela cupped her hand around the flame and carefully lit the cigarette. “Thanks,” she said. “Man, what a night.”

The rain had started again. But behind the huge umbrella they were both dry.

“Hey,” she said, “you want to have a little fun … ?” She picked up the hem of her dress, pulled it above her knees. She had a purple mark on the inside of one thigh. For the first time, the man stopped smiling. Angela said, “It’s just a bruise.”

“Thank you, no,” the man said.

Angela shrugged. She drew on the cigarette. Pushed her dress down over her legs again.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Angela,” the man said, standing up. “Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” She watched him back away. “Thanks for the smoke. Come back if you change your mind.”

The man nodded.

“I don’t have any diseases. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No,” the man said. “I’m not worried about your having diseases.”

Something in his voice put her off. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it in the best way. You’re a young woman, Angela. You look very healthy. I’m sure you have no diseases.”

Angela smiled, a fixed, frozen smile that was part arrogance, part fear, and no part happiness. “That’s right. I’m so clean you could eat off me.”

“I’m sure,” the man said. “Good night, Angela.”

* * *

The headline the story carried in the Daily News was only slightly inaccurate: “Runaway Poisoned Behind Penn Station.” Angela Nicholas had not run away. She had been thrown out of her home. Her mother emphasized that point, stabbing it into her husband’s shoulder with her index finger while the man looked down at his hands in his lap and mumbled apologies to her, to himself, to God.

The detective took notes. There had been a fight. There had been many fights. A boy had been the subject of one of the fights. Other boys had been the subject of other fights, or maybe the same boy had. It wasn’t clear. What was clear was that the father had delivered an ultimatum: That boy doesn’t enter this house again or you don’t enter it again.

Angela had brought the boy back. The next day, her clothes were on the sidewalk. She had beaten on the door, crying, and the mother had wanted to let her back in. But her husband had held her back. When they finally opened the door, Angela was gone. When they phoned around to all her friends—even, finally, to the boy, who hung up on them—they couldn’t find her.

Three years later, they found her. No, that wasn’t quite accurate, either: The police had found her. The point was, she had been found. But she had been dead.

Did the police have any idea who had done it? The detective shook his head. He could have told the mother that it had probably been one of Angela’s tricks, but contrary to popular belief in the precinct house, he actually did have a heart. “We currently have no information, Mrs. Nicholas.” Which wasn’t entirely true, since that man, Sladek, had turned out to have been poisoned, too, and with the same poison, so that was—maybe—a starting point. But it was close enough to true. Anyway, he said it.

“How did it happen? How could this happen?”

“We aren’t certain. Our lab is working on it.”

The father finally stirred to life, raising his head, his eyes burning. “You find the man who did this and I’ll kill him.”

“Haven’t you done enough?” Mrs. Nicholas said.

“Do you have a daughter, sergeant?”

“A son,” the detective said.

“Well, if somebody did to your son what somebody did to my daughter,” Mr. Nicholas said, “what would you do?”

I’d kill the son of a bitch, the detective said. To himself. “I’d let the proper authorities handle it.”

Mr. Nicholas shook his head. “With a daughter it’s different.”

* * *

For the first night in a week, it wasn’t raining. The detective looked at the map he’d made, showing the streets from 32nd to 45th on the West Side. The locations where the bodies had been found were marked with red circles. They were spread around—enough so that it didn’t look like there was a pattern. But five homeless people dead in the course of seven weeks? All poisoned? It wasn’t obvious that this was the work of just one person, but that the deaths were connected the detective had no doubt.

He started at the uptown end, the theater district. As you left the streets dominated by Disney marquees, you found the remnants of the old Times Square: novelty shops, import/export storefronts, peep shows, For Rent signs. Plenty of homeless people to talk to.

The detective took his time, walking slowly, keeping his eyes open—for what, he wasn’t sure. He stopped whenever he saw someone sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a street lamp, lying under a filthy quilt in a cardboard box. He introduced himself, asked whether the person had seen anything unusual lately.

Mostly they said no.

One man said, “You not going to get anyone to tell you anything. They too scared.”

“You scared?” the detective asked.

“Bet your ass I’m scared.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t want to end up dead.”

“We all end up dead,” the detective said.

“Not me, man. I’m not ready yet.”

“So why don’t you tell me, who is it that people are scared of?”

The man just shook his head emphatically.

“Why? Why won’t you tell me?”

“Maybe it’s you.”

“For god’s sake, I’m a cop. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“You’re a cop don’t mean nothing. You know that, I know that, everybody know that.”

The detective moved on. Could it be a cop? He thought about it. A frustrated beat cop, maybe, out to clean up the neighborhood in his off time? An old PD hack, about to hit retirement, sick of seeing bums lining the sidewalk? It was possible. He didn’t want to think about it.

Below Port Authority, the number of homeless people dropped to only one or two per block. The detective walked down Eighth Avenue, came back on Broadway, walked down again on Sixth.

At 42nd and Sixth, at the entrance to Bryant Park, a blind man was leaning on a propped-up piece of cardboard lettered with the words, “God Bless You If You Help Me.” He was smoking a long, filter-tipped cigarette. The smoke formed a gray wreath around his face.

“Evening,” the detective said.

“God bless,” the man said. He groped for his cup and then raised it, shaking the coins inside.

“I’m with the police.” The detective squatted next to the man, pulled out his wallet, and put the man’s hand onto his badge. The man’s eyebrows rose and his mouth crinkled into a smile. He put the cup down.

“How are you doing, officer?”

“Could be worse. You?”

“Good night for me,” the man said, hugging himself against the chill. “Most nights nobody talks to me. Tonight you’re the second.”

“Really? Who was the other?”

He thought for a moment. “Man about your age, I’d say. Little older maybe. Pleasant fellow. Talked to me a while, just a minute ago.” He lifted his cigarette. “Gave me a smoke.”

“Nice of him,” the detective said. “Listen, you notice anything out of the ordinary around here lately?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“We’re conducting an investigation.”

“Well, I haven’t seen a thing,” the man said. He laughed softly to himself.

The detective dropped a handful of change into the man’s cup before walking away.

“My lucky day,” the man said, hugging himself tighter. “God bless you.”

* * *

“His name was Michael Casey. He lived off his monthly federal disability check, plus what he picked up panhandling.”

“Damn it!”

“Calm down.”

“I was talking to him last night,” the detective said. “He was sitting next to me, smoking a goddamn cigarette, telling me what a wonderful night it was.”

“You couldn’t have known,” his partner said.

“Sure I could have. I could have figured it out then instead of now. I could have saved his life.”

“We don’t know that.” The partner stopped the car outside Body Beautiful.

The detective got out and walked to the service entrance. The issue of Cosmopolitan was still lying where he had dropped it, crumpled in a dark corner of the doorway. It had dried and hardened and was now stuck to the ground. The detective used a scraper to get it up. Underneath it there was a cigarette butt.

“Bingo.” The detective picked the butt up with a pair of tweezers and dropped it in an evidence baggie. He returned to the car. “I told you there was a cigarette.”

“There are cigarettes on every sidewalk in the city.”

“That’s true, and maybe this one has nothing to do with our case. But I don’t think so. I think that Harold Sladek smoked it. Why? Because the first time we saw it, it was lying on top of that magazine, and the magazine was lying behind his body. Do you think someone came along, smoking, finished his cigarette, and then tossed it over Sladek’s dead body so that it landed on his magazine? I don’t think so.”

“Okay.”

“So: Sladek smoked it. That still doesn’t mean it has something to do with our case. But since we didn’t find any cigarettes in his bags, or even an empty cigarette pack, we can assume that someone else gave the cigarette to him. And we know that someone gave a cigarette to Michael Casey just before he died. And it was the same brand as this one.” He waved the bag in front of his partner’s face.

“Lots of people smoke Chrome Golds.”

“Sure. And lots of homeless people die on the streets. But how many do one right after doing the other? I’ll bet that if we analyze this butt, we’ll find traces of the same poison they found in Sladek’s body.”

“Let’s say you’re right. What would that tell us? We already know Sladek was poisoned.”

“It tells us how it happened.”

“And … ?”

“And now we can get the bastard who did it.”

“What do you want to do, arrest everyone who buys a pack of Chrome Golds?”

The detective didn’t have an answer to that.

“Then what? All we can do is keep cleaning up after the guy and hope that one of these days he’ll try his stunt on the wrong person and get himself shot.”

“No one’s going to shoot a nice old guy who’s offering them a cigarette.”

“You don’t know that,” the partner said. “This is New York.”

* * *

He sat with a blue knit hat pulled down over his forehead, his hands crammed under his armpits, shivering. Even with two shirts on, he was cold. He had a thin blanket, which he had wrapped and rewrapped around himself, trying to make it hold in as much heat as possible. Under the blanket he had a thermos filled with coffee. Every few minutes he took a swallow.

People passed, hurrying from store to store, from home to theater, from street to taxi. He only saw their legs, their hands swinging by their sides, their packages. Sometimes children passed at his eye level and then he saw adult hands snatch the curious faces away from him. He saw car tires and bicycle wheels. As it got later, he saw less and less. By midnight, he saw nothing but a neon sign across the street and patches of sidewalk, dimly lit in the glow of street lamps.

The doorway he sat in, the entrance to a Burger King that was closed for renovation, was relatively roomy: He was able to stretch his legs almost to their full length. Each night for the previous ten he had sat in a different doorway, on a different street. Unlike Harold Sladek, he was not driven by years of habit. But this doorway was more comfortable than the others had been, and that really did make a difference. He started thinking about staying here, at least for the next few nights.

A pair of high-heeled shoes clicked past, speeding up as they passed him. Sometime later, a taxi braked to a halt a few feet away. The driver got out, unzipped his pants, relieved himself against a tree, got back into his car, and drove away. Then nothing, for several hours.

Closer to dawn than midnight, footsteps approached again. They came at a casual pace, and he waited for them to pass, but they didn’t.

“Hello there,” a voice said.

The detective didn’t say anything. But under the blanket, he put the thermos down and picked up his gun.

“Cold night.”

“Sure is,” the detective said.

The feet moved a few steps to one side, then the knees bent, and then a man was sitting next to him. “What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?” the detective asked.

“Arthur,” the man said. “You can call me Art.”

The detective looked at him. He had a friendly face with great unruly eyebrows, a small mouth, good teeth. Good dentures, more likely. He looked like someone’s grandfather. Was this their killer, this harmless-looking man? The detective stared at him and tried to see in him a serial murderer, a cold-blooded exterminator of the homeless. He couldn’t.

Arthur reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you smoke?”

In wide gold letters, the pack said Chrome Gold.

The detective felt his fingers tense under the blanket, felt the weight of the gun in his hand. What would he do if I said no? Would he find some other way to do it? Or would he just go off and pick someone else to kill?

“Sure,” the detective said. “I smoke.”

Arthur flipped open the top of the pack. There were twenty cigarettes inside, lined up in their perfect rows. Which should have been a tip-off that something was wrong, the detective realized: The pack was already unwrapped, but none of the cigarettes were missing. Why would someone have opened a pack of cigarettes but not have smoked even one of them?

He reached out from under the blanket with his free hand, gripped the pack of cigarettes firmly, and pulled it out of Arthur’s hand.

“Now hold on,” Arthur said, not losing his smile. “Leave some for me. I was just offering you one.” He reached for the pack.

“Oh, I won’t smoke them all,” the detective said. “Don’t worry about that.” He turned the pack over and shook the cigarettes out. Arthur caught a few; the rest fell on the pavement. He started scooping them up.

“Don’t bother, Art. You’ve got bigger worries.”

Arthur kept snatching up the loose cigarettes until he heard the gun cock. He looked up and the smile finally disappeared.

The detective moved the gun closer to the other man’s face. “I’m not going to shoot you, Arthur,” he said, “unless you make me.”

Arthur’s face was trembling. His hands shook. A few cigarettes slipped back onto the sidewalk. He looked left and right, but the street was deserted.

“Nervous?” the detective said. He picked two cigarettes off the sidewalk, wiped them roughly on the blanket. He leaned forward and put one between Arthur’s lips. It slipped out as Arthur opened his mouth to talk. “I don’t want—”

“Oh, you want,” the detective said. He leaned forward and put another cigarette in Arthur’s mouth. He pressed the gun against Arthur’s forehead, Arthur’s head against the wall. “Don’t spit it out.”

Arthur shifted the cigarette nervously to one corner of his mouth, but he didn’t spit it out.

“Good.” The detective groped through Arthur’s coat pockets until he found the lighter. He opened it. A flame leapt up. He brought it close to the end of the cigarette in Arthur’s mouth.

“Please, don’t—”

“Why not?”

Arthur shook his head.

“Why not?” Arthur looked at him miserably, but said nothing. “You’re going to tell me why not, Arthur, or you’re going to smoke that cigarette.”

“I don’t want to …”

The detective passed the flame over the end of the cigarette. The paper and tobacco were singed. A drop of sweat rolled down Arthur’s upper lip and onto the cigarette.

“Want me to guess why you don’t want to smoke this cigarette?” the detective said. “Okay. How about, because you poisoned it? Could that be it?”

Arthur nodded uneasily.

“Talk to me, Arthur.”

“Yes,” he said in a small voice. “That’s it.”

“And why are you going around offering homeless people poisoned cigarettes, Arthur? Do you dislike homeless people? Do you not want to see them around? Or do you just get off on killing people?”

“No,” Arthur whispered, “that’s not it at all.”

“Why don’t you tell me what it is, then?”

“They’re so miserable,” Arthur said. There were tears in his eyes. “Out here on the street, in the cold, on drugs, selling their bodies … No one should have to live like that.”

“So you kill them?”

“I give them a cigarette. They feel no pain. They never know what happened. They’re out of their misery.”

“In other words, you kill them.”

“They go to sleep and don’t wake up.”

“You kill them, goddamn it,” the detective said, pressing the gun harder into the man’s skull. “Say it.”

“I kill them,” Arthur said. “But they’re better off for it.”

Arthur and the detective sat silently, staring at each other. The detective saw no sign of understanding or of self-awareness. He saw terror, but no remorse.

He thought of the digital recorder in his pocket, quietly capturing a record of their words, and pictured this grandfatherly man standing in front of a jury, earnestly insisting on his innocence. He looked at Arthur’s well-cut suit and polished loafers, at the watch on his wrist, and pictured the caliber of lawyer he would hire to defend himself. He pictured a trial with no witnesses to the crimes, a case where the victims were on the margins of society and the defendant looked like a pillar of the community. He pictured the defense lawyer asking the jury if they could trust a policeman who had held a gun to this nice old man’s head. Of course he admitted the crime, ladies and gentlemen—wouldn’t you? With a gun to your head?

He pictured Harold Sladek, cold and wet, taking a cigarette from this well-dressed benefactor. He pictured Michael Casey passing time with his killer, thanking him for his kindness, whispering God bless.

He pictured all this in the time it took for Arthur to swallow, nervously, twice.

The detective passed the flame over the cigarette once more. This time he held it there. “Inhale.”

“You can’t—”

“Inhale!”

Arthur sucked in, as briefly as he could. The tip of the cigarette glowed red. The detective closed the lighter and pocketed it.

“Again.”

“Don’t—”

“Again.”

“Please—”

“This is the way it has to be,” the detective said. “You said the stuff you put in the cigarettes is painless. I hope it is, because I guarantee you, bullets are not.” The detective pulled the gun away from Arthur’s head and aimed it at his gut. “Not the way I’ll use them. Take your pick.”

“You’re a monster,” Arthur said, the cigarette gripped tightly between his lips.

“I can live with that,” the detective said. “Now decide.”

Arthur looked at the gun, looked into the detective’s eyes, and inhaled.

“Again,” the detective said.

* * *

When Arthur was dead, the detective packed all the loose cigarettes into one of his bags and then stripped the corpse down to an undershirt and briefs. A press of a button erased the memory of the digital recorder, but just to be safe, he’d record over it when he got home.

He bundled everything up under one arm, pulled his hat further down on his brow, and walked east on 38th Street. It was still dark. No one saw him.

* * *

The body was found shortly after 9 in the morning.

The papers reported that an unidentified homeless man had died during the night, presumably of exposure. In the Daily News it was mentioned that he’d had a thin blanket over him, apparently donated by a good samaritan.

But, the News reported, it hadn’t been enough to keep him alive.

THE LAST SUPPER

BY CAROL LEA BENJAMIN

Greenwich Village

Harry was late. No problem. Esther knew just what to do while she waited, lifting her hand and finally catching the waiter’s eye. He was new, she thought, just a kid, his face eager, as if it really mattered to him what Esther wanted, as if he really cared. Was it a waiter thing, that faux interest? Or just a guy thing, appearing to be listening, to be interested, when they’re not. Harry used to be like that. Harry used to be a lot of things. But no more. She’d see him tonight, give him what he asked for, then never see him again.

Esther pushed her empty glass toward the kid, a relative of Howdy Doody perchance, tapping the table the way you’d tap the bar, let the bartender know you were ready for another, let him know to keep them coming.

“Another Manhattan?” the kid asked, picking up the empty glass. Definitely not Mensa material. Esther nodded. He said he’d be right back.

Yeah, Esther thought. It had taken seventeen minutes to get the first one, the kid everywhere but at her table. She had to remind him, too, then listen politely while he pretended he hadn’t forgotten, while he told her there was a backup at the bar, the place half empty. Maybe she’d insist on paying just so she could stiff him on the tip. No way was Esther going to be here again, no matter what she tipped the kid.

She looked over toward the door to see if Harry had come in. Maybe he was there already, looking around for her, not seeing her sitting in the far corner. But there was no Harry standing at the door, and anyway, the maître d’ would have brought him over. They wouldn’t leave him there on his own. Not Harry. Not at his favorite restaurant.

Esther checked her watch and then adjusted her scarf, the silk one he’d gotten her ten years ago when they were in England, the same kind the queen wore. That was when she was still running the office, still doing Harry’s books. That was before Cheryl.

Peering out into the dark, as dark as New York City ever gets, which is not very, Esther caught her own reflection in the pane, her droopy eyelids, the soft jaw line, her thinning hair, the crosshatching of wrinkles over her pale, thin lips, all the little tricks Mother Nature plays on you as you age, followed by the little tricks your husband plays on you when he notices.

Esther took the little pot of lip gloss out of her purse, dipping one finger in, absentmindedly refreshing the color of her mouth, feeling hungry as soon as she did, checking the door again. Where the fuck was Harry?

Dropping the lip gloss into the inside zippered pocket so that it wouldn’t get lost, Esther took out her pen, then snapped the purse closed. She put the pen on her napkin, where Harry would be sure to see it. She wanted him to know the arguing was over. She wanted him to feel at ease. Enough was enough, Esther thought, turning back once more to look at her reflection. He wanted her to sign the papers, she’d sign the papers. What difference did it make now anyway? Sign them or not, Harry didn’t want her anymore and nothing was going to change that. Anyway, she’d made her decision, and once Esther made up her mind, there was no going back.

When another fifteen minutes had passed and there was still no Harry and still no second Manhattan, Esther began to daydream. Ever since Harry left her, she had been concocting ways to bump him off. In the beginning, it was the only way she could fall asleep, and later on, Esther found it elevated her mood any time of day. Looking out into the night through the oversize windows, Esther thought that might be a pleasant way to spend the time while she waited for the pimply waiter and her bald, overweight, philandering, estranged husband to show up.

When Harry first told her about Cheryl, Cheryl who worked for Harry as she herself had done until recently, Cheryl his bimbo, his chippy, his fiancée and about to be his next wife as soon as Esther signed the papers Harry was bringing along, she would write a new story every night. Lying in bed in the apartment she once shared with Harry, the apartment where she now lived alone, staring at the ceiling unable to sleep, Esther began killing Harry. She stood behind him, unseen, and pushed him in front of the Ninth Avenue bus, off the balcony of their penthouse apartment after he’d come crawling back to her, begging her to forgive him, even off the High Line, the old tram tracks the city kept promising to turn into a public space one day. She watched him die slowly at the hospital of some terrible, painful, incurable, slow-acting disease, and she gained access to the penthouse he shared with Cheryl, that tramp—who names a kid Cheryl, anyway?—and killed him there, tossing Cheryl’s hair dryer into the bathtub, holding a pillow over his face, even shooting him the moment he came home from work, alone, for once, Cheryl doing some retail therapy or getting the liposuction she, Esther, had refused when Harry suggested it. She’d killed him in Washington Square Park, right near the famous arch that all the Japanese tourists came by the busload to see. She’d killed him on the refurbished Christopher Street pier, once a gay sunbathing and pickup site, now a park where you can walk with your aged mother or bring your kids; Esther finding a time when the place was deserted, a time when she could be there alone with Harry and end his life. That’s the thing about stories, Esther thought, unlike real life, you can make them turn out just the way you want them to. Fiction, she’d come to see, was preferable to fact, at least the facts of life as Esther knew them.

Struggling for the peace of mind that would let her sleep, Esther had killed Harry at The Strand, the world’s biggest bookstore, at The White Horse Tavern, one of many places where Dylan Thomas supposedly drank himself to death, at Pastis, the popular restaurant in the meat market where young people talked on their cell phones instead of to each other, and even at one of the few remaining wholesale markets where Harry ended up hanging on one of those nasty-looking meat hooks alongside some hapless cow. There probably wasn’t a place left in the Village that Esther hadn’t used as a venue for killing Harry—not a seedy bar, an after-hours club, a back cottage, a pocket park; not a street, an avenue, a lane, an alley, a square, a mews.

In her desire for sleep, Esther had devised more ways to kill Harry than you could shake a scimitar at, a new one every night for the first three months. But then she saw that it was even more delicious to repeat a favorite story—there were so many of them, all so scrumptiously detailed and satisfying. That’s when she began to name them, then tweak the names, amusing herself with each title change. God knows, she needed a few laughs in her life. A while after that—she had been a bookkeeper, after all—Esther gave them each a number. That’s when “Am I Blue?”—formerly “Tampered”—in which Harry accidentally buys a bottle of Viagra that has been tampered with by a vindictive crazy person and falls down dead just as he’s about to join the voluptuous slut Cheryl under the sheets, that story became “One.” After that, on nights when Esther had done her yoga, taken a hot bath, and washed down an Ambien or two with some of that nice citron vodka she kept in the freezer, on those nights sometimes she could just slip under the comforter, close her eyes, and think “One,” and just like that she’d be off to dreamland. Esther, it seemed, had finally found something she was good at. In her stories she didn’t just murder Harry, she did it with grace, style, and wit, except perhaps for the one where she’d pulled up a loose cobblestone on Jane Street, one of the most charming of Greenwich Village’s many charming blocks, and bashed Harry’s stupid head in. That, of course, was the night he’d told her that he and Cheryl wanted to get married. That, Esther thought, had been the beginning of the end.

What used to work, worked no more. Even Esther’s favorite plots now left her wide awake. For the last month or so, long nights of sleeplessness had turned into longer days of exhaustion, the tiredness pulling on Esther like a double dose of gravity, her heavy legs feeling like tree trunks, her dry skin sallow now, her eyes dull, making Esther plod through her own life without energy and without hope. Friends told her things would get better, that time heals all wounds, or that time wounds all heels, but either way things only got worse, and in the end Esther could see only one way out, only one way to stop her pain.

That very afternoon, Esther had tossed the perishables and taken out the trash for the last time. And on the way to meet Harry, to do this one last thing, she’d packed Louie into his carrier and taken him over to that nice Mrs. Kwan at the deli a block from her apartment, a Korean deli a block or two from everyone’s apartment in Manhattan, and told her that if she kept Louie in the basement, she’d never have a problem with the Department of Health again. Mrs. Kwan had looked inside the bag, startled at first, then laughing, covering her mouth with one hand, nodding yes, thank you, a cat, good idea. Outside the deli, Esther had dropped her keys down a sewer grating, something else she wouldn’t need after her last supper with Harry.

She straightened the pen on her napkin—Esther liked things neat. And when she looked up, as ready as she’d ever be, there was Harry heading toward her. And there was the waiter with her drink as well.

“I ordered you a Manhattan,” she told Harry, pointing to his place setting, letting the waiter know the drink was for him, not her, flapping her hand when he tried to put down the little wooden dish of nuts, motioning him to take it away as Harry pulled out the chair and slipped off his scarf, not the one Esther had given him two years ago, this one from Cheryl. “I think I’ll have one, too,” she told the kid. “A man shouldn’t have to drink alone, should he?”

“Still taking care of me, Esther?” Harry said.

“Old habits die hard.”

Harry nodded without looking at her, snapping his fingers for the waiter to come back, handing him his coat and scarf instead of hanging it on the rack himself the way everyone else did.

“You’re looking good, Esther.” Still not looking at her. “New hairdo?”

Esther smiled. “You noticed,” she said, smoothing the same hair style she’d worn for the last seven years.

“So, my girl said I should bring the papers, Esther. I was quite surprised. Have you changed your mind? Have you decided … ?”

The kid brought Esther’s Manhattan and gave them each a menu. Esther lifted her glass. “To your future, Harry,” she said, waiting for him to lift his glass, listening to the sound of the glasses as they touched, remembering the champagne she always shared with Harry on their anniversaries, the little robin’s-egg-blue box with the white satin bow he’d slip out of his pocket, at least until the last few anniversaries, the one when he was away, the one he just forgot, and the last one, the one he spent with Cheryl.

Harry picked up his menu, and the moment he put it down, the damn kid appeared, that shit-eating grin on his face.

“I’ll start with the risotto,” Harry told him, more interested in what he was going to eat for dinner than he was in Esther. “And then the steak, medium rare.”

He didn’t even ask Esther what she was going to have. But the kid was looking at her, waiting. That was as good as it was going to get around here, Esther thought, waving her hand back and forth. “Nothing for me.”

“Esther,” Harry said. “Come on. Have a bite.”

“I’m on that diet you kept talking about, Harry.”

“The liquid diet?”

Esther picked up her drink. “Yes, Harry, that one.”

Why was it always Esther who was supposed to go on a diet? Didn’t Harry ever look at himself in the mirror? But Cheryl didn’t mind. She loved Harry just the way he was, old enough to be her father, fat enough to play Santa without padding, and with an income in the neighborhood of two million a year, give or take. Esther figured Harry was doing the giving, Cheryl the taking, as much of it as she could.

If Esther thought Harry would have trouble eating in front of her, she would have been sorely mistaken. But then again, she’d been mistaken about so many things, hadn’t she? And what did it matter now anyway?

After a third Manhattan, the second that Harry knew about, she decided to let Harry pay the bill. The kid didn’t seem so bad anymore. Let Harry leave him a big tip. Esther no longer cared. She excused herself to go to the ladies’ room while Harry looked at the dessert menu. When she got back, no sooner had she sat down when Harry took the agreement out of his pocket and handed it across the table.

“Cheryl and I …” he began, then changed his mind. “I really appreciate this, Esther. And I’m sure you’ll agree I’ve been generous. There’s more than enough—”

He stopped again when she held up a hand. “Water under the bridge, Harry.” She picked up the pen, signed and initialed wherever it was indicated to do so, then folded the document and handed it back to her husband.

“Ready?” he asked, anxious to go now, anxious to get home to Cheryl and show her the signed papers, open a bottle of champagne, toast to their future. Esther nodded. She’d given him what he wanted. That was what this dinner had been about and she’d done it. Esther dabbed on some lip gloss and stood, picking up her coat from the back of her chair, slipping it on without Harry’s assistance, as the kid helped Harry into his coat, a new one, Esther noted, perhaps another gift from Cheryl, a gift paid for with Harry’s money.

Still, she took his arm as they left the restaurant, the way she always used to. It felt good. It felt right, and besides, the streets were slippery and she didn’t want to fall. She’d left her boots back at the apartment. She’d wanted to look nice tonight, her last night with Harry. They walked a block north, to Jane Street, and Esther looked down at the cobblestones showing in patches where the traffic had melted the snow. Twenty-two, she thought as they crossed the street, the one where she’d killed Harry with a loose cobblestone. Why had she been so foolish, living on fantasies of revenge instead of moving on with her life?

“I’d like to go on alone,” she said when they arrived at the next corner.

Harry patted his coat where the signed papers would be in the inside pocket of his jacket. “Thank you, Esther. You always were a good sport.”

“Kiss me goodbye, Harry. Kiss me as if it were the last time.”

Harry bent. Esther got up on her toes. Harry was surprised at the force of her kiss, how tightly she held him, and then at the sight of the tears in her eyes when she finally stepped back.

He headed east, toward the bus stop on Greenwich Street. Esther shook her head. She knew him so well. There probably wasn’t a thing about Harry she didn’t know, including where he’d be generous and exactly where he’d scrimp. As if you could take it with you, she thought, lifting her arm to hail a cab.

Actually, it would be Esther taking it with her, all the money she’d embezzled from him all those years as his bookkeeper, a thousand here, a thousand there. It had added up to quite a sum in the twenty-eight years she’d run her husband’s office and done his books.

Esther checked her watch. Feeling a bit lightheaded, she regretted for the moment that she hadn’t eaten, the food on the plane would be so bad. But then she remembered that her ticket was first class. The food might not be so bad after all, and they’d be pouring champagne even before takeoff. She saw a cab a few blocks away and reached into her purse for the little pot of lip gloss and dropped it, along with the syringe of epinephrine she’d taken from Harry’s pocket when she’d hugged him, between the grates of the sewer, two more things she wouldn’t need again.

The cab pulled up and Esther settled herself in the backseat, telling the driver to take her to JFK. Everything was right on schedule. She had plenty of time to catch her flight, the bus wouldn’t be at the corner of Greenwich and Horatio Streets for another five or six minutes, and by that time Harry would be dead.

Nine, Esther said to herself, eyes closed, smiling, the one first called “Nut Allergy” and then “Nuts to You,” the one in which Esther adds peanut oil to her lip gloss and kills Harry with a kiss. It had always been her very favorite.

IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT

BY LAWRENCE BLOCK

Clinton

She felt his eyes on her just about the time the bartender placed a Beck’s coaster on the bar and set her dry Rob Roy on top of it. She wanted to turn and see who was eyeing her, but remained as she was, trying to analyze just what it was she felt. She couldn’t pin it down physically, couldn’t detect a specific prickling of the nerves in the back of her neck. She simply knew she was being watched, and that the watcher was a male.

It was, to be sure, a familiar sensation. Men had always looked at her. Since adolescence, since her body had begun the transformation from girl to woman? No, longer than that. Even in childhood, some men had looked at her, gazing with admiration and, often, with something beyond admiration.

In Hawley, Minnesota, thirty miles east of the North Dakota line, they’d looked at her like that. The glances followed her to Red Cloud and Minneapolis, and now she was in New York, and, no surprise, men still looked at her.

She lifted her glass, sipped, and a male voice said, “Excuse me, but is that a Rob Roy?”

He was standing to her left, a tall man, slender, well turned out in a navy blazer and gray trousers. His shirt was a button-down, his tie diagonally striped. His face, attractive but not handsome, was youthful at first glance, but she could see he’d lived some lines into it. And his dark hair was lightly infiltrated with gray.

“A dry Rob Roy,” she said. “Why?”

“In a world where everyone orders Cosmopolitans,” he said, “there’s something very pleasingly old-fashioned about a girl who drinks a Rob Roy. A woman, I should say.”

She lowered her eyes to see what he was drinking.

“I haven’t ordered yet,” he said. “Just got here. I’d have one of those, but old habits die hard.” And when the barman moved in front of him, he ordered Jameson on the rocks. “Irish whiskey,” he told her. “Of course, this neighborhood used to be mostly Irish. And tough. It was a pretty dangerous place a few years ago. A young woman like yourself wouldn’t feel comfortable walking into a bar unaccompanied, not in this part of town. Even accompanied, it was no place for a lady.”

“I guess it’s changed a lot,” she said.

“It’s even changed its name,” he said. His drink arrived, and he picked up his glass and held it to the light, admiring the amber color. “They call it Clinton now. That’s for DeWitt Clinton, not Bill. DeWitt was the governor awhile back, he dug the Erie Canal. Not personally, but he got it done. And there was George Clinton, he was the governor, too, for seven terms starting before the adoption of the Constitution. And then he had a term as vice president. But all that was before your time.”

“By a few years,” she allowed.

“It was even before mine,” he said. “But I grew up here, just a few blocks away, and I can tell you nobody called it Clinton then. You probably know what they called it.”

“Hell’s Kitchen,” she said. “They still call it that, when they’re not calling it Clinton.”

“Well, it’s more colorful. It was the real estate interests who plumped for Clinton, because they figured nobody would want to move to something called Hell’s Kitchen. And that may have been true then, when people remembered what a bad neighborhood this was, but now it’s spruced up and gen-trified and yuppified to within an inch of its life, and the old name gives it a little added cachet. A touch of gangster chic, if you know what I mean.”

“If you can’t stand the heat—”

“Stay out of the Kitchen,” he supplied. “When I was growing up here, the Westies pretty much ran the place. They weren’t terribly efficient like the Italian mob, but they were colorful and bloodthirsty enough to make up for it. There was a man two doors down the street from me who disappeared, and they never did find the body. Except one of his hands turned up in somebody’s freezer on 53rd Street and Eleventh Avenue. They wanted to be able to put his fingerprints on things long after he was dead and gone.”

“Would that work?”

“With luck,” he said, “we’ll never know. The Westies are mostly gone now, and the tenement apartments they lived in are all tarted up, with stockbrokers and lawyers renting them. Which are you?”

“Me?”

“A stockbroker or a lawyer?”

She grinned. “Neither one, I’m afraid. I’m an actress.”

“Even better.”

“Which means I take a class twice a week,” she said, “and run around to open casting calls and auditions.”

“And wait tables?”

“I did some of that in the Cities. I suppose I’ll have to do it again here, when I start to run out of money.”

“The Cities?”

“The Twin Cities. Minneapolis and St. Paul.”

They talked about where she was from, and along the way he told her his name was Jim. She was Jennifer, she told him. He related another story about the neighborhood—he was really a pretty good storyteller—and by then her Rob Roy was gone and so was his Jameson. “Let me get us another round,” he said, “and then why don’t we take our drinks to a table? We’ll be more comfortable, and it’ll be quieter.”

* * *

He was talking about the neighborhood.

“Irish, of course,” he said, “but that was only part of it. You had blocks that were pretty much solid Italian, and there were Poles and other Eastern Europeans. A lot of French, too, working at the restaurants in the theater district. You had everything, really. The UN’s across town on the East River, but you had your own General Assembly here in the Kitchen. Fifty-seventh Street was a dividing line; north of that was San Juan Hill, and you had a lot of blacks living there. It was an interesting place to grow up, if you got to grow up, but no sweet young thing from Minnesota would want to move here.”

She raised her eyebrows at sweet young thing, and he grinned at her. Then his eyes turned serious and he said, “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?”

“I followed you in here.”

“You mean you noticed me even before I ordered a Rob Roy?”

“I saw you on the street. And for a moment I thought …”

“What?”

“Well, that you were on the street.”

“I guess I was, if that’s where you saw me. I don’t … Oh, you thought—”

“That you were a working girl. I wasn’t going to mention this, and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way …”

What, she wondered, was the right way?

“… because it’s not as though you looked the part, or were dressed like the girls you see out there. See, the neighborhood may be tarted up, but that doesn’t mean the tarts have disappeared.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“It was more the way you were walking,” he went on. “Not swinging your hips, not your walk, per se, but a feeling I got that you weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere, or even all that sure where you were going.”

“I was thinking about stopping for a drink,” she said, “and not sure if I wanted to, or if I should go straight home.”

“That would fit.”

“And I’ve never been in here before, and wondered if it was decent.”

“Well, it’s decent enough now. A few years ago it wouldn’t have been. And even now, a woman alone—”

“I see.” She sipped her drink. “So you thought I might be a hooker, and that’s what brought you in here. Well, I hate to disappoint you—”

“What brought me in here,” he said, “was the thought that you might be, and the hope that you weren’t.”

“I’m not.”

“I know.”

“I’m an actress.”

“And a good one, I’ll bet.”

“I guess time will tell.”

“It generally does,” he said. “Can I get you another one of those?”

She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “I was only going to come in for one drink, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do that. And I’ve had two, and that’s really plenty.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s not just the alcohol, it’s the time. I have to get home.”

“I’ll walk you.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary.”

“Yes, it is. Whether it’s Hell’s Kitchen or Clinton, it’s still necessary.”

“Well …”

“I insist. It’s safer around here than it used to be, but it’s a long way from Minnesota. And I suppose you get some unsavory characters in Minnesota, as far as that goes.”

“Well, you’re right about that.” At the door she added, “I just don’t want you to think you have to walk me home because I’m a lady.”

“I’m not walking you home because you’re a lady,” he said. “I’m walking you home because I’m a gentleman.”

* * *

The walk to her door was interesting. He had stories to tell about half the buildings they passed. There’d been a murder in this one, a notorious drunk in the next. And though some of the stories were unsettling, she felt completely secure walking at his side.

At her door he said, “Any chance I could come up for a cup of coffee?”

“I wish,” she said.

“I see.”

“I’ve got this roommate,” she said. “It’s impossible, it really is. My idea of success isn’t starring on Broadway, it’s making enough money to have a place of my own. There’s just no privacy when she’s home, and the damn girl is always home.”

“That’s a shame.”

She drew a breath. “Jim? Do you have a roommate?”

* * *

He didn’t, and if he had, the place would still have been spacious enough to afford privacy. A large living room, a big bedroom, a good-sized kitchen. Rent-controlled, he told her, or he could never have afforded it. He showed her all through the apartment before he took her in his arms and kissed her.

“Maybe,” she said, when the embrace ended, “maybe we should have one more drink after all.”

* * *

She was dreaming, something confused and confusing, and then her eyes snapped open. For a moment she did not know where she was, and then she realized she was in New York, and realized the dream had been a recollection or reinvention of her childhood in Hawley.

In New York, and in Jim’s apartment.

And in his bed. She turned, saw him lying motionless beside her, and slipped out of bed, moving with instinctive caution. She walked quietly out of the bedroom, found the bathroom. She used the toilet, peeked behind the shower curtain. The tub was surprisingly clean for a bachelor’s apartment and looked inviting. She didn’t feel soiled, not exactly that, but something close. Stale, she decided. Stale, and very much in need of freshening.

She ran the shower, adjusted the temperature, stepped under the spray.

She hadn’t intended to stay over, had fallen asleep in spite of her intentions. Rohypnol, she thought. Roofies, the date-rape drug. Puts you to sleep, or the closest thing to it, and leaves you with no memory of what happened to you.

Maybe that was it. Maybe she’d gotten a contact high.

She stepped out of the tub, toweled herself dry, and returned to the bedroom for her clothes. He hadn’t moved in her absence and lay on his back beneath the covers.

She got dressed, checked herself in the mirror, found her purse, put on lipstick but no other makeup, and was satisfied with the results. Then, after another reflexive glance at the bed, she began searching the apartment.

His wallet, in the gray slacks he’d tossed over the back of a chair, held almost three hundred dollars in cash. She took that but left the credit cards and everything else. She found just over a thousand dollars in his sock drawer, and took it, but left the mayonnaise jar full of loose change. She checked the refrigerator, and the set of brushed-aluminum containers on the kitchen counter, but the fridge held only food and drink, and one container held tea bags while the other two were empty.

That was probably it, she decided. She could search more thoroughly, but she’d only be wasting her time.

And she really ought to get out of here.

But first she had to go back to the bedroom. Had to stand at the side of the bed and look down at him. Jim, he’d called himself. James John O’Rourke, according to the cards in his wallet. Forty-seven years old. Old enough to be her father, in point of fact, although the man in Hawley who’d sired her was his senior by eight or nine years.

He hadn’t moved.

Rohypnol, she thought. The love pill.

“Maybe,” she had said, “we should have one more drink after all.”

I’ll have what you’re having, she’d told him, and it was child’s play to add the drug to her own drink, then switch glasses with him. Her only concern after that had been that he might pass out before he got his clothes off, but no, they kissed and petted and found their way to his bed, and got out of their clothes and into each other’s arms, and it was all very nice, actually, until he yawned and his muscles went slack and he lay limp in her arms.

She arranged him on his back and watched him sleep. Then she touched and stroked him, eliciting a response without waking the sleeping giant. Rohypnol, the wonder drug, facilitating date rape for either sex. She took him in her mouth, she mounted him, she rode him. Her orgasm was intense, and it was hers alone. He didn’t share it, and when she dismounted his penis softened and lay upon his thigh.

* * *

In Hawley her father took to coming into her room at night. “Jenny? Are you sleeping?” If she answered, he’d kiss her on the forehead and tell her to go back to sleep.

Then half an hour later he’d come back. If she was asleep, if she didn’t hear him call her name, he’d slip into the bed with her. And touch her, and kiss her, and not on her forehead this time.

She would wake up when this happened, but somehow knew to feign sleep. And he would do what he did.

Before long she pretended to be asleep whenever he came into the room. She’d hear him ask if she was asleep, and she’d lie there silent and still, and he’d come into her bed. She liked it, she didn’t like it. She loved him, she hated him.

Eventually they dropped the pretense. Eventually he taught her how to touch him, and how to use her mouth on him. Eventually, eventually, there was very little they didn’t do.

* * *

It took some work, but she got Jim hard again and made him come. He moaned audibly at the very end, then subsided into deep sleep almost immediately. She was exhausted, she felt as if she’d taken a drug herself, but she forced herself to go to the bathroom and look for some Listerine. She couldn’t find any, and wound up gargling with a mouthful of his Irish whiskey.

She stopped in the kitchen, then returned to the bedroom. When she’d done what she needed to do, she decided it wouldn’t hurt to lie down beside him and close her eyes. Just for a minute …

* * *

And now it was morning, time for her to get out of there. She stood looking down at him, and for an instant she seemed to see his chest rise and fall with his slow even breathing, but that was just her mind playing a trick, because his chest was in fact quite motionless, and he wasn’t breathing at all. His breathing had stopped forever when she slid the kitchen knife between two of his ribs and into his heart.

He’d died without a sound. La petite mort, the French called an orgasm. The little death. Well, the little death had drawn a moan from him, but the real thing turned out to be soundless. His breathing stopped, and never resumed.

She laid a hand on his upper arm, and the coolness of his flesh struck her as a sign that he was at peace now. She thought, almost wistfully, how very serene he had become.

In a sense, there’d been no need to kill the man. She could have robbed him just as effectively while he slept, and the drug would ensure that he wouldn’t wake up before she was out the door. She’d used the knife in response to an inner need, and the need had been an urgent one; satisfying it had shuttled her right off to sleep.

She had never used a knife, or anything else, in Hawley. She’d considered it, and more than once. But in the end all she did was leave. No final scene, no note, nothing. Out the door and on the first Trailways bus out of there, and that was that.

Maybe everything else would have been different if she’d left her father as peaceful as she was leaving James John O’Rourke. But had that ever been an option? Could she have done it, really?

Probably not.

* * *

She let herself out of the apartment, drew the door shut, and made sure it locked behind her. The building was a walk-up, four apartments to the floor, and she walked down three flights and out the door without encountering anyone.

Time to think about moving.

Not that she’d established a pattern. The man last week, in the posh loft near the Javits Center, she had smothered to death. He’d been huge, and built like a wrestler, but the drug rendered him helpless, and all she’d had to do was hold the pillow over his face. He didn’t come close enough to consciousness to struggle. And the man before that, the advertising executive, had shown her why he’d feel safe in any neighborhood, gentrification or no. He kept a loaded handgun in the drawer of the bedside table, and if any burglar was unlucky enough to drop into his place, well—

When she was through with him, she’d retrieved the gun, wrapped his hand around it, put the barrel in his mouth, and squeezed off a shot. They could call it a suicide, just as they could call the wrestler a heart attack, if they didn’t look too closely. Or they could call all three of them murders, without ever suspecting they were all the work of the same person.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt her to move. Find another place to live before people started to notice her on the streets and in the bars. She liked it here, in Clinton, or Hell’s Kitchen, whatever you wanted to call it. It was a nice place to live, whatever it may have been in years past. But, as she and Jim had agreed, the whole of Manhattan was a nice place to live. There weren’t any bad neighborhoods left, not really.

Wherever she went, she was pretty sure she’d feel safe.

RAIN

BY THOMAS H. COOK

Battery Park

Aburst of light releases the million eyes of the rain, glimpsing the Gothic towers in dark mist, falling in glittering streams of briefly reflected light, moving inland, toward the blunt point of the island, an outbound ferry as it loads for the midnight run.

So like I said before, it ain’t like she has long, you know?

Yeah, mon. She just hangin’ on now.

Rain streaks down the ferry’s windows where the night riders sit in yellow haze––Toby McBride only one among them, single, forty-two, the bowling alley in trouble, thinking of his invalid mother on Staten Island, money leaching away, watching her Jamaican nurse, such big black hands, how easy it would be.

I figure you could use twenty grand, right?

Twenty, huh?

* * *

The rain falls on intrigue and conspiracy, trap doors, underground escape routes, the crude implements of quick getaways. It collects the daily grime from the face of the Custom House and sends it swirling into the vast underground drains that empty into the sea. Along the sweep of Battery Park it smashes against crumpled cigarette packets, soaks a broken shoelace, flows into a half-used tube of lipstick, drives a young woman beneath a tattered awning, blond hair, shoulder-length, with a stuck umbrella, struggling to open it, a man behind her, sunk in the shadows, his voice a tremble in the air.

You live in this building?

Long, dark fingers still the umbrella, curl around its mahogany handle.

Name’s Rebecca, right?

The rain sees the fickle web of chance meetings, the grid of untimely intersections, lethal fortuities from which there will be no escape. A million tiny flashing screens reflect stilettos and box cutters, switchblades and ice picks, the snub-nosed barrel that stares out from its nest of long dark fingers.

Don’t say a word.

* * *

Off West Street the rain falls on the deserted pit of the ghostly towers, and moves on, cascading down the skeletal girders of the new construction, then further north, to Duane Street, thudding against the roof of an old green van.

So, when you get here, Sammy?

Don’t worry. I’ll be there.

Eddie squeezes the cell phone, glances back toward the rear of the van, speakers, four DVD players, two car radios, a cashmere overcoat, a shoebox of CDs, some jewelry that might be real, the bleak fruit of the hustle.

I need you here now, man.

You that hyped?

Now, man.

* * *

In the gutters, the rushing rain washes cigarette butts and candy wrappers, a note with the number 484 in watery ink, a hat shop receipt, a prescription label for Demerol. It washes down grimy windshields and as it washes, sees the pop-eyed and the drowsy, the hazy and the alert, Eddie scratching his skinny arms, Detective Boyle in the unmarked car a block away, playing back the tape, grinning at his partner as he listens to the voices on the ferry.

We got McBride dead to rights, Frank.

A laugh.

That fucking Jamaican. Jeez, does he know how to work a wire.

* * *

At Police Plaza, the wind shifts, driving eastward, battering the building’s small square windows, a thudding rumble that briefly draws Max Feldman from the photographs on his desk, Lynn Abercrombie sprawled across the floor of her Tribeca apartment, shot once with a snub-nosed .38, no real clues, save the fact that she lay on her back, with a strand of long blond hair over the right eye, maybe by a fan of Veronica Lake, some sick aficionado of the noir.

The rain falls upon the tangle of steel and concrete, predator and prey. It slaps the baseball cap of Jerry Brice, as he waits for Hattie Jones, knowing it was payday at the all- night laundry, her purse full of cash. It mars Sammy Kaminsky’s view of Dolly Baron’s bedroom window, and foils the late-night entertainment of a thousand midnight peepers.

On Houston Street, it falls on people drawn together by the midnight storm, huddled beneath shelters, Herman Devane crowded into a bus refuge, drunk college girls all around him, that little brunette in the red beret, her body naked beneath her clothes, so naked and so close, the touch so quick, so easy, to brush against her then step back, blame it on the rain.

* * *

Lightning, then thunder rolling northward, over Bleecker Street, past clubs and taverns, faces bathed in neon light, nodding to the beat of piano, bass, drums, the late-night riff of jazz trios.

Ernie Gorsh taps his foot lightly beneath the table.

Not a bad piano.

Jack Plato, fidgeting, toying with the napkin beneath his drink, a lot on his mind, time like a blade swinging over his head.

Fuck the piano. You hear me, Ern? 484 Duane. A little jewelry store. Easy. I cased it this afternoon.

Ernie Gosch listens to the piano.

Jack Plato, slick black hair, sipping whiskey, cocksure about the plans, the schedule, where the cameras are.

Paulie Cerrello’s backing the operation. A safe man is all we need. Christ, it’s a sure thing, Ern.

Ernie Gorsh, gray hair peeping from beneath his gray felt hat, just out of the slammer, not ready to go back.

Nothing’s ever sure, Jack.

It is if you got the balls.

It is if you don’t got the brains.

Plato, offended, squirming, a deal going south, Paulie will be pissed. No choice now but play the bluff.

Take it or leave it, old man.

Ernie, thinking of his garden, the seeds he’s already bought for spring, seeds in packets, nestled in his jacket pocket, thinking of the slammer, too, how weird it is now, gangs, Aryans, Muslims, fag cons raping kids in the shower, deciding not to go back.

Sorry, Jack. Rising. I got a bus to catch.

* * *

The eyes of the rain see the value of experience, the final stop of crooked roads. It falls on weariness and dread, the iron bars of circumstance, the way out that looks easy, comes with folded money, glassine bags of weed, tinfoil cylinders stuffed with white powder, floor plans of small jewelry stores, with x’s where the cameras are.

* * *

At 8th Street and Sixth Avenue, Tracey Olson leaves a cardboard box on the steps of Jefferson Market. Angelo and Luis watch her rush away from inside a red BMW boosted on Avenue A, the rain thudding hard on its roof.

You see that?

Wha?

That fucking girl.

What about her?

She left a box on the steps there.

What about it?

That all you can say, whataboutitwhataboutit?

Luis steps out into the rain, toward the box, the tiny cries he hears now.

Jesus. Jesus Christ.

* * *

On 23rd, the rain slams against the windows of pizza parlors and Mexican restaurants, Chinese joints open all night.

Sal and Frankie. Sweet and sour pork. Moo goo gai pan.

So, the guy, what’d he do?

What they always do.

He ask how old?

I told him eighteen.

Sal and Frankie giggling about the suits from the suburbs, straight guys who dole out cash for their sweet asses then take the PATH home to their pretty little wives.

Where was he from?

Who cares? He’s a dead man now.

That plum sauce, you eatin’ that?

* * *

At Broadway and 34th, the million eyes of the rain smash against the dusty windows of the rag trade, Lennie Mack at his desk, ledgers open, refiguring the numbers, wiping his moist brow with the rolled sleeves of his shirt, wondering how Old Man Siegelman got suspicious, threatening to call in outside auditors, what he has to do before that call is made … do for Rachel, and the two kids in college, do because it was just a little at the beginning. Jesus, two-hundred fifty thousand now. Too much to hide. He closes the ledger, sits back in his squeaky chair, thinks it through again … what he has to do.

* * *

From Times Square, the gusts drive northward, slanting lines of rain falling like bullets, exploding against the black pavement, the cars and buses still on Midtown streets, Jaime Rourke on the uptown 104, worrying about Tracy, what she might do with the baby, seated next to an old guy in a gray felt hat fingering packets of garden seed.

So I guess you got a garden.

My building has little plots. A smile. My daughter thinks I should plant a garden.

Eddie Gorsh sits back, relaxed, content in his decision, grateful to his daughter, how, because of her, there’ll be no more sure things.

Daughters are like that, you know. They make you have a little sense.

* * *

Near 59th and Fifth, a gust lifts the awning of the San Domenico. Dim light in the bar. Bartender in a black bolero jacket.

Amanda Graham. Martini, very dry, four olives. Black dress, sleeveless, Mikimoto pearls. Deidre across the small marble table. Manhattan. Straight up.

Paulie’s going to find out, Mandy.

Amanda sips her drink. How?

He has ways.

A dismissive wave. He’s not Nostradamus.

Close enough. And for what? Some nobody.

He’s not a nobody. He plays piano. A nice gig. On Bleecker Street.

My point exactly.

Amanda nibbles the first olive. What do you really think Paulie would do?

Deidre sips her drink.

Kill you.

Amanda’s olive drops into the crystal glass, ripples the vodka and vermouth. The smooth riffs of Bleecker Street grow dissonant and fearful.

You really think he would?

* * *

Over the nightbound city, the rain falls upon uncertainty and fear, the nervous tick of unsettled outcomes, things in the air, motions not yet completed. At 72nd and Broadway, it sweeps along windows coiled in neon, decorated with bottles of ale and pasted with green shamrocks.

Captain Beals. Single malt scotch. Glenfiddich. Detective Burke with Johnny Walker Black. A stack of photographs on the bar between them. Fat man. Bald. 3849382092.

This the last one?

Yeah. Feldman thinks it’s a long shot, but the guy lives in Tribeca, and it seems pretty clear the killer lives there too.

A quick nod.

His name is Harry Devane. Lives in Windsor Apartments. Just a couple buildings down from Lynn Abercrombie. Four blocks from Tiana Matthews. Been out four years.

What’s his story?

He works his way up to it by flashing, or maybe just rubbing against a girl. You know, in the subway, elevator, crap like that.

Then what?

Then he … gets violent.

How violent?

So far, assault. But pretty bad ones. The last time, the girl nearly died. He got seven years.

Ever used a gun?

No.

A sip of Glenfiddich.

Then he’s not our man.

* * *

At 93rd and Amsterdam, the rain sweeps in waves down the tavern window, Paulie Cerrello watching Jack Plato step out of the cab, taking a sip from his glass as Plato comes through the door, slapping water from his leather jacket.

Fucking storm. Jesus.

So? Gorsh?

I showed him everything. The whole deal.

And?

He ain’t in, Paulie. He’s scared of the slammer.

Paulie knocks back the drink, unhappy with the scheme of things, some old geezer scared of the slammer, the whole deal a bust.

So what now, Paulie? You want I should get another guy?

A shake of the head.

No, I got another problem.

He nods for one more shot.

You know my wife, right?

* * *

The rain sees no way out, no right decision, nothing that can slow the encroaching vise. It falls on bad judgment and poor choice and the clenched fist of things half thought through. At Park and 104th, it slaps against a closing window, water on the ledge dripping down onto the bare floor.

Shit.

Charlie Landrew tosses his soggy hat onto the small wooden table that is his office and dining room. Misses. The hat now on the frayed rug beneath the table.

Shit.

Leaves it.

Phone.

Yeah?

Charlie, it’s me. Lennie.

This fucking storm flooded my goddamn apartment. Water all over the fucking floor.

Listen, Charlie. I need to borrow some cash. You know, from the guy you … from him.

A hard laugh.

You barely got away with your thumbs last time, Lennie.

But I made good, that’s all that matters, right?

How much?

Twenty-five.

Charlie thinks. Old accounts. Too many of them. Past due. Lots of heavy leaning ahead. And if the leaning doesn’t work, and somebody skips? His neck in a noose already.

So what about it, Charlie?

Not a hard decision.

No.

* * *

The rain sees last options, called bluffs, final scores, silenced bells, snuffed candles, books abruptly closed. At Broadway and 110th, the windshield wipers screech as they toss it from the glass.

Listen to that, will ya?

Yeah, what a piece of shit.

A fucking BMW, and shit wipers like that.

Might as well be a goddamn Saturn.

The box shifts slightly on Luis’s lap.

I think it’s taking a crap, Angelo.

So?

So? What if it craps through the box?

It won’t crap through the box.

Okay, so it don’t. What we gonna do?

I’m thinking.

You been thinking since we left the Village.

So what’s your idea, Luis? And don’t say cops, because we ain’t showing up at no cop-house with a fucking stolen car and a baby we don’t know whose it is.

A leftward glance, toward a looming spire.

A church. Maybe a church.

* * *

The rain falls on quick solutions, available means, a way out that relieves the burden. It falls on homeless shelters and SROs and into the creaky, precariously hanging drains of old cathedrals.

At 112th and Broadway, a blast of wind hits as the bus’ hydraulic doors open.

Eddie Gorsh rises.

Good luck with the garden.

A smile back at the kid.

Thanks.

I got a daughter, too.

Then take care of her, and maybe she’ll take care of you.

Out onto the rain-pelted sidewalk, head down, toward the building, Edna waiting for him there, relieved to have him back, the years they have left, a road he’s determined to keep straight. This, he knows, will make Rebecca happy, and that is all he’s after now.

* * *

The rain moves on, northward, toward the Bronx, leaving behind new beginnings, things learned, lessons applied. At 116th and Broadway, Jamie Rourke steps out into the million, million drops, thinking of Tracey and his daughter, how he shouldn’t have said what he said, made her mad, determined to call her now, tell her how everything is going to be okay, how it’s going to be the three of them against the world, a family.

* * *

The rain falls on lost hopes and futile resolutions, redemptions grasped too late, fanciful solutions. At 116th and Broadway, it falls on Barney Siegelman as he steps out of a taxi, convinced now that his son-in-law is a crook, news he has to break to his wife, his daughter, the whole sorry scheme of things unmasked. He rushes toward the front of his building, feels his feet slosh through an unexpected stream of water. He stops beneath the awning of his building and follows the rushing tide up the sidewalk to Our Lady of Silence, where a cardboard box lays beneath a ruptured drain, a torrent gushing from its cracked mouth, filling the box with water, then over its sodden sides and down the concrete stairs, flooding the sidewalk with the stream that splashes around Siegelman’s newly polished shoes. He shakes his head. Tomorrow he’ll have to have them shined all over again. He peers toward the church, the stairs, the shattered drain pipe, the overflowing box beneath it. Disgusting, he thinks, the way people leave their trash.

A NICE PLACE TO VISIT

BY JEFFERY DEAVER

Hell’s Kitchen

When you’re a natural-born grifter, an operator, a player, you get this sixth sense for sniffing out opportunities, and that’s what Ricky Kelleher was doing now, watching two guys in the front of the smoky bar, near a greasy window that still had a five-year-old bullet hole in it.

Whatever was going down, neither of them looked real happy.

Ricky kept watching. He’d seen one guy here in Hanny’s a couple of times. He was wearing a suit and tie—it really made him stand out in this dive, the sore thumb thing. The other one, leather jacket and tight jeans, razor-cut bridge-and-tunnel hair, was some kind of Gambino wannabe, Ricky pegged him. Or Sopranos, more likely—yeah, he was the sort of prick who’d hock his wife for a big-screen TV. He was way pissed off, shaking his head at everything Mr. Suit was telling him. At one point he slammed his fist on the bar so hard glasses bounced. But nobody noticed. That was the kind of place Hanny’s was.

Ricky was in the rear, at the short L of the bar, his regular throne. The bartender, a dusty old guy, maybe black, maybe white, you couldn’t tell, kept an uneasy eye on the guys arguing. “It’s cool,” Ricky reassured him. “I’m on it.”

Mr. Suit had a briefcase open. A bunch of papers were inside. Most of the business in this pungent, dark Hell’s Kitchen bar involved trading bags of chopped-up plants and cases of Johnny Walker that’d fallen off the truck; the transactions were conducted in either the men’s room or alley out back. This was something different. Skinny, five-foot-four Ricky couldn’t tip to exactly what was going down, but that magic sense, his player’s eye, told him to pay attention.

“Well, fuck that,” Wannabe said to Mr. Suit.

“Sorry.” A shrug.

“Yeah, you said that before.” Wannabe slid off the stool. “But you don’t really sound that fucking sorry. And you know why? Because I’m the one out all the money.”

“Bullshit. I’m losing my whole fucking business.”

But Ricky’d learned that other people losing money doesn’t take the sting out of you losing money. Way of the world.

Wannabe was getting more and more agitated. “Listen careful here, my friend. I’ll make some phone calls. I got people I know down there. You don’t want to fuck with these guys.”

Mr. Suit tapped what looked like a newspaper article in the briefcase. “And what’re they gonna do?” His voice lowered and he whispered something that made Wannabe’s face screw up in disgust. “Now just go on home, keep your head down, and watch your back. And pray they can’t—” Again, the lowered voice. Ricky couldn’t hear what “they” might do.

Wannabe slammed his hand down on the bar again. “This isn’t gonna fly, asshole. Now—”

“Hey, gentlemen,” Ricky called. “Volume down, okay?”

“The fuck’re you, little man?” Wannabe snapped. Mr. Suit touched his arm to quiet him, but he pulled away and kept glaring.

Ricky slicked back his greasy, dark blond hair. Easing off the stool, he walked to the front of the bar, the heels of his boots tapping loudly on the scuffed floor. The guy had six inches and thirty pounds on him but Ricky had learned a long time ago that craziness scares people a fuck of a lot more than height or weight or muscle. And so he did what he always did when he was going one on one—threw a weird look into his eyes and got right up in the man’s face. He screamed, “Who I am is guy’s gonna drag your ass into the alley and fuck you over a dozen different ways, you don’t get the fuck out of here now!”

The punk reared back and blinked. He fired off an automatic “Fuck you, asshole.”

Ricky stayed right where he was, kind of grinning, kind of not, and let this poor bastard imagine what was going to happen now that he’d accidentally shot a little spit onto Ricky’s forehead.

A few seconds passed.

Finally, Wannabe drank down what was left of his beer with a shaking hand and, trying to hold on to a little dignity, he strolled out the door, laughing and muttering, “Prick.” Like it was Ricky backing down.

“Sorry about that,” Mr. Suit said, standing up, pulling out money for the drinks.

“No, you stay,” Ricky ordered.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you.”

The man hesitated and sat back down.

Ricky glanced into the briefcase, saw some pictures of nice-looking boats. “Just gotta keep things calm round here, you know. Keep the peace.”

Mr. Suit slowly closed the case, looked around at the faded beer promotion cut-outs, the stained sports posters, the cobwebs. “This your place?”

The bartender was out of earshot. Ricky said, “More or less.”

“Jersey.” Mr. Suit nodded at the door that Wannabe had just walked out of. Like that explained it all.

Ricky’s sister lived in Jersey and he wondered if maybe he should be pissed at the insult. He was a loyal guy. But then he decided loyalty didn’t have anything to do with states or cities and shit like that. “So. He lost some money?”

“Business deal went bad.”

“Uh-huh. How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“Buy him another beer,” Ricky called to the bartender, then turned back. “You’re in business with him and you don’t know how much money he lost?”

“What I don’t know,” the guy said, his dark eyes looking right into Ricky’s, “is why I should fucking tell you.”

This was the time when it could get ugly. There was a tough moment of silence. Then Ricky laughed. “No worries.”

The beers arrived.

“Ricky Kelleher.” He clinked glasses.

“Bob Gardino.”

“I seen you before. You live around here?”

“Florida mostly. I come up here for business some. Delaware too. Baltimore, Jersey shore, Maryland.”

“Yeah? I got a summer place I go to a lot.”

“Where?”

“Ocean City. Four bedrooms, on the water.” Ricky didn’t mention that it was T.G.’s., not his.

“Sweet.” The man nodded, impressed.

“It’s okay. I’m looking at some other places too.”

“Man can never have too much real estate. Better than the stock market.”

“I do okay on Wall Street,” Ricky said. “You gotta know what to look for. You just can’t buy some stock ’cause it’s, you know, sexy.” He’d heard this on some TV show.

“Truer words.” Now Gardino tapped his glass into Ricky’s.

“Those were some nice fucking boats.” A nod toward the briefcase. “That your line?”

“Among other things. Whatta you do, Ricky?”

“I got my hand in a lot of stuff. Lot of businesses. All over the neighborhood here. Well, and other places too. Maryland, like I was saying. Good money to be made. For a man with a sharp eye.”

“And you have a sharp eye?”

“I think I do. Wanta know what it’s seeing right now?”

“What, your eye?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it seeing?”

“A grifter.”

“A—?”

“A scam artist.”

“I know what a grifter is,” Gardino said. “I meant, why do you think that’s what I am?”

“Well, for instance, you don’t come into Hanny’s—”

“Hanny’s?”

“Here. Hanrahan’s.”

“Oh.”

“—to sell some loser asshole a boat. So what really happened?”

Gardino chuckled but said nothing.

“Look,” Ricky whispered, “I’m cool. Ask anybody on the street.”

“There’s nothing to tell. A deal went south is all. Happens.”

“I’m not a cop, that’s what you’re thinking.” Ricky looked around, reached into his pocket, and flashed a bag of hash he’d been carrying around for T.G. “I was, you think I’d have this on me?”

“Naw, I don’t think you’re a cop. And you seem like an okay guy. But I don’t need to spill my guts to every okay guy I meet.”

“I hear that. Only … I’m just wondering there’s a chance we can do business together.”

Gardino drank some more beer. “Again, why?”

“Tell me how your con works.”

“It’s not a con. I was going to sell him a boat. It didn’t work out. End of story.”

“But … see, here’s what I’m thinking,” Ricky said in his best player’s voice. “I seen people pissed off ’cause they don’t get a car they wanted, or a house, or some pussy. But that asshole, he wasn’t pissed off about not getting a boat. He was pissed off about not getting his down payment back. So, how come he didn’t?”

Gardino shrugged.

Ricky tried again. “How’s about we play a game, you and me? I’ll ask you something and you tell me if I’m right or if I’m full of shit. How’s that?”

“Twenty questions.”

“Whatever. Okay, try this on: You borrow—” He held up his fingers and made quotation marks—“a boat, sell it to some poor asshole, but then on the way here it sinks.” Again the quotation marks. “And there’s nothing he can do about it. He loses his down payment. He’s fucked. Too bad, but who’s he going to complain to? It’s stolen merch.”

Gardino studied his beer. Son of a bitch still wasn’t giving away squat.

Ricky added, “Only there never was any boat. You never steal a fucking thing. You just show him pictures you took on the dock and a fake police report or something.”

The guy finally laughed. But nothing else.

“Your only risk is some asshole whaling on you when he loses the money. Not a bad grift.”

“I sell boats,” Gardino said. “That’s it.”

“Okay, you sell boats.” Ricky eyed him carefully. He’d try a different approach. “So that means you’re looking for buyers. How ’bout I find one for you?”

“You know somebody who’s interested in boats?”

“There’s a guy I know. He might be.”

Gardino thought for a minute. “This a friend of yours we’re talking?”

“I wouldn’ta brought him up, he was a friend.”

The sunlight came through some clouds over Eighth Avenue and hit Gardino’s beer. It cast a tint on the counter, the yellow of a sick man’s eye. Finally, he said to Ricky, “Pull your shirt up.”

“My—?”

“Your shirt. Pull it up and turn around.”

“You think I’m wired?”

“Or we just have our beers and bullshit about the Knicks and we go our separate ways. Up to you.”

Self-conscious of his skinny build, Ricky hesitated. But then he slipped off the stool, pulled up his leather jacket, and lifted his dirty T-shirt. He turned around.

“Okay. You do the same.”

Gardino laughed. Ricky thought he was laughing at him more than he was laughing at the situation but he held on to his temper.

The con man pulled up his jacket and shirt. The bartender glanced at them but he was looking like nothing was weird. This was, after all, Hanny’s.

The men sat down and Ricky called for more brews.

Gardino whispered, “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m up to. But listen. You get some idea that you’re in the mood to snitch, I got two things to say: One, what I’m doing is not exactly legal, but it’s not like I’m clipping anybody or selling crack to kids, got it? So even if you go to the cops, the best they can get me for is some bullshit misrepresentation claim. They’ll laugh you out of the station.”

“No, man, seriously—”

Gardino held up a finger. “And number two, you dime me out, I’ve got associates in Florida’ll find you and make you bleed for days.” He grinned. “We copacetic?”

Whatever the fuck that meant. Ricky said, “No worries, mister. All I wanta do is make some money.”

“Okay, here’s how it works: Fuck down payments. The buyers pay everything right up front. A hundred, hundred fifty thousand.”

“No shit.”

“What I tell the buyer is my connections know where there’re these confiscated boats. This really happens. They’re towed off by the DEA for drugs or Coast Guard or State Police when the owner’s busted for sailing ’em while drunk. They go up for auction. But see, what happens is, in Florida, there’s so many boats that it takes time to log ’em all in. I tell the buyers my partners break into the pound at 3 in the morning and tow a boat away before there’s a record of it. We ship it to Delaware or Jersey, slap a new number on it, and bang, for a hundred thousand you get a half-million-dollar boat.

“Then, after I get the money, I break the bad news. Like I just did with our friend from Jersey.” He opened up his briefcase and pulled out a newspaper article. The headline was: “Three arrested in Coast Guard Impound Thefts.”

The article was about a series of thefts of confiscated boats from a federal government impound dock. It went on to add that security had been stepped up and the FBI and Florida police were looking into who might’ve bought the half-dozen missing boats. They’d arrested the principals and recovered nearly a million dollars in cash from buyers on the East Coast.

Ricky looked over the article. “You, what? Printed it up yourself?”

“Word processor. Tore the edges to make it look like I ripped it out of the paper and then Xeroxed it.”

“So you keep ’em scared shitless some cop’s going to find their name or trace the money to them. Now, just go on home, keep your head down, and watch your back. Some of ’em make a stink for a day or two, but mostly they just disappear.”

This warranted another clink of beer glasses. “Fucking brilliant.”

“Thanks.”

“So if I was to hook you up with a buyer? What’s in it for me?”

Gardino debated. “Twenty-five percent.”

“You give me fifty.” Ricky fixed him with the famous mad-guy Kelleher stare. Gardino held the gaze just fine. Which Ricky respected.

“I’ll give you twenty-five percent if the buyer pays a hundred Gs or less. Thirty, if it’s more than that.”

Ricky said, “Over one fifty, I want half.”

Gardino finally said, “Deal. You really know somebody can get his hands on that kind of money?”

Ricky finished his beer and, without paying, started for the door. “That’s what I’m going to go work on right now.”

* * *

Ricky walked into Mack’s bar.

It was pretty much like Hanrahan’s, four blocks away, but was busier, since it was closer to the convention center where hundreds of teamsters and union electricians and carpenters would take fifteen-minute breaks that lasted two hours. The neighborhood surrounding Mack’s was better too: redeveloped town houses and some new buildings, expensive as shit, and even a Starbucks. Way fucking different from the grim, hustling combat zone that Hell’s Kitchen had been until the ’70s.

T.G., a fat Irishman in his mid-thirties, was at the corner table with three, four buddies of his.

“It’s the Lime Rickey man!” T.G. shouted, not drunk, not sober—the way he usually seemed. Man used nicknames a lot, which he seemed to think was cute but always pissed off the person he was talking to, mostly because of the way he said it, not so much the names themselves. Like, Ricky didn’t even know what a Lime Rickey was, some drink or something, but the sneery tone in T.G.’s voice was a putdown. Still, you had to have major balls to say anything back to the big, psycho Irishman.

“Hey,” Ricky offered, walking up to the corner table, which was like T.G.’s office.

“The fuck you been?” T.G. asked, dropping his cigarette on the floor and crushing it under his boot.

“Hanny’s.”

“Doing what, Lime Rickey man?” Stretching out the nickname.

“Polishing me knob,” Ricky responded in a phoney brogue. A lot of times he said stuff like this, sort of putting himself down in front of T.G. and his crew. He didn’t want to, didn’t like it. It just happened. Always wondered why.

“You mean, polishing some altar boy’s knob,” T.G. roared. The more sober in the crew laughed.

Ricky got a Guinness. He really didn’t like it but T.G. had once said that Guinness and whiskey were the only things real men drank. And, since it was called stout, he figured it would make him fatter. All his life, trying to get bigger. Never succeeding.

Ricky sat down at the table, which was scarred with knife slashes and skid marks from cigarette burns. He nodded to T.G.’s crew, a half-dozen losers who sorta worked the trades, sorta worked the warehouses, sorta hung out. One was so drunk he couldn’t focus and kept trying to tell a joke, forgetting it halfway through. Ricky hoped the guy wouldn’t puke before he made it to the john, like yesterday.

T.G. was rambling on, insulting some of the people at the table in his cheerful-mean way and threatening guys who weren’t there.

Ricky just sat at the table, eating peanuts and sucking down his licorice-flavored stout, and took the insults when they were aimed at him. Mostly he was thinking about Gardino and the boats.

T.G. rubbed his round, craggy face and his curly red-brown hair. He spat out, “And, fuck me, the nigger got away.”

Ricky was wondering which nigger. He thought he’d been paying attention, but sometimes T.G.’s train of thought took its own route and left you behind.

He could see T.G. was upset, though, and so Ricky muttered a sympathetic, “That asshole.”

“Man, I see him, I will take that cocksucker out so fast.” He clapped his palms together in a loud slap that made a couple of the crew blink. The drunk one stood up and staggered toward the men’s room. Looked like he was going to make it this time.

“He been around?” Ricky asked.

T.G. snapped, “His black ass’s up in Buffalo. I just told you that. The fuck you asking if he’s here?”

“No, I don’t mean here,” Ricky said fast. “I mean, you know, around. ”

“Oh, yeah,” T.G. said, nodding, as if he caught some other meaning. “Sure. But that don’t help me any. I see him, he’s one dead nigger.”

“Buffalo,” Ricky said, shaking his head. “Christ.” He tried to listen more carefully, but he was still thinking about the boat scam. Yeah, that Gardino’d come up with a good one. And man, making a hundred thousand in a single grift—he and T.G.’d never come close to that before.

Ricky shook his head again. He sighed. “Got half a mind to go to Buffalo and take his black ass out myself.”

“You the man, Lime Rickey. You the fucking man.” And T.G. started rambling once again.

Nodding, staring at T.G.’s not-drunk, not-sober eyes, Ricky was wondering: How much would it take to get the fuck out of Hell’s Kitchen? Get away from the bitching ex-wives, the bratty kid, away from T.G. and all the asshole losers like him. Maybe go to Florida, where Gardino was from. Maybe that’d be the place for him. From the various scams he and T.G. put together, he’d saved up about thirty thousand in cash. Nothing shabby there. But man, if he conned just two or three guys in the boat deal, he could walk away with five times that.

Wouldn’t set him for good, but it’d be a start. Hell, Florida was full of rich old people, most of ’em stupid, just waiting to give their money to a player had the right grift.

A fist colliding with his arm shattered the daydream. He bit the inside of his cheek and winced. He glared at T.G., who just laughed. “So, Lime Rickey, you going to Leon’s, ain’t you? On Saturday.”

“I don’t know.”

The door swung open and some out-of-towner wandered in. An older guy, in his fifties, dressed in beltless tan slacks, a white shirt, and a blue blazer, a cord around his neck holding a convention badge, AOFM, whatever that was.

Association of … Ricky squinted. Association of Obese Ferret Molesters.

He laughed at his own joke. Nobody noticed. Ricky eyed the tourist. This never used to happen, seeing geeks in a bar around here. But then the convention center went in a few blocks south and after that, Times Square got its balls cut off and turned into Disneyland. Suddenly Hell’s Kitchen was White Plains and Paramus, and the fucking yuppies and tourists took over.

The man blinked, eyes getting used to the dark. He ordered wine—T.G. snickered, wine in this place?—and drank down half right away. The guy had to’ve had money. He was wearing a Rolex and his clothes were designer shit. The man looked around slowly, and it reminded Ricky of the way people at the zoo look at the animals. He got pissed and enjoyed a brief fantasy of dragging the guy’s ass outside and pounding him till he gave up the watch and wallet.

But of course he wouldn’t. T.G. and Ricky weren’t that way; they steered clear of busting heads. Oh, a few times somebody got fucked up bad—they’d pounded a college kid when he’d taken a swing at T.G. during a scam, and Ricky’d slashed the face of some spic who’d skimmed a thousand bucks of their money. But the rule was, you didn’t make people bleed if you could avoid it. If a mark lost only money, a lot of times he’d keep quiet about it, rather than go public and look like a fucking idiot. But if he got hurt, more times than not he’d go to the cops.

“You with me, Lime Rickey?” T.G. snapped. “You’re off in your own fucking world.”

“Just thinking.”

“Ah, thinking. Good. He’s thinking. ’Bout your altar bitch?”

Ricky mimicked jerking off. Putting himself down again. Wondered why he did that. He glanced at the tourist. The man was whispering to the bartender, who caught Ricky’s eye and lifted his head. Ricky pushed back from T.G.’s table and walked to the bar, his boots making loud clonks on the wooden floor.

“Whassup?”

“This guy’s from out of town.”

The tourist looked at Ricky once, then down at the floor.

“No shit.” Ricky rolled his eyes at the bartender.

“Iowa,” the man said.

Where the fuck was Iowa? Ricky’d come close to finishing high school and had done okay in some subjects, but geography had bored him crazy and he never paid any attention in class.

The bartender said, “He was telling me he’s in town for a conference at Javits.”

Him and the ferret molesters …

“And …” the bartender’s voice faded as he glanced at the tourist. “Well, why don’t you tell him?”

The man took another gulp of his wine. Ricky looked at his hand. Not only a Rolex, but a gold pinky ring with a big honking diamond in it.

“Yeah, why don’t you tell me?”

The tourist did—in a halting whisper.

Ricky listened to his words. When the old guy was through, Ricky smiled and said, “This is your lucky day, mister.”

Thinking: Mine too.

* * *

A half hour later, Ricky and the tourist from Iowa were standing in the grimy lobby of the Bradford Arms, next to a warehouse at Eleventh Avenue and 50th Street.

Ricky was making introductions. “This’s Darla.”

“Hello, Darla.”

A gold tooth shone like a star out of Darla’s big smile. “How you doing, honey? What’s yo’ name?”

“Uhm, Jack.”

Ricky sensed he’d nearly made up “John” instead, which would’ve been pretty funny, under the circumstances.

“Nice to meet you, Jack.” Darla, whose real name was Sha’quette Greeley, was six feet tall, beautiful, and built like a runway model. She’d also been a man until three years ago. The tourist from Iowa didn’t catch on to this, or maybe he did and it turned him on. Anyway, his gaze was lapping her body like a tongue.

Jack checked them in, paying for three hours in advance.

Three hours? thought Ricky. An old fart like this? God bless him.

“Y’all have fun now,” Ricky said, falling into a redneck accent. He’d decided that Iowa was probably somewhere in the south.

* * *

Detective Robert Schaeffer could’ve been the host on one of those FOX or A&E cop shows. He was tall, silver-haired, good-looking, maybe a bit long in the face. He’d been an NYPD detective for nearly twenty years.

Schaeffer and his partner were walking down a filthy hallway that stank of sweat and Lysol. The partner pointed to a door, whispering, “That’s it.” He pulled out what looked like an electronic stethoscope and placed the sensor over the scabby wood.

“Hear anything?” Schaeffer asked, also in a soft voice.

Joey Bernbaum, the partner, nodded slowly, holding up a finger. Meaning wait.

And then a nod. “Go.”

Schaeffer pulled a master key out of his pocket, and drawing his gun, unlocked the door then pushed inside.

“Police! Nobody move!”

Bernbaum followed, his own automatic in hand.

The faces of the two people inside registered identical expressions of shock at the abrupt entry, though it was only in the face of the pudgy middle-aged white man, sitting shirtless on the bed, that the shock turned instantly to horror and dismay. He had a Marine Corps tattoo on his fat upper arm and had probably been pretty tough in his day, but now his narrow, pale shoulders slumped and he looked like he was going to cry. “No, no, no …”

“Oh, fuck,” Darla said.

“Stay right where you are, sweetheart. Be quiet.”

“How the fuck you find me? That little prick downstairs at the desk, he dime me? I know it. I’ma pee on that boy next time I see him. I’ma—”

“You’re not going to do anything but shut up,” Bernbaum snapped. In a ghetto accent he added a sarcastic, “Yo, got that, girlfriend?”

“Man oh man.” Darla tried to wither him with a gaze. He just laughed and cuffed her.

Schaeffer put his gun away and said to the man, “Let me see some ID.”

“Oh, please, officer, look, I didn’t—”

“Some ID?” Schaeffer said. He was polite, like always. When you had a badge in your pocket and a big fucking pistol on your hip you could afford to be civil.

The man dug his thick wallet out of his slacks and handed it to the officer, who read the license. “Mr. Shelby, this your current address? In Des Moines?”

In a quivering voice, he said, “Yessir.”

“All right, well, you’re under arrest for solicitation of prostitution.” He took his cuffs out of their holder.

“I didn’t do anything illegal, really. It was just … It was only a date.”

“Really? Then what’s this?” The detective picked up a stack of money sitting on the cockeyed nightstand. Four hundred bucks.

“I—I just thought …”

The old guy’s mind was working fast, that was obvious. Schaeffer wondered what excuse he’d come up with. He’d heard them all.

“Just to get some food and something to drink.”

That was a new one. Schaeffer tried not to laugh. You spend four hundred bucks on food and booze in this neighborhood, you could afford a block party big enough for fifty Darlas.

“He pay you to have sex?” Schaeffer asked Darla.

She grimaced.

“You lie, baby, you know what’ll happen to you. You’re honest with me, I’ll put in a word.”

“You a prick too,” she snapped. “All right, he pay me to do a round-the-world.”

“No …” Shelby protested for a moment but then he gave up and slumped even lower. “Oh, Christ, what’m I gonna do? This’ll kill my wife … and my kids …” He looked up with panicked eyes. “Will I have to go to jail?”

“That’s up to the prosecutor and the judge.”

“Why the hell’d I do this?” he moaned.

Schaeffer looked him over carefully. After a long moment he said, “Take her downstairs.”

Darla snapped, “Yo, you fat fuck, keep yo’ motherfuckin’ hands offa me.”

Bernbaum laughed again. “This mean you ain’t my girlfriend no more?” He gripped her by the arm and led her outside. The door swung shut.

“Look, detective, it’s not like I robbed anybody. It was harmless. You know, victimless.”

“It’s still a crime. And don’t you know about AIDS, hepatitis?”

Shelby looked down again. He nodded. “Yessir,” he whispered.

Still holding the cuffs, Schaeffer eyed the man carefully. He sat down on a creaky chair. “How often you get to town?”

“To New York?”

“Yeah.”

“Once a year, if I’ve got a conference or meeting. I always enjoy it. You know what they say, ‘It’s a nice place to visit.’” His voice faded, maybe thinking that the rest of that old saw—“but you wouldn’t want to live there”—would insult the cop.

Schaeffer asked, “So, you got a conference now?” He pulled the badge out of the man’s pocket, read it.

“Yessir, it’s our annual trade show. At the Javits. Outdoor furniture manufacturers.”

“That’s your line?”

“I have a wholesale business in Iowa.”

“Yeah? Successful?”

“Number one in the state. Actually, in the whole region.” He said this sadly, not proudly, probably thinking of how many customers he’d lose when word got out about his arrest.

Schaeffer nodded slowly. Finally he put the handcuffs away.

Shelby’s eyes narrowed, watching this.

“You ever done anything like this before?”

A hesitation. He decided not to lie. “I have. Yessir.”

“But I get a feeling you’re not going to again.”

“Never. I promise you. I’ve learned my lesson.”

There was a long pause.

“Stand up.”

Shelby blinked then did what he was told. He frowned as the cop patted down his trousers and jacket. With the guy not wearing a shirt, Schaeffer was ninety-nine percent sure the man was legit, but had to make absolutely certain there were no wires.

The detective nodded toward the chair and Shelby sat down. The businessman’s eyes revealed that he now had an inkling of what was happening.

“I have a proposition for you,” Schaeffer said.

“Proposition?”

The cop nodded. “Okay. I’m convinced you’re not going to do this again.”

“Never.”

“I could let you go with a warning. But the problem is, the situation got called in.”

“Called in?”

“A vice cop on the street happened to see you go into the hotel with Darla—we know all about her. He reported it and they sent me out. There’s paperwork on the incident.”

“My name?”

“No, just a John Doe at this point. But there is a report. I could make it go away but it’d take some work and it’d be a risk.”

Shelby sighed, nodding with a grimace, and opened the bidding.

It wasn’t much of an auction. Shelby kept throwing out numbers and Schaeffer kept lifting his thumb, more, more … Finally, when the shaken man hit $150,000, Schaeffer nodded.

“Christ.”

When T.G. and Ricky Kelleher had called to say that he’d found a tourist to scam, Ricky told him the mark could go six figures. That was so far out of those stupid micks’ league that Schaeffer had to laugh. But sure enough, he had to give the punk credit for picking out a mark with big bucks.

In a defeated voice Shelby asked, “Can I give you a check?”

Schaeffer laughed.

“Okay, okay … but I’ll need a few hours.”

“Tonight. Eight.” They arranged a place to meet. “I’ll keep your driver’s license. And the evidence.” He picked up the cash on the table. “You try to skip, I’ll put out an arrest warrant and send that to Des Moines too. They’ll extradite you and then it’ll be a serious felony. You’ll do real time.”

“Oh, no, sir. I’ll get the money. Every penny.” Shelby hurriedly dressed.

“Go out by the service door in back. I don’t know where the vice cop is.”

The tourist nodded and scurried out of the room.

In the lobby by the elevator the detective found Bernbaum and Darla sharing a smoke.

“Where my money?” the hooker demanded.

Schaeffer handed her two hundred of the confiscated cash. He and Bernbaum split the rest, a hundred fifty for Schaeffer, fifty for his partner.

“You gonna take the afternoon off, girlfriend?” Bernbaum asked Darla.

“Me? Hell no, I gots to work.” She glanced at the money Schaeffer’d given her. “Least till you assholes start paying me fo’ not fuckin’ same as I make fo’ fuckin’.”

* * *

Schaeffer pushed into Mack’s bar, an abrupt entrance that changed the course of at least half the conversations going on inside real fast. He was a crooked cop, sure, but he was still a cop, and the talk immediately shifted from deals, scams, and drugs to sports, women, and jobs. Schaeffer laughed and strode across the room. He dropped into an empty chair at the scarred table, muttered to T.G., “Get me a beer.” Schaeffer being about the only one in the universe who could get away with that.

When the brew came he tipped the glass to Ricky. “You caught us a good one. He agreed to a hundred fifty.”

“No shit,” T.G. said, cocking a red eyebrow. The split was Schaeffer got half and then Ricky and T.G. divided the rest equally. “Where’s he getting it from?”

“I dunno. His problem.”

Ricky squinted. “Wait. I want the watch too.”

“Watch?”

“The old guy. He had a Rolex. I want it.”

At home Schaeffer had a dozen Rolexes he’d taken off marks and suspects over the years. He didn’t need another one. “You want the watch, he’ll give up the watch. All he cares about is making sure his wife and his corn-pone customers don’t find out what he was up to.”

“What’s corn-pone?” Ricky asked.

“Hold on,” T.G. snarled. “Anybody gets the watch, it’s me.”

“No way. I saw it first. It was me who picked him—”

“My watch,” the fat Irishman interrupted. “Maybe he’s got a money clip or something you can have. But I get the fucking Rolex.”

“Nobody has money clips,” Ricky argued. “I don’t even want a fucking money clip.”

“Listen, little Lime Rickey,” T.G. muttered. “It’s mine. Read my lips.”

“Jesus, you two are like kids,” Schaeffer said, swilling the beer. “He’ll meet us across the street from Pier 46 at 8 tonight.” The three men had done this same scam, or variations on it, for a couple of years now but still didn’t trust each other. The deal was they all went together to collect the payoff.

Schaeffer drained the beer. “See you boys then.”

After the detective was gone they watched the game for a few minutes, with T.G. bullying some guys to place bets, even though it was in the fourth quarter and there was no way Chicago could come back. Finally, Ricky said, “I’m going out for a while.”

“What, now I’m your fucking babysitter? You want to go, go.” Though he still made it sound like Ricky was a complete idiot for missing the end of game that only had eight minutes to run.

Just as Ricky got to the door, T.G. called in a loud voice, “Hey, Lime Rickey, my Rolex? Is it gold?”

Just to be a prick.

* * *

Bob Schaeffer had walked a beat in his youth. He’d investigated a hundred felonies, he’d run a thousand scams in Manhattan and Brooklyn. All of which meant that he’d learned how to stay alive on the streets.

Now, he sensed a threat.

He was on his way to score some coke from a kid who operated out of a newsstand at Ninth and 55th, and he realized he’d been hearing the same footsteps for the past five or six minutes. A weird scraping. Somebody was tailing him. He paused to light a cigarette in a doorway and checked out the reflection in a storefront window. Sure enough, he saw a man in a cheap gray suit, wearing gloves, about thirty feet behind him. The guy paused for a moment and pretended to look into a store window.

Schaeffer didn’t recognize the guy. He’d made a lot of enemies over the years. The fact he was a cop gave him some protection—it’s risky to gun down even a crooked one—but there were plenty of nuts jobs out there.

Walking on. The owner of the scraping shoes continued his tail. A glance in the rearview mirror of a car parked nearby told him the man was getting closer, but his hands were at his side, not going for a weapon. Schaeffer pulled out his cell phone and pretended to make a call, to give himself an excuse to slow up and not make the guy suspicious. His other hand slipped inside his jacket and touched the grip of his chrome-plated Sig Sauer 9mm automatic pistol.

This time the guy didn’t slow up.

Schaeffer started to draw.

Then: “Detective, could you hang up the phone, please?”

Schaeffer turned, blinked. The pursuer was holding up a gold NYPD shield.

The fuck is this? Schaeffer thought. He relaxed, but not much. Snapped the phone closed and dropped it into his pocket. Let go of his weapon.

“Who’re you?”

The man, eyeing Schaeffer coldly, let him get a look at the ID card next to the shield.

Schaeffer thought: Fuck me. The guy was from the department’s Internal Affairs Division—the boys that tracked down corrupt cops.

Still Schaeffer kept on the offensive. “What’re you doing following me?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“What’s this all about?”

“An investigation we’re conducting.”

“Hello,” Schaeffer said sarcastically. “I sort of figured that out. Give me some fucking details.”

“We’re looking into your connection with certain individuals.”

“‘Certain individuals.’ You know, not all cops have to talk like cops.”

No response.

Schaeffer shrugged. “I have ‘connections’ with a lotta people. Maybe you’re thinking of my snitches. I hang with ’em. They feed me good information.”

“Yeah, well, we’re thinking there might be other things they feed you. Some valuable things.” He glanced at Schaeffer’s hip. “I’m going to ask you for your weapon.”

“Fuck that.”

“I’m trying to keep it low key. But you don’t cooperate, I’ll call it in and we’ll take you downtown. Then everything’ll all be public.”

Finally Schaeffer understood. It was a shakedown—only this time he was on the receiving end. And he was getting scammed by Internal Affairs, no less. This was almost fucking funny, IAD on the take too.

Schaeffer gave up his gun.

“Let’s go talk in private.”

How much was this going to cost him? he wondered.

The IAD cop nodded toward the Hudson River. “That way.”

“Talk to me,” Schaeffer said. “I got a right to know what this’s all about. If somebody told you I’m on the take, that’s bullshit. Whoever said it’s working some angle.” He wasn’t as hot as he sounded; this was all part of the negotiating.

The IAD cop said only, “Keep walking. Up there.” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Offered one to Schaeffer. He took it and the guy lit it for him.

Then Schaeffer froze. He blinked in shock, staring at the matches. The name on them was McDougall’s Tavern. The official name of Mack’s—T.G.’s hangout. He glanced at the guy’s eyes, which went wide at his mistake. Christ, he was no cop. The ID and badge were fake. He was a hit man, working for T.G., who was going to clip him and collect the whole hundred fifty Gs from the tourist.

“Fuck,” the phony cop muttered. He yanked a revolver out of his pocket, then shoved Schaeffer into a nearby alley.

“Listen, buddy,” Schaeffer whispered, “I’ve got some good bucks. Whatever you’re being paid, I’ll—”

“Shut up.” In his gloved hands, the guy exchanged his gun for Schaeffer’s own pistol and pushed the big chrome piece into the detective’s neck. Then the fake cop pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and stuffed it into the detective’s jacket. He leaned forward and whispered, “Here’s the message, asshole: For two years T.G.’s been setting up everything, doing all the work, and you take half the money. You’ve fucked with the wrong man.”

“That’s bullshit,” Schaeffer cried desperately. “He needs me! He couldn’t do it without a cop! Please—”

“So long—” He lifted the gun to Schaeffer’s temple.

“Don’t do it! Please, man, no!”

A scream sounded from the mouth of the alley. “Oh my god!” A middle-aged woman stood twenty feet away, staring at the man with the pistol. Her hands were to her mouth. “Somebody call the police!”

The hit man’s attention was on the woman. Schaeffer shoved him into a brick wall. Before he could recover and shoot, the detective sprinted fast down the alley.

He heard the man shout, “Goddamn it!” and start after him. But Hell’s Kitchen was Bob Schaeffer’s hunting grounds, and in five minutes the detective had raced through dozens of alleys and side streets and lost the killer.

Once again on the street, he paused and pulled his backup gun out of his ankle holster, slipped it into his pocket. He felt the crinkle of paper—what the guy had planted on him. It was a fake suicide note, Schaeffer confessing that he’d been on the take for years and he couldn’t handle the guilt anymore. He had to end it all.

Well, he thought, that was partly right.

One thing was fucking well about to end.

Smoking, staying in the shadows of an alley, Schaeffer had to wait outside Mack’s for fifteen minutes before T.G. Reilly emerged. The big man, moving like a lumbering bear, was by himself. He looked around, not seeing the cop, and turned west.

Schaeffer gave him half a block and then followed.

He kept his distance, but when the street was deserted he pulled on gloves and fished into his pocket for the pistol he’d just gotten from his desk. He’d bought it on the street years ago—a cold gun, one with no registration number stamped on the frame. Gripping the weapon, he moved up fast behind the big Irishman.

The mistake a lot of shooters make during a clip is they feel they’ve gotta talk to their vic. Schaeffer remembered some old Western where this kid tracks down the gunslinger who killed his father. The kid’s holding a gun on him and explaining why he’s about to die, you killed my father, yadda, yadda, yadda, and the gunslinger gets this bored look on his face, pulls out a hidden gun, and blows the kid away. He looks down at the body and says, “You gonna talk, talk. You gonna shoot, shoot.”

Which is just what Robert Schaeffer did now.

T.G. must’ve heard something. He started to turn. But before he even caught sight of the detective, Schaeffer parked two rounds in the back of the fat man’s head. He dropped like a bag of sand. The cop tossed the gun on the sidewalk—he’d never touched it with his bare hands—and, keeping his head down, walked right past T.G.’s body, hit Tenth Avenue, and turned north.

You gonna shoot, shoot.

Amen …

* * *

It took only one glance.

Looking into Ricky Kelleher’s eyes, Schaeffer decided he wasn’t in on the attempted hit.

The small goofy guy, with dirty hair and a cocky face, strode up to the spot where Schaeffer was leaning against a wall, hand inside his coat, near his new automatic. But the loser didn’t blink, didn’t show the least surprise that the cop was still alive. The detective had interviewed suspects for years and he now concluded that the asshole knew nothing about T.G.’s plan.

Ricky nodded, “Hey.” Looking around, asked, “So where’s T.G.? He said he’d be here early.”

Frowning, Schaeffer asked, “Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Damn, you didn’t. Somebody clipped him.”

“T.G.?”

“Yep.”

Ricky just stared and shook his head. “No fucking way. I didn’t hear shit about it.”

“Just happened.”

“Christ almighty,” the little man whispered. “Who did it?”

“Nobody knows yet.”

“Maybe that nigger.”

“Who?”

“Nigger from Buffalo. Or Albany. I don’t know.” Ricky then whispered, “Dead. I can’t believe it. Anybody else in the crew?”

“Just him, I think.”

Schaeffer studied the scrawny guy. Well, yeah, he did look like he couldn’t believe it. But, truth was, he didn’t look upset. Which made sense. T.G. was hardly Ricky’s buddy; he was a drunk loser bully.

Besides, in Hell’s Kitchen the living tended to forget about the dead before their bodies were cold.

Like he was proving this point, Ricky said, “So how’s this going to affect our, you know, arrangement?”

“Not at all, far as I’m concerned.”

“I’m going to want more.”

“I can go a third.”

“Fuck a third. I want half.”

“No can do. It’s riskier for me now.”

“Riskier? Why?”

“There’ll be an investigation. Somebody might turn up something at T.G.’s with my name on it. I’ll have to grease more palms.” Schaeffer shrugged. “Or you can find yourself another cop to work with.”

As if the Yellow Pages had a section, “Cops, Corrupt.”

The detective added, “Give it a few months. After things calm down, I can go up a few more points then.”

“To forty?”

“Yeah, to forty.”

The little man asked, “Can I have the Rolex?”

“The guy’s? Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“You really want it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, it’s yours.”

Ricky looked out over the river. It seemed to Schaeffer that a faint smile crossed his face.

They stood in silence for a few minutes and, right on time, the tourist, Shelby, showed up. He was looking terrified and hurt and angry, which is a fucking tricky combination to get into your face all at one time.

“I’ve got it,” he whispered. There was nothing in his hands—no briefcase or bag—but Schaeffer had been taking kickbacks and bribes for so long that he knew a lot of money can fit into a very small envelope.

Which is just what Shelby now produced. The grim-faced tourist slipped it to Schaeffer, who counted the bills carefully.

“The watch too.” Ricky pointed eagerly to the man’s wrist.

“My watch?” Shelby hesitated and, grimacing, handed it to the skinny man.

Schaeffer gave the tourist his driver’s license back. He pocketed it fast then hurried east, undoubtedly looking for a taxi that’d take him straight to the airport.

The detective laughed to himself. So, maybe New York ain’t such a nice place to visit, after all.

The men split the money. Ricky slipped the Rolex on his wrist but the metal band was too big and it dangled comically. “I’ll get it adjusted,” he said, putting the watch into his pocket. “They can shorten the bands, you know. It’s no big deal.”

They decided to have a drink to celebrate and Ricky suggested Hanny’s since he had to meet somebody over there.

As they walked along the avenue, blue-gray in the evening light, Ricky glanced at the placid Hudson River. “Check it out.”

A large yacht eased south in the dark water.

“Sweet,” Schaeffer said, admiring the beautiful lines of the vessel.

Ricky asked, “How come you didn’t want in?”

“In?”

“The boat deal.”

“Huh?”

“That T.G. told you about. He said you were going to pass.”

“What the fuck’re you talking about?”

“The boat thing. With that guy from Florida.”

“He never said anything to me about it.”

“That prick.” Ricky shook his head. “Was a few days ago. This guy hangs at Hanny’s? He’s who I’m gonna meet. He’s got connections down in Florida. His crew perps these confiscated boats before they get logged in at the impound dock.”

“DEA?”

“Yeah. And Coast Guard.”

Schaeffer nodded, impressed at the plan. “They disappear before they’re logged. That’s some smart shit.”

“I’m thinking about getting one. He tells me I pay him, like, twenty Gs and I end up with a boat worth three times that. I thought you’d be interested.”

“Yeah, I’d be interested.” Bob Schaeffer had a couple of small boats. Had always wanted a really nice one. He asked, “He got anything bigger?”

“Think he just sold a fifty-footer. I seen it down in Battery Park. It was sweet.”

“Fifty feet? That’s a million-dollar boat.”

“He said it only cost his guy two hundred or something like that.”

“Jesus. That asshole, T.G. He never said a word to me.” Schaeffer at least felt some consolation that the punk wouldn’t be saying anything to anyone from now on.

They walked into Hanrahan’s. Like usual, the place was nearly deserted. Ricky was looking around. The boat guy apparently wasn’t here yet.

They ordered boiler makers. Clinked glasses, drank.

Ricky was telling the old bartender about T.G. getting killed, when Schaeffer’s cell phone rang.

“Schaeffer here.”

“This’s Malone from Homicide. You heard about the T.G. Reilly hit?”

“Yeah. What’s up with it? Any leads.” Heart pounding fast, Schaeffer lowered his head and listened real carefully.

“Not many. But we heard something and we’re hoping you can help us out. You know the neighborhood, right?”

“Pretty good.”

“Looks like one of T.G.’s boys was running a scam. Involved some tall paper. Six figures. We don’t know if it had anything to do with the clip, but we want to talk to him. Name of Ricky Kelleher. You know him?”

Schaeffer glanced at Ricky, five feet away. He said into the phone, “Not sure. What’s the scam?”

“This Kelleher was working with somebody from Florida. They came up with a pretty slick plan. They sell some loser a confiscated boat, only what happens is, there is no boat. It’s all a setup. Then when it’s time to deliver, they tell the poor asshole that the feds just raided ’em. He better forget about his money, shut up, and go to ground.”

That little fucking prick … Schaeffer’s hand began shaking with anger as he stared at Ricky. He told the Homicide cop, “Haven’t seen him for a while. But I’ll ask around.”

“Thanks.”

He disconnected and walked up to Ricky, who was working on his second beer.

“You know when that guy’s going to get here?” Schaeffer asked casually. “The boat guy?”

“Should be any time,” the punk said.

Schaeffer nodded, drank some of his own beer. Then he lowered his head, whispered, “That call I just got? Don’t know if you’re interested but it was my supplier. He just got a shipment from Mexico. He’s gonna meet me in the alley in a few minutes. It’s some really fine shit. He’ll give it to us for cost. You interested?”

“Fuck yes,” the little man said.

The men pushed out the back door into the alley. Letting Ricky precede him, Schaeffer reminded himself that after he’d strangled the punk to death, he’d have to be sure to take the rest of the bribe money out of his pocket.

Oh, and the watch too. The detective decided that you really couldn’t have too many Rolexes after all.

Detective Robert Schaeffer was enjoying a grande mocha outside the Starbucks on Ninth Avenue. He was sitting in a metal chair, none too comfortable, and he wondered if it was the type that outdoor furniture king Shelby distributed to his fellow hicks.

“Hey there,” a man’s voice said to him.

Schaeffer glanced over at a guy sitting down at the table next to him. He was vaguely familiar and even though the cop didn’t exactly recognize him, he smiled a greeting.

Then the realization hit him like ice water and he gasped. It was the fake Internal Affairs detective, the guy T.G. had hired to clip him.

Christ!

The man’s right hand was inside a paper bag, where there’d be a pistol, of course.

Schaeffer froze.

“Relax,” the guy said, laughing at the cop’s expression. “Everything’s cool.” He extracted his hand from the bag. No gun. He was holding a raisin scone. He took a bite. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“Then who the fuck are you?”

“You don’t need my name. I’m a private eye. That’ll do. Now listen, we’ve got a business proposition for you.” The PI looked up and waved. To Schaeffer he said, “I want to introduce you to some folks.”

A middle-aged couple, also carrying coffee, walked outside. In shock, Schaeffer realized that the man was Shelby, the tourist they’d scammed a few days ago. The woman with him seemed familiar too. But he couldn’t place her.

“Detective,” the man said with a cold smile.

The woman’s gaze was chill too, but no smile was involved.

“Whatta you want?” the cop snapped to the private eye.

“I’ll let them explain that.” He took a large bite of scone.

Shelby’s eyes locked onto Schaeffer’s face with a ballsy confidence that was a lot different from the timid, defeated look he’d had in the cheap hotel, sitting next to Darla, the used-to-be-a-guy hooker. “Detective, here’s the deal: A few months ago my son was on vacation here with some friends from college. He was dancing in a club near Broadway and your associates T.G. Reilly and Ricky Kelleher slipped some drugs into his pocket. Then you came in and busted him for possession. Just like with me, you set him up and told him you’d let him go if he paid you off. Only Michael decided you weren’t going to get away with it. He took a swing at you and was going to call 911. But you and T.G. Reilly dragged him into the alley and beat him so badly he’s got permanent brain damage and is going to be in therapy for years.”

Schaeffer remembered the college kid, yeah. It’d been a bad beating. But he said, “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Shhhhh,” the private eye said. “The Shelbys hired me to find out what happened to their son. I’ve spent two months in Hell’s Kitchen, learning everything there is to know about you and those two pricks you worked with.” A nod toward the tourist. “Back to you.” The PI ate some more scone.

The husband said, “We decided you were going to pay for what you did. Only we couldn’t go to the police—who knew how many of them were working with you? So my wife and I and our other son—Michael’s brother—came up with an idea. We decided to let you assholes do the work for us; you were going to double-cross each other.”

“This is bullshit. You—”

The woman snapped, “Shut up and listen.” She explained: They set up a sting in Hanny’s bar. The private eye pretended to be a scam artist from Florida selling stolen boats and their older son played a young guy from Jersey who’d been duped out of his money. This got Ricky’s attention, and he talked his way into the phony boat scam. Staring at Schaeffer, she said, “We knew you liked boats, so it made sense that Ricky’d try to set you up.”

The husband added, “Only we needed some serious cash on the table, a bunch of it—to give you losers some real incentive to betray each other.”

So he went to T.G.’s hangout and asked about a hooker, figuring that the three of them would set up an extortion scam.

He chuckled. “I kept hoping you’d keep raising the bidding when you were blackmailing me. I wanted at least six figures in the pot.”

T.G. was their first target. That afternoon the private eye pretended to be a hit man hired by T.G. to kill Schaeffer so he’d get all the money.

“You!” the detective whispered, staring at the wife. “You’re the woman who screamed.”

Shelby said, “We needed to give you the chance to escape—so you’d go straight to T.G.’s place and take care of him.”

Oh lord. The hit, the fake Internal Affairs cop … It was all a setup!

“Then Ricky took you to Hanrahan’s, where he was going to introduce you to the boat dealer from Florida.”

The private eye wiped his mouth and leaned froward. “Hello,” he said in a deeper voice. “This’s Malone from Homicide. ”

“Oh fuck,” Schaeffer spat out. “You let me know that Ricky’d set me up. So …” His voice faded.

The PI whispered, “You’d take care of him too.

The cold smile on his face again, Shelby said, “Two perps down. Now we just have the last one. You.”

“What’re you going to do?” the cop whispered.

The wife said, “Our son’s got to have years of therapy. He’ll never recover completely.”

Schaeffer shook his head. “You’ve got evidence, right?”

“Oh, you bet. Our older son was outside of Mack’s waiting for you when you went there to get T.G. We’ve got real nice footage of you shooting him. Two in the head. Real nasty.”

“And the sequel,” the private eye said. “In the alley behind Hanrahan’s. Where you strangled Ricky.” He added, “Oh, and we’ve got the license number of the truck that came to get Ricky’s body in the dumpster. We followed it to Jersey. We can implicate a bunch of very unpleasant people, who aren’t going to be happy they’ve been fingered because of you.”

“And, in case you haven’t guessed,” Shelby said, “we made three copies of the tape and they’re sitting in three different lawyers’ office safes. Anything happens to any one of us, and off they go to Police Plaza.”

“You’re as good as murderers yourself,” Schaeffer muttered. “You used me to kill two people.”

Shelby laughed. “Semper Fi… I’m a former Marine and I’ve been in two wars. Killing vermin like you doesn’t bother me one bit.”

“All right,” the cop said in a disgusted grumble, “what do you want?”

“You’ve got the vacation house on Fire Island, you’ve got two boats moored in Oyster Bay, you’ve got—”

“I don’t need a fucking inventory. I need a number.”

“Basically your entire net worth. Eight hundred sixty thousand dollars. Plus my hundred fifty back … And I want it in the next week. Oh, and you pay his bill too.” Shelby nodded toward the private eye.

“I’m good,” the man said. “But very expensive.” He finished the scone and brushed the crumbs onto the sidewalk.

Shelby leaned forward. “One more thing: my watch.”

Schaeffer stripped off the Rolex and tossed it to Shelby.

The couple rose. “So long, detective,” the tourist said.

“Love to stay and talk,” Mrs. Shelby added, “but we’re going to see some sights. And then we’re going for a carriage ride in Central Park before dinner.” She paused and looked down at the cop. “I just love it here. It’s true what they say, you know. New York really is a nice place to visit.”

THE NEXT BEST THING

BY JIM FUSILLI

George Washington Bridge

He was a nasty bastard and everybody knew it, but she fell for him anyway. He had blue, blue eyes and he knew how to take his time and, of course, she loved the way he played piano. She thought everybody loved the way he played piano.

She didn’t know he’d been run out of Kansas City and that he worked in Jersey because he couldn’t cut it on 52nd Street, up at Minton’s or at the Café Bohemia in the Village. One time, she followed him to Broadway, knowing Bud Powell was playing Birdland, and she cozied up to him at the bar between sets and slid her hand onto his broad shoulder. He turned hard, his face going blank with a pure, powerful rage. Taking it simple, figuring he didn’t want her catching him doing something or hearing something he didn’t want her to know, she slid off the stool, pushed through the chattering crowd and walked back downtown, and she never asked why. She was learning it was better to let him be.

They were in Hell’s Kitchen, and she wore a slip, and his scent surrounded her like mist, and one evening she said, “Maxie, do you ever—”

“No,” he said as he brushed his shoes. Maxie put on his shoes before his trousers, and she liked that too.

Later, he slipped the straight razor into its leather sheath, dusted his face and neck with Pinaud talc, and headed out to Port Authority for the 8:05 bus to Fort Lee. Three sets at the Continental Lounge for six bucks a night and whatever ended up in the brandy snifter. He would’ve done better in tips if he wasn’t such a nasty bastard. He had those blue, blue eyes.

* * *

Maxie had his shot, but it didn’t take, and soon he was just another guy with his hat in his hand.

He wasn’t going to get a gig in New York City. He knew that before he caught the train. His old man called it from the day Maxie was born. A gristled rail, an Okie to his soul, he used to sit by the Franklin stove, wind whistling through the shack, and as firelight danced on his sorrowful face, he’d say, “Man was born to fail, son. There ain’t no way around that.”

Thumbing, he made his way to Missouri, thinking it’d be all right. But Bird told him kindly he couldn’t play, so he hustled and found work with the Benny Walters band, passing through K.C., their pianist coming down with shingles. But soon every musician and big-time booking agent was hearing how Maxie had taken off Bippy Brown’s left ear with a .22. Bippy had a mouth on him, but it was Maxie who got the gate, Benny bouncing him in a diner outside Chickasha. Maxie could’ve walked home.

He’d arrived at Pennsylvania Station with thirty-eight cents in his pocket, figuring if he was going to fail, he’d make it look like he failed at the top.

Big, big city, he thought, as he stepped into the sun, catching a breeze from the IND running below. Buzz buzz buzz, and he looked up at the Empire State, and then at the Western Union Telegraph building in the distance. Yeah, a real metropolis, he thought, as he spit through his teeth onto Eighth Avenue. They got a bank on every corner.

A merciless winter and he caught a cold, and she made him hot lemonade and brought a therapeutic lamp to his two-room flat.

By then, he was set at the Continental, and she thought he’d hung the moon.

He’d sleep until 11 and walk until supper, and sometimes she’d eat with him. He liked the steam-table dives, so she said she did too.

He was the first man she knew who didn’t babble about her red hair or the birthmark under her left breast. He hadn’t hit her, at least not yet, and somebody taught him to keep himself neat, and that was new too. She thought there might be more to him, even after the lanky Mexican woman from downstairs started dropping in, leading with sympathy when she’d asked for none.

At night, she’d go up to the Gaiety for a rye and ginger ale, killing time before he returned from Jersey, and pretty soon the stories, all with the ring of truth. Maxie lifted a gold-plated lighter from the bouncer at the Onyx, Maxie took a sap to the doorman at the Stuyvesant Casino, Maxie tore up a joint on the Bowery over a ten-cent pig’s feet-and-potato dish.

The black-eyed Mexican beauty said Maxie was itching to get himself killed.

“Honey,” Maria said, “this man hate himself. You can no love somebody who hate himself.”

She ran her fingers through Mitzi’s red hair, called her Margarita.

Slumped on the divan, Mitzi listened, listened, and she rested her head against Maria’s hip.

She’s right, she thought. Ain’t it always the way?

Maria kissed the top of her hair, traced her ear with her thumb.

Mitzi heard Maria singing through the floorboard. Always something sweet, proud, and tragic. Always in Spanish.

Soon, they were spending afternoons in Maxie’s bed, Maria toying with the tufts of hair below Mitzi’s baby paunch, Maria exploring; the two of them soaking through the sheets. Mitzi arching her back, tingling like her soul was being stroked, smiling as she wiped away warm tears, as she met soothing kisses from Maria’s salty lips.

Later, after barefoot Maria slipped away, Mitzi quickly washed her face, washed under her arms, brushed her teeth with his Ipana powder. She sprinkled Pinaud talc on the pillows and opened the windows wide.

* * *

The rubes under the George Washington Bridge didn’t know a damned thing about much, most of all music, so he gave them some Van Heusen Sinatra brought to life. The rest of the time he riffed on the chords to “I Got Rhythm” and the I-IV-V blues Jay McShann showed him, figuring that right there covered most modern jazz.

When they applauded, he saw chimps, the kind they teach to roller-skate, to wear a fez and smoke a cigar.

He let his mind drift when he played, and he was back in K.C. with all that dough, telling them how he made it at the Three Deuces, up at Small’s Paradise, stared down the shadow of the great Tatum, knocked Al Haig on his ass.

He’d already decided it was going to be one of those banks, all marble, cathedral ceilings, gold-leaf lettering on the windows, pens on chains.

Payday, early, before they came by to cash their checks, while the vault still swelled with dough. And a crowd on the street so the weary ex-cop drowsing amid all that marble and all that money don’t come out blazing.

Every day he walked until supper, and in time he scoured the city.

And he found it: the North River Savings Bank, a block west of Macy’s and Gimbel’s, maybe a thousand people working between the two. The bank had a piano in the lobby, some heeb with glasses murdering Richard Rodgers.

Maxie followed the little guy home.

A stretch of cord flung like he was roping a calf. Stomped him into shock, his wrists wrecked, elbows all but ground to dust.

He quit the Continental, calling from a booth in the bank’s lobby.

* * *

Maria was looking to borrow the iron, and she knew Maxie was gone, hearing his brood steps on the stairs.

She let herself in, and she found Mitzi hunched over the bed, angrily cramming clothes into a cardboard suitcase. Crying like she should’ve known better.

“Margarita?” Maria said, shutting the door. “Mi amor, what?”

“No, no …”

Maria turned her, wrapped her arms around her, waited until she lifted her chin.

“What? What did he do?”

“He—oh Maria, he—”

A man at the bank, a vice president, a sucker for redheads, always was. Liked a good time, and didn’t mind laying out for quality. Winked at Maxie when he said he liked to come and go, and Maxie winked when he passed it on.

“A vice president …” Maria thought about it. “That son of a bitch.”

Mitzi whimpered.

Maria never liked him. A musician who didn’t have records and didn’t play the radio, not even to study, did not love music and did not have pride for his own gifts.

Going after the money: it’s what they did when they knew their talent fell short.

“You are nobody’s whore,” Maria said, as she kissed her tears.

Not for a good long while, Mitzi thought. Not since Maxie.

Maria nudged her toward the divan.

Mitzi, one, two, three steps and everything moving under red rayon.

“You go no place,” Maria began, kneeling now. “Here is you home.”

She murdered English, but she was damned smart and she saw it in Technicolor. Jazzman takes a gig in a bank, cozies up to a vice president, maybe the one with the key to the vault, the combination. Mr. Moneybags.

“This vice president. He is a married man?”

Mitzi wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “I guess. Maxie says he’s got a pencil mustache.”

Maria looked into her hazel eyes, gave her nipple a playful twist. “It’s the woman’s curse. To fall for the stupid man.”

“Oh Maria,” she moaned, “ain’t I ever going to learn?”

“I tell you, chica. Leave everything to me.”

Mitzi leaned back, stared at the tin ceiling. She expected Maria’s hand on her thigh, thinking what a man might do, claiming his reward.

Instead, Maria stood, went for the bottle of rye in the kitchenette, the Hoffman’s ginger ale on the window sill.

Mitzi opened her eyes. “Maria … ?”

“Margarita,” she said, “I tell you: Leave everything to me.”

* * *

He started showing up a half hour before the bank opened, and the tellers liked his serenade almost as much as his blue, blue eyes, and he brought black coffee for Puckett, knowing the ex-cop made him for the nasty bastard he’d become.

Puckett had to piss before he took a second sip.

“You holding out on me, Maxie?” asked the vice president, jaunty when he passed the Steinway. “Keeping that redhead for yourself?”

“Looking for twins, Mr. Minthorn,” he replied, toying with the waltz from “Carousel,” playing it in 4/4 time.

Maxie broke for lunch at 2 o’clock.

Maria walked in eight minutes later.

Seated beside Minthorn’s desk, legs crossed, with his eyes fixed on the underside of her brown thigh, she made her pitch.

“But a man like you knows this,” she added. “A man in your position.”

Flattery, and the way she said “position”: lips pursed, her tongue peeking between her teeth for the little hiss.

And Minthorn knew she was right. A bunch of people from Macy’s and Gimbel’s who cashed their checks were from the islands, janitors and bus boys and such, and they needed to bank somewhere. To have someone to greet them in Spanish, to help them, a gentle twist of the arm …

“Whatever it is you invest, you make back quick,” she said.

“And someone as lovely as yourself to grace our branch …”

Maria pretended to blush, bringing her tapered fingers to her throat.

He hired her immediately, hoping her sense of propriety would wither in time.

She waited outside the bank on Eighth Avenue, shivering as the lunchtime crowd rushed by, their shopping bags brimming.

Coming back from Child’s, Maxie turned onto the avenue, topcoat collar high, and he looked right at her as he pushed the revolving door to enter the heated lobby.

She saw he hadn’t recognized her, and she knew it was going to be all right.

* * *

Find where Maxie kept his gun, look at the spot every morning when he leaves for the bank, and tell Maria when the piece was gone. Find where Maxie kept the gun, look at the spot every morning, and tell Maria …

The butterflies in her belly, prickle in her neck and chest, the way time stood still when she was gone: They all told Mitzi that she’d do whatever Maria said.

Never occurred to her that Maria might do her wrong like everybody else she’d fallen for.

Maxie’s gun rested beneath his array of socks, each pair rolled in a tight ball, diamonds on the ankles.

And then it was gone.

Wrapped in a thirsty robe, Mitzi went downstairs, drawing toward Maria’s lilting voice.

“It’s gone,” she said.

Maria in a black slip, and she was rolling up her hose. “He leave the same time?”

Mitzi nodded, and she watched as Maria went to her closet, brought out a dress in indigo-blue.

“Is it going to be today?” Mitzi asked.

“No, no, mi amor,” she replied as she slipped into the garment, stole a glance at the clock on the nightstand. “The money comes late this afternoon. Tomorrow. Has to be.”

“Should I be … Should I be scared?”

Maria wasn’t due at the bank until 10, but she found Minthorn liked it if she showed up early.

“No, you just do what we said.”

Maria pecked her cheek, then erased the lipstick trace. “Margarita, don’t think,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“Okay, Maria.”

A moment later, Mitzi was alone.

She sprayed Maria’s perfume into the air, and stood beneath the cloud of flowers, summer songs, a feathery sway. For the rest of the day, Maria’s scent clung to her fingertips and her red hair.

* * *

Mitzi felt like a heel stealing Maxie’s valise, but Maria said he wasn’t going to need it, and besides, he left it behind, dumping it like he was dumping her.

He took his razor, though. Took his ties, a shirt, two pairs each of boxers and those diamond socks too, and she saw him packing the night before last, one eye open under the covers, carefully stuffing the duffel he’d bought. Spent a long time looking at his cocoa suit in the closet, fingering the sleeve, and she knew he hated like hell to leave it behind.

Mitzi lifted the slacks, figuring what the hell.

Kerchief knotted under her chin, she went down the stairs, everything she owned in the valise but the therapeutic lamp and her old cardboard suitcase, and she was thinking a handful of talc might’ve captured the sweat soaking under her arms, running along her ribs.

She looked at Maria’s door.

Maria said Pennsylvania Station, 9:18. Track 101, Baltimore, and to stay put even if the seat next to her was empty when the train pulled out.

Maria had given her a ticket, and as Mitzi stepped onto the avenue, the cold stinging her face, she tapped her pocket, felt the envelope. Tapped it twice more for luck.

Baltimore to D.C. to Shreveport via Roanoke, Chattanooga, and Birmingham.

Maria said she always wanted to drive to Texas, said they’d cross the border at Eagle Pass. Said she had a brother in Salinas.

Baltimore would’ve been enough for Mitzi, leaning into the wind, a bitty thing under buildings pricking the clouds. She’d never been south of Battery Park.

* * *

Maxie had ice-water veins, never regretted shooting off Bippy Brown’s ear and now he didn’t give a damn about nothing. In less than an hour, he’d be back at the Hotel New Yorker using his real name, Mr. H.J. Blubaugh, having them deliver eggs, sunny-side up, and hash browns too.

Puckett thanked him for the container of black joe, and Maxie sat on the piano bench to remove his galoshes, putting his hat and topcoat on the case, wondering if he was going to have to kill anybody to get it done.

Wick, the senior teller, was already at her station, puckered lips, rouge, and all business, and then the Mexican broad entered, head held high.

The ex-cop walked across the lobby, falling in behind the Mexican on his way to the can.

Maxie eased the gun from the piano bench and dropped it into the side pocket of his blue suit jacket. As he went toward the locker room, he saw Minthorn opening the vault door, grunting.

The Mexican broad was sitting at her desk under the stairs, and she was still wearing her coat.

Puckett pissing away behind a door to the men’s room.

Maxie opened his locker and saw that his duffel bag was gone, and his clothes.

On the shelf, a record: “Moonlight and You” by the Benny Walters Orchestra, cornet solo by Bippy Brown, back when he had two ears.

Maxie felt a jolt, but he already had it spent. “Fuck it,” he said, charging out.

Puckett thought he heard someone call his name.

Passing Minthorn and the open vault, Maxie marched around the counter, and the tellers looked at him, wondering, thinking, Maxie …?

He grabbed the startled Wick by the meat of her arm, yanked her off the stool, rammed the .38 against her spine, and told her he didn’t give a shit if he had to kill her now or later, just keep her mouth shut.

She said, “See here, Maxie—”

Maxie, a nasty bastard, didn’t have a free hand to clap her, so he bit her hard on the back of her neck, drawing blood.

“Ready to shut it now?” he said, as he spit to the side.

They advanced toward Minthorn, who was stacking the cart with thick packets of bills and a fat bag of coins.

Puckett backed out of the toilet, and then he looked at Maria who, with a wide-eyed nod of her head and a sideways glance, told the ex-cop what was going on.

Puckett drew his side arm, held it shoulder high. He stayed under the stairs as Maxie and Wick passed the final teller.

“Minthorn,” Maxie said.

The vice president turned and, no panic, lifted his hands in the air. And then he said, “Maxie, let her go. Maxie, she’s got three kids.”

Maxie released Wick’s arm, grabbed her hair by the bun.

Wick hissed, but didn’t scream, blood dribbling.

“Maxie, for Christ’s sake, take the money. Just let her—”

Puckett squeezed the trigger.

Out of the corner of his blue, blue eyes, Maxie saw it, saw how the whole thing was going to end.

The bullet in the air, and he remembered it was Bird who gave him his nickname. Bird dubbed him Mum, since he didn’t yap much, and then Bird, as well read as anybody and twice as quick, upped it to Maximum, calling him Maxie.

He loved Bird, and he hightailed it to K.C. full of hope, thinking he could play, thinking what he’d learned in the basement of the Kingdom Hall—

Puckett’s shot took off the back of Maxie’s head.

Wick went to her knees, the red mist finding her easy, and Minthorn charged out of the safe to catch her, failing when he bumped the cart.

Maxie collapsed to the marble floor like somebody cut his strings.

Minthorn took Wick in his arms. “Muriel?”

She told him she was okay, and the color rushed back to her face.

Puckett holstered his gun and pushed back the swinging door.

Maxie’s blood was spreading fast.

Minthorn said, “Muriel, let’s get the girls into my office.” Looking at the ex-cop, “Frank, don’t trip the alarm. Just keep the front door locked and wait for them outside. I’ll make the call.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Minthorn,” he said as he turned, started toward the piano bench, the revolving door on Eighth, steam still rising from his coffee container.

Minthorn shepherded Wick and the quaking tellers, and then they were all inside, grateful they no longer had to see Maxie, the nasty bastard, with the side of his skull blown off, his blue, blue eyes rolled up into his head.

Minthorn pulled the blinds all around his office, cutting the light until he reached the desk lamp.

On cue, Maria took Maxie’s empty duffel bag from her drawer and went to the open vault, as Minthorn had agreed.

Minthorn, spent and on his side last night at the Hotel Martinique, and Maria, naked beneath his shirt on the chaise, telling him about Cuba. After a stopover in Miami, she said, they’d lounge on golden beaches, rum concoctions in their hands, and there wasn’t a banker on the entire island who would fail to believe he’d won the $202,000 at the casinos.

She stretched out her long legs, giving him a peek at the dark patch under the shirt front, and Minthorn quivered at the thought of her on white sheets after a day in the sun.

Referencing Maxie, she said, “He won’t know what to do when he has to face a man like you, Morris.”

There was no counting how many ways a line like that would work on a dope like Minthorn.

* * *

The 9:18 to Baltimore lurched forward, jostling the last of the passengers to board. Mitzi turned one last time to the rear. Maxie’s valise sat next to her atop the empty seat on the aisle.

She’s not coming, Mitzi thought, as she wrapped her kerchief around her finger, unwrapped it, all but tied it in knots. I’m sent off, again, only this time it’s to Baltimore with two dollars and change in my purse.

Ain’t it always the way?

She started thinking she’d get off in Newark, grab a couple of bucks on a refund, figuring they had a subway or some kind of ferry would take her back to Hell’s Kitchen, knowing Maxie was paid up until New Year’s.

As the clattering train began to find its pace, she thought, maybe there’s a guy in Baltimore. There’s got to be. A real nice guy, and she’s new in town, and he can see she’s had it rough. He’s got a job, something regular, and he’s kind. Buys her a drink, then the blue-plate special, a refill on the coffee, and everybody in the diner says he’s kind, a gentleman—

“Excuse me, miss. I can have this seat?”

Maria smiled, looking down.

She seemed awfully composed, considering.

“I can put your valise with mine,” she said.

Brand new, brown leather, and without a single scratch.

Mitzi figured the money was locked inside.

“Okay,” Mitzi said, and she watched Maria allow the porter to hoist the two pieces, and her coat, into the overhead compartment.

“Your coat now, miss?” asked the colored porter, sharp in a black bow tie and vest.

“No,” Mitzi said, as Maria nestled next to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll keep it.”

They met sunlight in Jersey, and Mitzi leaned over, whispered, “Did you hurt him?”

Maria looked at the red trim on the seat in front of them. “No, chica, I did not.”

“The money …”

Outside, miles of tracks on all sides, maybe twenty ways to come and go.

Maria tapped Mitzi’s hand. She’d booked a sleeper for the overnight to Birmingham, and they’d count the dough on the bed, if the girl insisted.

Maria figured it was $200,000, seeing that she left the coins.

Minthorn thought she was waiting at the Hotel Martinique. He said he’d arrive around noon, passport in his pocket.

She told him she had a brother in Camagüey.

Her turn to whisper, Maria said, “The next tunnel I’m going to kiss you, Margarita. I’m going to kiss you until you no can breathe.”

Mitzi blushed.

“There is no one between us now, baby,” Maria added. “Now you are mine alone.”

They rode in silence for a stretch, pulling into Newark, pulling out. “Trenton next,” bellowed the roly-poly man.

Factories on either side, most of the way. Mitzi wondering if they had an ocean in Baltimore. Be nice to swim in an ocean.

She didn’t know what to call the feeling inside. No, but it was like it was all the other times at the start. She wondered if it could be different in the long run.

“Maria? Maria, will you be nasty?”

“Que? ”

“I mean, are you ever nasty?”

Maria looked at her with her black, black eyes.

“I told you, Margarita: Don’t think and don’t worry,” she said softly. “Leave everything to me.”

Mitzi studied her, trying to figure out how she could ignore the passing scenery, puffy smoke billowing from towering chimneys, a silver airplane growing bigger. Christmas lights, and little backyards with snowmen, coal buttons, carrots, corncob pipes.

TAKE THE MAN’S PAY

BY ROBERT KNIGHTLY

Garment District

Sergeant Thomas Cippolo, desk sergeant at Midtown South, peers over his half-moon reading glasses at Detective Morrie Goldstein and his handcuffed prisoner as they enter the precinct.

“What’s up wit’ Charlie Chang?” he asks.

“Chang?”

“Yeah.” Cippolo starts his various chins in motion with a vigorous shake of his head. “Charlie Chang. The dude made all those movies with Number One Son.”

“That’s Chan, ya moron,” Goldstein replies without relaxing his grip on the arm of his prisoner. “Charlie Chan.” Goldstein is a massive man, well over six feet tall with broad sloping shoulders that challenge the seams of an off-the-rack suit from the Big & Tall shop at Macy’s. “Anyway, he’s not Chinese. He’s a Nip. Hoshi Taiku.”

“A Nip?”

“Yeah, like Nipponese. From Japan.” Goldstein notes Cippolo’s blank stare, and sighs in disgust. “The Japanese people don’t call their country Japan. They call it Nippon. Ain’t that right, Hoshi?”

Taiku does not speak. Though he’s been in the United States for three days and has only the vaguest notion of the American criminal justice system, he’s heard about Abner Louima and wouldn’t be surprised if the giant policeman strung him up by his toes.

Goldstein steers Taiku around Cippolo’s desk and up a flight of stairs to a large room jammed with desks set back-to-back. A few of the desks are occupied by detectives who look up from their paperwork to watch Goldstein direct his prisoner to a small interview room. They do not speak. The windowless interview room contains a table and two metal chairs, one of which is bolted to the floor. The table and chairs are gray, the floor tiles brown, the walls a dull institutional yellow. All are glazed with decades of accumulated grime, even the small one-way mirror in the wall opposite the hump seat.

“That feel better?” Goldstein removes Taiku’s handcuffs, then flips them onto the table where they settle with an echoing clang. “Okay, that’s your chair.” He points to the bolted-down chair. “Take a seat.”

Hoshi Taiku is a short middle-aged man with a round face that complements his soft belly. From his seated position, looking up, Goldstein appears gigantic and menacing. Curiously, this effect remains undiminished when Goldstein draws his own chair close, then settles down with an appreciative sigh.

“My back,” he explains. “When I gotta stand around, it goes into spasm. I don’t know, maybe I should get myself one of those supports. I mean, standing around is all I ever fuckin’ do.” He removes a cheap ballpoint pen, a notebook, and a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and sets them on the table.

“First thing I gotta do is explain your rights. Understand?”

Taiku does not reply. Instead, his gaze shifts to the wall on the other side of the room, a small act of defiance which elicits a triumphant smile from Goldstein. Goldstein has bet Sergeant Alex Mowrey $25 that Taiku will crack before 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It is now 10:30 in the morning.

Goldstein lays his hand on Hoshi’s shoulder, and notes a barely detectable shudder run along the man’s spine. “Hoshi, listen to me. You chatted up the desk clerk, the bartender in the Tiger Lounge, and a barmaid named Clara. I know you know how to speak English, so please don’t start me off with bullshit. It’s inconsiderate.”

After a moment, Hoshi bows, a short nod that Goldstein returns.

“Okay, like I already said, you got certain rights which I will now carefully enumerate. You don’t have to speak to me at all if you don’t want to, plus you can call a lawyer whenever you like. In fact, if you’re broke, which I doubt very much, the court will appoint a lawyer to represent you. But the main thing, which you should take into your heart, is that whatever you say here is on the record. Even though you haven’t been arrested and you might never be. You got it so far?”

Goldstein acknowledges a second bow with a squeeze of Taiku’s bony shoulder, then releases his grip, leans back in the chair, and scratches his head. In contrast to his body, Goldstein’s oval skull is very small and rises to a definite point in the back, a sad truth made all the more apparent by a hairline the stops an inch or so above his ears.

“So it’s up to you, Hoshi,” he finally declares. “What you’re gonna do and all. You say the word, tell me you don’t wanna clear this up, I’ll put you under arrest, and that’ll be that.”

“No lawyer.” Despite a prodigious effort, the words come out, “‘No roy-uh.’”

“Okay, then you gotta sign this.” Goldstein takes a standard Miranda waiver from the inside pocket of his jacket, then spreads it on the table as if unrolling a precious scroll. “Right here, Yoshi. Right on the dotted line.”

A moment later, after Yoshi signs, a knock on the door precedes the entrance of Detective Vera Katakura.

“The lieutenant wants you in his office.”

“Now?” Goldstein is incredulous.

“Not now, Morris. Ten minutes ago.”

* * *

When he returns a few minutes later, Hoshi Taiku, though unattended, is sitting exactly as Goldstein left him, has not, in fact, moved at all.

“I’m gonna be a while,” the detective explains. “I gotta take you downstairs. Stand up.”

Re-cuffed, Hoshi is led across the squad room to a narrow stairway at the rear of the building, then down two flights to the holding cells in the basement.

“What you got here, Morrie?” Patrolman Brian O’Boyle asks when Goldstein approaches his desk. O’Boyle has been working lockup since he damaged his knee chasing a suspect ten years before. He sits with his feet on his desk, perusing a worn copy of Penthouse magazine.

“Gotta stash him for a while,” Goldstein explains. He lays his service automatic on O’Boyle’s desk, then grabs a set of keys. “Don’t get up.”

Goldstein leads Taiku through a locked door, then down a corridor to a pair of cells. The cells are constructed of steel bars, two cages side-by-side.

“Yo, Detective Goldstein, wha’chu doin’? You bringin’ me some candy?”

“That you, Speedo Brown? Again?”

“Yeah. Ah’m real popular these days.”

Taiku’s arm tightens beneath Goldstein’s grip and his steps shorten. Speedo Brown is every civilian’s nightmare, a bulked-up black giant with a prison-hard glare that overwhelms his bantering tone.

“Put your eyes back in your head, Speedo. I’m stashin’ Hoshi outta reach.”

“That the bitch cell,” Speedo protests as Goldstein unlocks the cell adjoining his. “Can’t put no man in the bitch cell lessen he a bitch. You a bitch, man? You some kinda Chinatown bitch? You Miss Saigon?”

Goldstein pushes Taiku into the cell, locks the door, then turns to leave. “C’mon, baby,” he hears Speedo coo as he walks off, “bring it on over here. Let Speedo bus’ yo cherry.”

* * *

Hoshi Taiku perches on the edge of a narrow shelf bolted to the wall at the rear of his cell. He stares out through the bars, his face composed as he studiously ignores the taunts of Speedo Brown. But he cannot compose his thoughts. He has disgraced his family and betrayed his nation. In the ordinary course of events, he would already have lost everything there is to lose. But not here in this land of barbarians. No, in the land of the barbarians there is a good deal more to lose, as Speedo Brown’s words make clear.

“You come to Rikers Island, ahm gonna own yo sorry ass. I got friends in Rikers, git you put up in my cell. You be shavin’ yo legs by sunrise.”

Taiku thinks of home, of Kyoto, of his wife and children. If he is arrested, they will be shunned by their neighbors, his disgrace falling on them as surely as if they’d committed the act themselves. But he has not been arrested, has not, in fact, even been questioned, a state of affairs he finds unfathomable. In Japan, in Kyoto, he would already have done what is expected of anyone arrested for a crime. He would have confessed, then formally apologized for upsetting the harmony of Japanese society. That was what you did when you were taken into custody: You accepted your unworthiness, took it upon yourself, the consequences falling across your shoulders like a yoke.

But he is not at home, he reminds himself for the second time, and there are decisions to make, and make soon. Should he speak to the detective? If so, what should he say? Is it dishonorable to lie to the barbarians who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Who occupied Japan? Who humiliated the emperor? Taiku no longer believes that Goldstein will hurt him, not physically. That’s because Goldstein has made the nature of his true threat absolutely clear: Talk or face immediate arrest and Speedo Brown, or someone just like him. Well, talk is one thing, truth another …

Taiku’s thoughts are interrupted by the appearance of Patrolman O’Boyle. He is walking along the hallway, a prisoner in tow, a female prisoner.

“Up ya go, Taiku,” O’Boyle orders. “You’re movin’.”

“Thank you, Lord,” Speedo Brown cries.

O’Boyle cuffs his prisoner to the bars of Taiku’s cell, then unlocks the door and motions Taiku forward. Already on his feet, Taiku finds that his legs do not respond to his will, that his heart has dropped into his feet, that he has a pressing need to immediately void his bladder. He has never known such fear, has not, prior to this moment, known that human beings had the capacity to be this afraid.

“You wanna hustle it up, Tojo? I don’t got all day.”

Again, Taiku wills himself to move, again he fails.

“Lemme put it this way, Taiku. If I gotta call in backup and extract you from that cell, I’m gonna carve your little Jap ass into sushi. You comprende? ”

Taiku’s mouth curls into a little circle, then he finally speaks, “Man threaten me.”

The word “threaten” emerges as “fletta,” which only adds to the humiliation Taiku feels at that moment. He has begged an inferior, a foreigner, to protect him.

“What?”

“Man threaten me.”

“Who fletta, you? Speedo?” O’Boyle glances at Speedo Brown, then laughs before answering his own question. “Little Speedo? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Would ya, Speedo?”

“Never hurt a fly in my life, but I’m hell on Japanese beetles.”

“I am Japanese citizen. You must … protect me.” Taiku chokes on his own demand. A shudder runs through his body. If he’d had the means, he would have killed himself before speaking those words.

“Whatta ya think, Speedo? Should I ploteck him?”

“You jus’ leave the boy in my hands, officer. Ain’ nobody gonna hurt him. Leastways, nobody but me.”

O’Boyle chuckles and shakes his head. “Awright, Tojo. You can wait for Goldstein out by the desk. Bein’ as you’re a Jap citizen and you ain’t been charged with a crime, I guess it’s my beholden duty to save you from the big bad wolf.”

* * *

“I’m really sorry,” Goldstein apologizes for the second time. “A couple of uniforms picked up a rapist I been after for six months. I hadda make sure he got hit with enough counts to catch a high bail. The asshole, he goes out on the streets, he’s gonna rape someone else.”

They are sitting in the interview room they left an hour before, on either side of the gray table. Goldstein’s pen, pad, and tape recorder are laid out in a neat row. “We’re goin’ on the record now.” Goldstein sets the tape recorder on end, starts it running, then suddenly shuts it off and pushes it to the side.

“Ya know something, Hoshi? I don’t think we need to get formal. For right now, let’s just keep this between the two of us. Whatta ya say?”

Goldstein acknowledges Hoshi Taiku’s nod with one of his own, then gets to work. “Okay, why don’t we start at the beginning. Why don’t you tell me, in your own words, exactly what happened at the hotel this morning.”

Taiku draws a breath and feels his command of English, modest at the best of times, slip away. He fears that when he speaks, he will appear a clown to the detective whose eyes never leave his own. Still, he knows he must speak.

“Girl jump,” he finally says. “She whore.”

“Whore?”

“She whore,” Taiku repeats.

“A prostitute? That’s what you’re saying?”

“Yes.”

“You devil. So, how’d you meet her?” Goldstein shakes his head and mock-punches Taiku’s arm. “And by the way, her name was Jane Denning. She was twenty-eight years old and had a kid in fourth grade at Holy Savior in Brooklyn.”

Bit by bit, with Goldstein in no seeming rush, Taiku’s story emerges. First, before leaving Japan, he was handed a business card from the Monroe Escort Service by a superior who’d been quick to explain that Monroe’s specialty was large-breasted, blond-all-over blondes. Taiku had accepted the business card, not because he wished to enjoy the favors of a blond-all-over blonde, but only because a refusal would result in his superior’s losing face. He’d bowed, put the card in his wallet, and had forgotten about it until a dinner meeting was canceled at the last second and he found himself consigned to a long evening in his room at the Martinique Hotel. Jane Denning (who’d called herself Inga Johannson) had arrived an hour later.

“Did you get what you paid for?” Goldstein asks. He hasn’t stopped grinning (nor have his eyes strayed from Taiku’s) since Taiku began his story.

“What you say?”

“You know.” Goldstein cups his hands against his chest. “Did she have a big pair? Was she blond all over?”

Taiku recoils. He cannot divine the motive behind the question; the cultural differences are too vast. Policemen in Japan maintained a supremely disapproving countenance at all times. Goldstein looks as if he’s about to drool.

“Hai. Girl okay.”

“How many times you do her?” Goldstein arches his back and grunts. “I mean, it was an all-nighter, right? You took her for the whole night?”

“Yes. All night.”

“So, how many times you do her?”

Taiku has had enough. He expects foreigners to be offensive, and knows he has to make allowances. But this is too much. Next Goldstein will ask him to describe what they did. “This not your business.”

Goldstein’s eyes narrow, but do not waver. “Awright,” he waves his hand in a vague circle. “Go on, Hoshi.”

They’d had sex, Taiku admits, then he’d gone to sleep. He’d slept through the night and when he’d awakened the next morning, found himself alone in the bed. His first thought was that he’d been robbed, but his wallet, with his cash and credit cards, was where he’d left it in the pocket of his trousers. Then a cool breeze had drawn his attention to an open window, which he’d closed without thinking to look down. It was only after he’d showered and dressed, after Goldstein knocked on his door, after a long, repeated explanation, that he’d finally understood. Inga Johannson had used the window to make her final exit.

The story is simple and carefully rehearsed, but Taiku’s voice drops in pitch and volume as he proceeds. He is lying and certain that Goldstein knows it, certain also that he has to maintain the lie if he hopes to see his country and his family any time in the near future. But the need to confess, prompted by shame and disgrace, is very strong as well. And then there is the likelihood that even should he be released, he will neither be welcomed in his country, nor embraced by his family.

“Look,” Goldstein declares after a long moment of silence, “just for the record, is this the woman who came to your hotel room?”

Goldstein dips into the breast pocket of his jacket to remove a small photo of a young woman kneeling behind a toddler. The child, a boy, is looking over his shoulder and up at his mother while she faces the camera squarely. The broad smile on her face appears to be spontaneous and genuine.

Taiku stares at the photo, remembering the heavily made-up prostitute who’d emerged from the bathroom in her transparent lingerie, who’d run her tongue over her lips and her fingertips over her belly as if possessed. “Tell me what you want me to do,” she’d said. “Just tell me.”

“Hai. This her.”

“We found it in her wallet. Good thing, too, because the way she came down on her face … Wait a second.” Goldstein’s fingers return to his breast pocket, this time removing a Polaroid taken a few hours before. He lays the photo on the table. “A fuckin’ mess, huh?”

At first, Taiku sees only a large pool of blood spreading from a headless torso. But as he continues to stare down, he finally discerns the outlines of a flattened human skull made even more obscure by a semi-detached scalp.

Goldstein’s tone, when he begins to speak, is matter-of-fact. “You did okay for an amateur, Hoshi. First, you washed up the bathroom pretty good. Then you dumped the dirty towels, her makeup, and her syringe in a plastic bag which you took from the waste basket. Then you carried the bag down two flights, and you tossed it in a service cart without being seen. The only problem is, it’s not gonna help ya, not one bit, and what you’re doin’ here, lyin’ to me and all, is only makin’ things a lot worse.”

Taiku finds that he can’t tear his eyes from the photo on the table. Not because the gore holds him prisoner, but because he can no longer face Goldstein’s steady gaze. It’s ridiculous, of course; sooner or later he will have to look up. Still, he’s relieved, at least initially, when Goldstein continues to speak.

“The way I see it, you wake up, find the bed empty, maybe check your wallet, then head into the bathroom, where you discover Jane Denning overdosed on heroin. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, you think she’s dead. Maybe she’s not breathing, maybe her skin is cool to the touch, maybe you can’t find a pulse. Either way, you don’t want her discovered in your room. Call it a culture thing. A dead whore brings dishonor on your company, your country, your family, yourself. You just can’t let that happen. You tell yourself that nobody saw her come up to your room, that the cops will take it for a suicide, that nobody will lose any sleep over a dead whore, that by the time the police figure it out, you’ll be ten thousand miles away.

“Not a bad plan, when I think about it. And if Jane hadn’t been tight with the hotel detective, it might’ve worked, too. But she was well known to Mack Cowens, who was most likely bein’ paid off, and she told him where she was goin’.”

Goldstein pauses long enough to yawn. The squeal had come through at 7:30, at the end of his tour, and it’s now a little after noon. He wants his home and his wife and his bed, but the way it is, he won’t finish the paperwork for many hours.

“Awright, back to the ball.” He leans closer to Taiku, until his mouth is within a few inches of the smaller man’s ear. “What you did, Hoshi, you bad boy, after due consideration, was open the window, haul her across the room, and toss her out. Then you closed …” Goldstein stopped, rubbed his chin, and nodded to himself. “Oh, yeah, something we couldn’t figure out and I been wantin’ to ask you. Did you wait for the crunch before you closed the window? You know, did you wait for her to hit the sidewalk? And another thing: Did you think about what would’ve happened if Jane landed on a pedestrian? I mean, it was pretty early, but what if some little kid had been walkin’ along, mindin’ her own business, maybe thinkin’ about school or goin’ to a party, and … splat? As it was, Hoshi, the few people down there who saw it happen, they’re gonna carry that image into the grave. It’s not fair and—”

The door opens at that moment, cutting Goldstein off in mid-sentence. He jerks back as though slapped. “What the fuck is this? I’m workin’ here.”

Vera Katakura endures the outburst without altering her stern expression. “You’re wanted,” she announces.

Goldstein’s eyes squeeze shut for a moment, then, with a visible effort, he slowly gets to his feet. “Keep an eye on this jerk,” he commands. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

Taiku watches the door close behind Goldstein, then turns to Vera Katakura. Though clearly Asian, she might be from any of a dozen countries. He guesses Chinese, maybe Korean, but it doesn’t matter because …

“Stand up.”

The simple demand, spoken in perfect Japanese, runs up Taiku’s spine, an ice cube settling onto the back of his neck. As in a dream, he feels the muscles in his thighs flex, his knees bend, his body rising until he stares directly into Vera Katakura’s unyielding black eyes. She doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t have to speak. He can see his disgrace at the very center of her pupils, a tiny shadow, a smudge, and he knows that his dishonor extends to all—and to each—of the Japanese people. He wants to bow, to bend forward until his back is parallel to the ground; he wants to acknowledge his shame, to shrivel up and die, a cockroach in a fire. Instead, though his knees tremble, he continues to stare into Vera’s eyes until, without changing expression, she lifts her open palm to her shoulder, then cracks him right across the face.

“Hai,” he says.

* * *

“She reduced him to a puddle,” Goldstein declares, not for the first time. “The poor schmuck just melted on the spot.” He turns to Vera Katakura, his partner for the last three years, and lifts his glass.

They are drinking in a hole-in-the-wall bar on Ninth Avenue, one of the last of its kind this close to Lincoln Center. Goldstein, Katakura, Brian O’Boyle, and First Grade Detective Speedo Brown.

It’s been a very good day. A signed statement in hand before 1, the paperwork completed by 2, a crowded press conference at 3:30 with Captain Anthony Borodski taking full credit for the successful investigation, though he hadn’t arrived until after Hoshi Taiku was formally charged with murder. Mowrey had stood alongside his captain, there to field the questions that followed Borodski’s official statement, while Goldstein and Katakura lounged at the rear of the dais, trying to appear at least vaguely interested.

“You were definitely right about one thing,” O’Boyle says to Katakura. “You told me the poor bastard would beg to confess and beg he did.”

Vera glances at Speedo Brown, who earned his nickname when he appeared at Captain Borodski’s annual pool party in a tiny crimson bathing suit that fit his buttocks like a condom. “As you would, Brian, if you were in Taiku’s position. For a Japanese male, Speedo Brown is the worst nightmare imaginable.”

“I resent that,” Speedo declares. “I’m really a very nice person when you get to know me.”

They go on this way for another hour, with only Vera Katakura, who holds herself responsible, lending a passing thought to Hoshi Taiku. With malice aforethought, she’d signed, sealed, and delivered him into the hands of the state, plucking his strings as though playing a harp, effectively (and efficiently) consigning him to whatever nightmare awaited him on Rikers Island. Well, in fairness to herself, she hoped he’d asked for protective custody, or to get in touch with a lawyer, or with the Japanese embassy. An outraged embassy official had called the precinct ten minutes after the press conference ended. By that time, Taiku had already been arraigned and bail denied.

The saddest part, though it didn’t seem to sadden her comrades, was that if Jane Denning was dead before Taiku pushed her out the window, the worst charge he faces is unlawful disposal of a body, an E felony for which he will likely receive probation. It all depends on the autopsy results. If Hoshi catches a break, he’ll be out within a week. If not, he’ll sit until he is indicted and re-arraigned, until his lawyer makes an application for reduced bail, an application very likely to be denied.

“C’mon, Vera.” Goldstein nudges his partner. “You got nothin’ to say?”

Vera Katakura thinks it over for a moment, then sips at her third vodka tonic and shrugs. “You take the man’s pay,” she declares in a tone that brooks no contradiction, “you do the man’s job.”

THE LAUNDRY ROOM

BY JOHN LUTZ

Upper West Side

That it was blood didn’t seem likely.

Possible, but not likely.

Laura Frain stood in the dim basement laundry room of her apartment building and studied the stained shirt beneath a sixty-watt bulb that should have been a hundred. The rust-red stain on Davy’s blue collar looked as if it might be stubborn. And there was a similar stain on the shirt’s right sleeve.

She glanced around the laundry room, as if she feared she wasn’t alone. But she was alone. Most of the women in the building and not a few of the men didn’t like coming to the basement room to use the aging, coin-operated washing machines and clothes dryers. Especially since Wash Up, a spacious and well-lighted laundromat, had opened down the block. The basement laundry room—smelling of mold and bleach—was oppressive, even spooky, with its dimness and shadows and slitlike windows that looked out on an air shaft and hadn’t been washed in years. The truth was, she hated being there, but felt she had little choice.

The laundry room was one of the reasons she and Roger had rented the apartment, so she was determined to take advantage of the convenience. Besides, it was cheaper than a laundromat or dry cleaners.

Laura, her husband Roger, and their sixteen-year-old son Davy had lived in the Upper West Side apartment for the past two years, after being displaced when their longtime apartment on West 89th Street had gone condo. The new apartment had finally begun to feel like home.

Like her husband, Laura was in her late thirties. She and Roger had only last month celebrated their seventeenth wedding anniversary. She smiled, thinking as she often did that she was part of an attractive family. She still had her dark good looks, her lush auburn hair, and bright blue eyes. And Roger, while never a handsome man in the conventional sense, was still trim and attractive in his homely, Lincolnesque way. Davy, of course, was beautiful, with Roger’s craggy features and Laura’s bold blue eyes and wavy dark hair. A heartbreaker, Davy, though he didn’t date much.

Laura turned on the washer and listened to the ancient pipes rattle along the ceiling joists as the tub began to fill. She spread out the shirt with the stain facing up, stretching the material tight over the top of one of the nearby dryers, then reached for the aerosol can of spot remover. She sprayed the stain, then dipped a scrub brush into the warm water gushing into the machine, applied some soap to the brush’s bristles, and began to work on the stain.

When it had completely disappeared, she started on the similar stain on the shirt sleeve. Red sauce of some kind, perhaps even a thick red wine. She scrubbed until that stain had disappeared too, then continued to scrub.

When the washer was almost filled, she put the shirt in by itself, so it would be good and clean.

Davy’s shirt.

* * *

“David,” he said.

The pretty blond girl looked at him and cocked her head to the side to demonstrate she was curious. Her hair was combed straight back but ringlets had escaped to dangle in front of her ears and dance when she moved her head.

Davy smiled. “I thought you asked me my name.” They were in a video arcade near Times Square, and it was noisy not only from the games but from the traffic sounds drifting in through the open door.

“You heard wrong,” the girl said, but she returned his smile.

He shrugged and turned back to his Mounted Brigade game, swerving his horse right and lopping off the head of one of the charging Dragoons. An abbreviated shrill scream burst from the machine.

“Holly,” he heard.

He turned back to face the girl. “A beautiful name.”

She laughed cynically. “Yeah. So’s David.”

“You come in here often?” he asked, ignoring the trumpet signaling another charge.

“I don’t come in here at all. I stopped in to get out of the rain.”

He glanced outside and saw that a light summer drizzle had begun. People on the sidewalk were looking up at the sky in wary surprise, some of them opening umbrellas. Then he took a closer look at the girl—woman. She was older than he’d imagined, in her twenties. It was the renegade ringlets that threw him, and her clothes. She was dressed young, in tight jeans, a sleeveless Mets shirt, and dirty white jogging shoes. She had an angular, delicate look, emphasized by her swept back blond hair and the way she wore her makeup, heavily applied, with eyeliner that made her blue eyes even bluer. Both her ears were pierced in three places, and each piercing held a tiny fake diamond stud.

“Seen enough?” she asked.

He laughed. “Not by a long shot.” He turned away from his video game so she’d know she had his full attention. They always liked that. “You go to NYU?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Your shirt.”

She looked down at what she was wearing and gave him a quizzical look.

“NYU girls are Mets fans,” he said.

“All of us?”

“Without exception.”

“I actually like the Yankees.”

“Okay. With one exception.”

She gave him a different kind of smile this time. Kind of slow and lazy. It made her look even older. He liked that. “Let’s get out of here,” she said. “It’s too fucking noisy.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

She widened her smile. “Yeah. I know what you were thinking.”

* * *

“I got a call from the high school,” Laura told Roger when he phoned from the office at Broadwing Mutual, where he sold all kinds of insurance over the phone and managed outstanding policies. Laura wasn’t sure exactly what his job entailed, but he earned enough to support the family in reasonably good style—if they watched their pennies. “Davy’s skipped his afternoon classes again.”

“A habit.”

“The school’s concerned.”

“He’s a senior. He’ll go away to college next year.”

“If he graduates.”

“He’ll graduate, the tuition we pay the place.”

“He’s got to attend some classes.”

“And he does attend some. Davy will always do at least enough to get by. That’s the kind of kid he is. You worry too much, Laura.”

Or not enough.“He probably won’t be home in time for dinner, either. That seems to be the pattern.”

“So he’s out someplace having fun. He’s a young man now. You want me to talk to him?”

“No.” She knew her husband was bluffing. He wouldn’t talk to their son even if she insisted. She’d known for years the kind of relationship Roger and Davy shared. The late night trips down the hall when Roger assumed she was asleep. The faint squeal of the hinge on Davy’s bedroom door and—

“Laura?”

“I don’t see any reason to talk to him,” she said. “It probably wouldn’t help, anyway.”

“Davy’ll be all right. I can just about guarantee it.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that guarantee.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Will you be home for supper?”

“No, I’ve gotta work late. Be about 9 o’clock, I’m afraid.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

“Don’t worry, Laura. Promise?”

“Sure,” she said, and hung up the phone.

She hadn’t mentioned the stained shirt to Roger. What would be the point?

* * *

They sat in the pocket park that was squeezed between two buildings on East 51st Street. The more they talked to each other, the more she thought they had a lot in common. Enough, anyway.

He was young, all right; Holly could see that even in the dim light from cars passing in the nearby street. But there was something about him, a deep sort of confidence despite his age, as if he’d been around. Maybe more than she had.

“Mind if I ask how old you are?”

He gave her a slow smile that got to her. “Sure, I mind. You afraid I’m jailbait?”

“No. Women don’t think that way. Besides, you’ve got old eyes.”

“You trust me to be old enough and I’ll trust you.”

“To do what?”

“To be gentle with me.”

Holly laughed. “Listen, I’ve got nothing but booze at my place.”

“We don’t even need that.”

She grinned. “C’mon, David. I might not even have that, but you can help me look.”

“I’m good at finding things,” he said, standing up from the bench. “Like, I found you.”

Less than an hour later he slid the long blade of one of her kitchen knives in at the base of her sternum, then up at a sharp angle to the heart. He’d worked out that method from books and basic medical research on the Internet. When he withdrew the blade, it made a muffled scraping sound on her rib cage. It was a sound he liked and made a point to remember.

Holly died quickly on the kitchen floor, not even aware of falling. The last two years, her friends, her lovers, her neat but small apartment near the college, all of it slipped away from her so, so fast, somewhere in the darkness beneath her pain.

The last thing she saw as the light faded was David, nude, standing near the sink, removing objects from the drawer where she kept the knives. More knives. There was a kind of studied purpose about the forward lean of his young body and his intense concentration, as if he were just beginning something rather than ending it.

* * *

“Another girl’s been murdered and carved up down in the Village,” Roger said, reading the folded Times as he sat at the kitchen table and sipped his coffee. “The news media’s calling the killer the Slicer. Not very imaginative.”

“I don’t think I want to hear about this at breakfast,” Laura said. She was sitting across from Roger, pouring milk over a bowl of cracked wheat cereal with raisins in it.

“The guy must be a frustrated surgeon. Or a butcher.”

Laura stood up and stalked to the window, standing with her back very straight and staring out over the fire escape.

“Take it easy,” Roger said. “I didn’t mean to spook you.”

Without turning around, she said, “Two weeks ago, the morning after another girl was killed the same way, I found what might be blood on Davy’s shirt.”

“So?”

“I found blood on his shirt this morning, too. Do you want me to show you?”

Roger picked up his cup, then paused, as if he’d changed his mind about coffee this morning. He placed the cup perfectly in its saucer. “No. I don’t see the necessity.”

“We could ask Davy if there’s a necessity.”

“Simple as that?”

“Yes.” But she knew it really wasn’t that simple. She was terrified of how Davy might reply. Even more terrified of what might follow. The media, the police and judges and juries, the system. Once the system, this city, had you by the throat, it shook and shook until there was nothing left of you. It might do that to Davy. To his family. Wasn’t it always the family’s fault? Over and over you heard that, how the killer was himself a victim.

Look at me. His mother. Look what I’m thinking. A victim and killer. Beautiful Davy.

It could be true. That terrified her more than anything.

Still, she had to know for sure.

“We could find out without telling Davy,” she said.

“It’s absurd even to think such a thing.” Roger sounded angry now. She understood why.

“We can’t simply do nothing. At least we can figure out what to do if we must do something.”

“I don’t follow you,” Roger said, sipping his coffee and making a display of calm.

“I don’t want you to follow me,” Laura said. “I want you to follow Davy.”

* * *

Two weeks later, when Davy emerged from his room after doing his homework, he said goodbye, then left for one of his unannounced destinations. This time neither Laura nor Roger pressed him for an explanation. Roger counted to twenty, then followed Davy.

“You’ll phone me?” Holly said as her husband left the apartment.

“I’ll phone you.”

Roger followed his son to a subway station, then boarded a car behind Davy’s and watched at each stop until he was among the passengers streaming out onto the platform.

Davy had gotten off at a stop in the Village. Roger hurriedly squeezed through incoming subway riders before the doors slid closed, then followed him up to the street.

It was a warm, pleasant evening, and plenty of people were out strolling the sidewalks and eating at outdoor cafés, so it was easy to keep Davy in sight without being noticed. He was unhurried yet seemed to walk with purpose, as if he knew where he was going rather than simply ambling around enjoying his surroundings.

Davy turned a corner, then made his way through a maze of narrow, crooked streets that were fairly dark but less crowded. Roger had to fall back, and it became more difficult to follow without being seen.

Suddenly Davy slowed and looked about, as if searching the block of old brick apartment buildings for an address. Roger picked up his pace, and from the other side of the street saw Davy enter the lighted vestibule of a beat-up structure whose bricks had years ago been painted white. Davy craned his neck slightly as if speaking into an intercom.

Roger jogged a few steps and saw that there was no inner door that needed to be buzzed open; Davy had simply announced himself. Roger watched his son take two wooden steps to a small landing and rap gently with his knuckles on the door to an apartment on his left. Moving closer still, Roger glimpsed a tall, thin, blond girl open the door and usher Davy inside.

Roger walked back across the street and studied the windows of what must be the front west ground-floor apartment, the one Davy had entered. There was protective iron grillwork over the windows. Shades were pulled, drapes drawn tightly shut. Only narrow angles of light made their way outside.

Feeling like an undercover cop—hoping a real undercover cop wouldn’t notice him—Roger dug his cell phone out of his pocket and called Laura.

“He’s in the Village visiting a tall blond girl—woman,” he said, then explained in detail his location and Davy’s, and how they’d gotten there. “I just caught a glimpse of her, but she looked very pretty. Maybe in her twenties.”

“You sound jealous.”

That seemed an odd thing for Laura to say. Was it in my voice?“So what’s our move now?” he asked. Laura seemed to have taken charge of the operation. “Should I bust in and yell for them to freeze?”

“You shouldn’t make light of it,” she said.

“Maybe we both should. All we’ve found out is Davy’s visiting a girlfriend—if he’s lucky.”

“Remember the blood on his shirts.”

“If it was blood.”

“I’ll come down there,” Laura said. “I’m going to join you.”

“What if Davy leaves before you get here?”

“If he does, let him leave. Don’t let him see you.”

“Then?”

“We’ll go into that apartment building and ring a doorbell.”

* * *

Roger didn’t notice Laura at first. She must have walked close to the buildings, on his side of the street. He saw that she was wearing a dark jacket, jeans, and her jogging shoes.

“Is he still in there?” she asked.

“No. He left about ten minutes ago.”

“How did he look?” Laura’s eyes shone like a cat’s in the dim reflected light of the streetlamp at the corner.

“He looked like he always looks. He seemed … calm.” Laura was standing motionless, in a strangely awkward yet poised position. “I doubt if anything happened in there,” Roger added, wondering himself how he could possibly hazard that guess.

“Let’s find out.” Laura started across the street.

Roger gripped her shoulder, stopping her. “And tell the woman what?”

“That we’re Davy’s parents.”

“For God’s sake, Laura!”

“We’ll tell her we’re taking a survey,” Laura said. “Or that we’re collecting food for charity.” She walked out from beneath his hand and he fell in behind her as they crossed the street and entered the building.

The pale green vestibule was more brightly lit than it appeared from outside—which was reassuring—and smelled as if it had been recently painted. Even so, there was fresh graffiti on the wall above the mailboxes in crude black lettering: God is watching over somebody else.

“It has to be that one,” Roger said, pointing up the stairs to the landing. He could see a brass letter and numeral, 1W, on the door to the girl’s apartment.

Laura pressed the brass button and they heard a distant buzzer inside the apartment.

There was no sound from the intercom.

They went up three wide wooden steps to the landing and waited at the door.

Nothing happened.

Laura knocked. Waited almost a full minute. Knocked again.

She glanced over at Roger.

“She didn’t leave with Davy,” he said. His voice was higher than he’d intended.

Laura turned the doorknob, pushed inward, and the door opened. She stepped inside, and Roger followed. For some reason he wanted to get in out of the hall now, didn’t want to be seen.

There were two dead bolt locks and an unfastened brass chain on the door. The woman certainly hadn’t locked herself in after Davy left.

They moved deeper inside the apartment, which was warm and comfortably furnished. The furniture was eclectic flea market but tasteful. There were art prints on the walls. A bookshelf was stuffed with paperbacks, most of them fiction.

They smelled the blood before they saw it. Roger felt as if his molars had turned to copper along the sides of his tongue, bringing saliva. He knew the stench was fresh blood even though he’d never before smelled it. Ancient knowledge.

The blond woman was sprawled in a wide circle of blood on the kitchen floor. Her long hair was fanned out and matted with blood. Her throat had been sliced almost deeply enough to have severed her head. Her breasts—

Roger had to turn away. He heard himself make a sobbing sound.

“We’re leaving,” Laura said. Her voice was so calm it frightened him.

“Jesus, Laura, we’ve gotta call the police. This—”

“Roger!”

“We’ve gotta tell somebody, no matter what. This is—”

“Don’t touch anything on the way out.”

He followed her. He touched nothing. In a dream. All in a dream. He saw Laura use her sleeve to wipe the outside doorknob after the door to the hall was closed behind them.

Out on the sidewalk, half a block away, they stopped, and Laura stooped low and vomited in a dark doorway.

Roger felt stronger than his wife now. At least he’d kept his food down. He pushed away a vivid image of the scene in the apartment kitchen and felt his own stomach roil. Swallowing a rising bitterness, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

“Don’t do that,” Laura said. “Not on a cell phone.”

“If we don’t call the police—”

“We’ll call them from home. We’ve got to talk. Got to talk with Davy. You know what will happen if we call the police. To all of us.”

“There’s no if about it. We’re going to call them. And maybe it should happen. Maybe we’ve all been partly to blame.”

“All of us?” She stared at him, astounded.

He thought for the first time that what had happened tonight, what they’d just seen, might have unhinged her mind. “All right,” he said, replacing the phone in his pocket. “We’ll go home. We’ll call from there.”

That seemed to mollify her, but he knew the subject hadn’t been dropped. They walked on to the subway stop and stood on the platform, which was now crowded. It must have been a while since the last train, so another should be due soon.

Even as he formulated the thought, a cool wash of air moved across the platform, pushed by an approaching train. A light appeared down the narrow, dark tunnel, and an increasing roar chased away all other sound. Everyone moved closer to where the speeding train would growl and squeal to a stop.

Roger was aware of Laura edging back behind him, which she did sometimes to protect her hairdo from the breeze of an approaching train.

When the train was no more than fifty feet away, he was surprised to feel her fists firm in the small of his back, and amazingly he was airborne, out and dropping, blinded by the brilliant light of the train, consumed by its thunder.

* * *

After the funeral, life, routine, settled back in. Roger had been dead less than six months, but Laura and Davy seldom spoke of him, and Laura and Roger’s wedding photo was tucked away in a box of his possessions that someday Laura would put out curbside with the trash.

Davy was doing better in school now. The Slicer murders were happening less frequently, as if the killer were maturing and learning restraint. There was no sense of urgency about the murders now in the media. In fact, amidst all the ongoing mayhem of Manhattan, they were hardly news at all.

Laura rarely patronized dry cleaners or laundromats, choosing instead to do most of the family wash herself. She would spend hours in the basement laundry room, scrubbing diligently, removing stains, scrubbing them again and again to make sure they were removed.

Some of the stains never completely came clean, but they were hardly noticeable, so she didn’t mind them. She didn’t see that they made much difference.

FREDDIE PRINZE IS MY GUARDIAN ANGEL

BY LIZ MARTÍNEZ

Washington Heights

Freddie Prinze had been dead for four years when he spoke to me the first time. I was in my room in my family’s apartment in Washington Heights, saying the Rosary, when he appeared. At first, I thought the dark spot on my wall was a shadow, and I closed my eyes tightly, trying to concentrate with fervor. I was preparing for my confirmation, and I knew that the ability to pray without distraction from the outside world was important.

He must have gotten impatient waiting for me to finish because he cleared his throat. I jumped at the sound, but for some reason I wasn’t afraid to see him standing in my room in the fading January light. He winked at me. “Hey, mamacita,” he said. “What’s goin’ on?”

I wasn’t really sure how to talk to a celebrity, but he was just slouching against the wall, the way I’d seen him do in Ed Brown’s garage on TV. He looked a lot taller in my room. In the living room, he was only about six inches high and sort of grayish on the old RCA. He also jumped up and down a lot because the vertical hold was busted. Here he was relatively still and looked like the older brother of one of my friends.

“Hi,” I said shyly. I immediately wondered if he knew I was saying the Rosary twice because today was the fourth anniversary of his death.

“So what are you doing?” he asked.

I guessed that he couldn’t read my mind after all. I breathed a little easier and held up the Rosary beads.

He nodded. “My mom does that all the time.”

He seemed very much at ease, but my knees were shaking like Bill Cosby’s Jell-O Pudding. I was glad I was kneeling so he couldn’t see. Did he know I had a huge crush on him, still?

“I hear you’re my number one fan,” he said.

I wanted to die. I felt my face turning red-hot. “Who told you that?” I asked, trying to be cool, sending up a quick prayer that my brother wouldn’t pick this moment to burst into my room.

He shrugged elaborately. “You know, you hear things when you’re …”

“Dead?” I whispered.

“Yeah.” He examined his fingernails.

“What’s it like?” I asked.

“Being dead? It’s not so bad,” he said.

“I mean … heaven. What’s heaven like? Do you get to meet all the saints?”

He snorted. “Naw. Haven’t met any yet.”

I was puzzled. This was not jibing with what the nuns had told me for the last eight years. An idea struck me. “Are you in, you know, purgatory?” I wondered if it was rude to ask, sort of like mentioning someone’s deformity that you’re not supposed to notice because it isn’t polite.

“No, no. It doesn’t really work that way.”

“What do you mean?” I was stunned.

He seemed to lose interest all of a sudden. “Listen, Raquel, I don’t have much time. I have to be getting back. I just came to tell you something important.”

He looked at me to make sure he had my full attention. Like I could concentrate on anything else.

He pointed his finger at me. “You’re going to have to make a decision soon, and it will affect the rest of your life.”

I nodded importantly. At last, something I could understand. “I know. I have to choose a confirmation name. I want to take Frederika. After you, you know?” I looked at the floor.

“Aw, kid. Don’t do this. I’m not—I wasn’t that important, really. I mean, I’m flattered as hell that you think so much of me, but I’m not worth it. Really.”

My eyes welled up. “I think you are.” I couldn’t speak above a whisper, and I couldn’t look at him.

“No, no, come on. Hey. I wish I could give you a tissue, but I don’t have any on me. Can you wipe your eyes on your sleeve and look at me? There you go. I hate to see anyone cry. Especially over me. I don’t deserve it, believe me.”

Now that I stopped sniffling, I got angry. “I think you do. You gave us all hope. You came from Washington Heights, and you made it. Everyone who has a TV saw that a Puerto Rican could be an important person.”

“Most people thought I was Mexican because of the character I played on Chico and the Man,” he said quietly. “And look at the kind of work Chico did on the show.”

I thought I understood. It wouldn’t be fitting for someone who would one day become a saint to brag. He must be practicing up by being modest with me. But I knew what he had done for me and countless others in el barrio. He was our symbol of possibilities.

I had another question. “Why’d you have to die so soon?”

There was no way to communicate to him the emptiness he left in my heart and soul when he abandoned me and all his other fans. Why couldn’t he have waited until I was older and could handle his death better?

“Every life lasts exactly as long as it’s supposed to,” he said gently. “I was here just the right amount of time.”

I hung my head and mumbled, “I wish you could have been here longer.”

“No, come on. Anyway, I’m here now because I have something important to tell you. You listening? Okay, here it is: You’re supposed to join the NYPD.”

I didn’t understand. “I’m only fourteen.”

“Yeah, well, this is a little ahead of schedule, but trust me. This is what you need to do. Listen, I have to get going now. It was nice to meet you.” He started to fade.

“Hey! Do you think you could say it before you go?”

“You mean, Looooking goo … ? ”

The last sound was drowned out by the pounding in my ears, which receded long after Freddie had disappeared.

I couldn’t understand why Freddie Prinze had told me to become a cop. There weren’t a lot of female officers, and I certainly didn’t know any Puerto Rican ones. It didn’t make any sense. I considered that he might be wrong. But could a saint be wrong? He must be a saint, because I’d heard of the Virgin Mary appearing in people’s oven windows, and she was certainly a saint if anyone was. He had the humility thing down, too, very important for those to be canonized.

But he had made those remarks about heaven and purgatory. Was it possible for a saint to be wrong? I didn’t think so. I thought the saints were like the Pope, always right, even if other people didn’t understand their logic.

I tested the waters with my mother. “Do you think saints can be wrong?” I asked her.

“Whaddaya talking about, wrong? Go wash up for supper,” she told me.

When I broached the subject of my confirmation name with her, I knew I had to be well prepared to counter the inevitable argument. “I want to take the name Frederika, after Frederick of Utrecht,” I said. “He was a Bishop who got stabbed to death during Mass in the year 838.”

My mother didn’t even glance away from her mending. “And you want to follow in his footsteps, maybe get stabbed to death on the street?” She finally looked up at me, narrowing her eyes. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, young lady. María. You’re going to take the name María,” she said in a voice that would brook no further argument.

But I had to try once more. “Sister says that you’re supposed to pick a saint’s name if the saint means something to you personally.”

“And this Frederick of Utrecht is a big idol for you, hmm? I think you didn’t know who he was until you looked him up in a book.” She shook her needle and thread at me. “I know which Frederick you’re interested in, and believe me, he was no saint.” My crush on Freddie Prinze was legendary.

“Maybe he will be one day,” I said stubbornly.

“Oh, I don’t think so, mija,” she said. “No, you’ll take María, like a good girl, and that’s final.”

Sister Mary Claire wasn’t any help, either. When I asked her how to go about proposing someone for canonization, she was immediately suspicious. She wanted to know who I had in mind, but I was cagey enough to pretend I was just asking in general. I don’t think it was an accident that the priest came in right after that and talked to us for a whole day about piety and the Catholic woman’s duty in the home.

* * *

I continued to pray for Freddie Prinze’s soul and to say the Rosary twice every January 29, but he didn’t come back the next year, even though I kept my eyes open long after I went to bed. I wracked my brain trying to remember the exact prayers that I had uttered in order to bring him back again. Each anniversary, I tried to repeat the magic formula, but it didn’t work until the year I was eighteen.

I was on my knees in the bedroom saying the Rosary fast because it had become a ritual, but my mind was more on meeting my friends. It was a Friday night, and we were going to a party at a boy’s house. I was thinking about the shoes I’d just bought when I saw Freddie standing against the wall.

This time, the first thing he said was, “Looooking good, mamacita! Whew, you’ve really grown up.” He nodded approvingly.

I was flattered, but still a little mad that he’d ignored me for the last three years. I tried to play it cool. “What took you so long?” I asked.

“Where I am now, time doesn’t work the same way it does here,” he said. “Seems like it’s been just a few weeks. That’s why it’s amazing that you’re all grown up.” He grinned.

I softened. I was thrilled to see him; why let my petty feeling of abandonment get in the way? “What’s up?” I asked. I was dying to find out what he had to tell me this time.

“You still haven’t joined the NYPD,” he said. “I’ve been checking.” He shook his finger at me.

“I’m not old enough yet. You have to be twenty-one.”

“Oh. Right.” He shrugged. “The time thing, you know?”

“You’ve been watching me?”

“Yeah. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

“Like a guardian angel, you mean?”

He gave me a funny half-smile. “Something like that.”

“So, do you see everything I do?” I worried about whether he observed me in the shower.

“Not everything, don’t worry. But the important things.”

I decided to test him. “Like what?”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, I know about you and Julio Marquez down the block.”

I blushed hard. I had experienced my first French kiss with Julio. I knew it was a sin, but I did it anyway. Then I went to Confession.

“Do you know other things, too?” I asked. “Like what horse is going to win?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” He squirmed. “But don’t ask me to tell you. I’m not supposed to.”

I immediately thought of what I could do with the winnings from OTB. Get my family out of Washington Heights and away from the drug dealers, for one thing. “Please? Could you just tell me the winner for one race? I’d never ask you again, I promise.”

“I’m really not supposed to,” he said.

I rose. “Isn’t there any way I could persuade you?”

He eyed me at chest level. “Um, I suppose just once wouldn’t hurt.” He beckoned me closer. I could feel his hot breath in my ear, but when I reached out to touch him, my hand hit the wall. “Okay, Broken Nose in the seventh at Aqueduct.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you!” I clapped my hands together. I was already spending the money.

“Yeah, well.” He cleared his throat. “You still need to become a police officer, okay?”

“I don’t see why,” I said. “It’s not like it’s what I really want to do or anything.”

“What would you rather do?”

“I want to be an actress. I’m even going to Performing Arts High School, just like you did.” I couldn’t keep the pride from my voice.

“Hey, kid, why do you wanna do that? No, no. It’s not in the cards for you. You join the NYPD like I told you, okay?”

“I guess. But I thought that if I could have a TV show like yours …”

“That’s not what’s right for you, believe me. Now, I got something else to tell you, so listen up, ’cause I gotta go soon,” he said.

“All right.” I was disappointed about the acting. I still wanted to follow in his footsteps.

“Come on, don’t sulk. This is important, so remember it, okay?”

I nodded to assure him that I was all ears.

“You’re gonna meet someone called Jumbo. He’s going to make you an offer, and it’ll sound real good to you. Don’t take it. If you do, you’ll get into really bad trouble. You understand?”

“Don’t accept Jumbo’s offer,” I repeated. “Who’s Jumbo and what’s he going to offer me?”

“No more time now. I gotta go.” He began to fade.

“Wait! Will you come back again?”

“Count on it, mami,” he said as he disappeared.

I broke open my piggy bank and counted the money. Not enough to bet on Broken Nose. On my way to the party, I picked up a copy of the Post, hoping to find the odds. Broken Nose wasn’t listed, but a horse named Jumbo was running in the seventh. It reminded me of Freddie’s warning, and I wondered about it again.

At the party, I tried to talk Julio and a few of my girl-friends into putting some money down on Broken Nose. I’d had a hot tip, I told them. Nobody believed me, especially when I couldn’t tell them when the race was, just that it was the seventh.

I checked the paper the next day. Jumbo was the winner in the seventh race. If I had put down fifty bucks, I would have been so rich … I didn’t even want to think about it. Why did Freddie give me the wrong tip? Maybe it was to keep me from gambling. He wasn’t supposed to tell me, and if he did, I wasn’t supposed to act on his tip. It must have been like a test. But for which one of us?

* * *

After I graduated from high school, I went to City College on a partial scholarship. I was so busy with my new life that I hardly ever thought about Freddie anymore. The first two years, I flew through the Rosary on the anniversary of his death, but the third year, I forgot to say it at all. I remembered two weeks later, but I was studying for a chemistry test and I didn’t want to take the time to pray. Besides, I was still a little sore about Jumbo.

During my senior year, I got involved with a Spanish theater group. I felt alive on the stage. I was looking into having head shots taken and putting my sparse acting credits together for a resume. At the school job fair, I filled out an application for an agency that was holding a model and talent search.

It was hard to believe that the guy taking applications worked for a modeling agency. He was tall and gangly with big ears and a nose that looked as though it had been broken more than once. As soon as I stopped by the table to talk to him, he latched onto me, though. He wanted to know everything: about my background, my training, acting classes, which productions I had performed in. It was very flattering to be asked to go to his agency to meet with his boss, a woman who could get me a lot of bookings, he said. He also liked my friend Gabriela. We looked somewhat alike, and he thought he could get us photo shoots together, when they needed sisters or look-alikes. He wanted us to come to his studio for an initial photo shoot over the weekend.

Gabriela was enchanted. “Think about how much money we could make,” she whispered.

But in the back of my mind, I wondered whether this man with the broken nose was the one that Freddie had warned me against. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I mean, look at this guy. No way he’s legit. He probably wants to get us to take off our clothes or something. Nah. I’m not going.”

Gabriela kept pestering me but I wouldn’t budge. She went by herself, and the next thing I knew, she was off to Florida to shoot a Coca-Cola commercial. She quit school because she got one booking after the next. She made so much money that she moved her mother to a house in Westchester. I tried to get her to convince her agent to let me try out for him, but she froze me out.

“You had your chance,” she said. We didn’t speak again after that.

I was kind of mad at Freddie, too, if you want to know the truth. Here he was supposed to be some kind of pre-saint or something, and he’d steered me wrong twice. What kind of guardian angel was he?

He showed up again that year. I didn’t really want to have much to do with him, but it’s kind of hard to ignore a dead guy who’s standing in your room.

“Hey, mami, looooking good!” he said, leaning against the wall.

I thought his whole act was kind of immature. He obviously hadn’t grown up much.

“Hey, mamita, what’s the problem?” he asked me. “You’re not happy to see me?”

“You gave me some bad advice,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, the Jumbo and Broken Nose thing,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I came to tell you that I got them mixed up. You don’t have to worry about that guy Jumbo.”

I curled my lip. “Jumbo was the horse,” I said. “The guy with the broken nose wanted to set me and my friend up as models. She made a zillion dollars, but I turned him down because of you.” Something struck me. “What do you mean, you got them mixed up? How can you get this stuff wrong? You’re in heaven, right? Don’t you hear things from God?”

He laughed. “No, no, I don’t get to talk to God. Like I told you before, it’s not really the way you think it is up there.”

I crossed my arms. “Well, how is it, then?”

“It’s … hard to explain. It’s just different, that’s all.”

“Well, anyway, why do you keep coming to visit me? I’m not saying the Rosary anymore, you know.”

“The Rosary isn’t like a magic trick. You didn’t call me up by praying with your beads,” he said.

“I didn’t? Then how come you appeared?”

His voice was gentle. “I told you, it’s my job.”

I snickered. “All those years, you told everybody, It’s not my job. Now you’re saying different.”

“That was just comedy. This is serious stuff. I’ve gotta watch over you or I won’t be able to—well, it’s sort of like getting a promotion. I have to do a certain number of things right before I can move up.”

“I knew it! You are in purgatory, aren’t you?”

“Naw. That’s not exactly how it works. But listen, my time is almost up here. I have to remind you about your calling. The NYPD is where you belong.”

“I’m not interested in police work at all.”

“Do you remember praying for a vocation when you were younger, to see if you were supposed to be a nun?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Try it again. You’ll find out what you need through prayer. I gotta go. Don’t forget, okay?”

He faded out, leaving me more confused than ever. I thought about it for a while, then hunted down my Rosary beads. Okay, God, I thought, if I’m supposed to have some sort of vocation, then let me know what you want me to do.

Nothing happened that night, but I thought I ought to give God more of a chance than that to show me His will. I said the Rosary every night, but I didn’t receive any celestial direction.

On the fourteenth day, my father’s younger sister Alma and her husband dropped by. They had a friend of my Uncle Juan’s with them. Sal was an absolute doll. He had a mustache and dimples that flashed when he laughed, which was often. He told jokes that cracked everyone up. His hair was dark and wavy, and I longed to run my fingers through it even though he was almost twice my age. I sat on my hands to make sure they didn’t jump out and touch him without my permission.

Tío Juan clapped Sal on the back repeatedly. They were celebrating his promotion from patrolman to sergeant. Juan kept saying how proud he was of Sal, one of the guys from the neighborhood making it: a good civil-service job, benefits, a pension. But I could hear the envy underneath my uncle’s words. He was a baker, but he never managed to get into a union. He would speak about others in the family who had landed union jobs as though they had hit the lottery. It was clear that he thought his life would have been easier if he had made it like they did. When he started getting obnoxious, my aunt pulled him out the door.

Sal lingered behind, saying goodnight to everyone, thanking my father for his hospitality. “It was very nice to meet you,” he said, looking into my eyes. His cheeks were made apple-round by his smile.

I wanted to touch his dimples, so I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jeans to keep them out of trouble.

He had been so easygoing and confident all evening that when he stuttered a little, I couldn’t imagine what was wrong.

“I, uh, that is, do you think you might like—”

My father had had a few glasses of wine and was watching us from his chair in the living room. “Oh, for chrissake,” he said, disgusted, “just ask her out already.”

Sal blushed and grinned at the same time. “Really? Would that really be okay with you?”

My father leaned back in the chair, his eyes almost closed. He flapped his hand in Sal’s direction, like, Don’t bother me.

Sal cleared his throat. “Would you like to go—”

“Yes!” I said.

He laughed. “You don’t even know what I was going to ask you.”

Now it was my turn to blush.

He started again. “Would you like to go to a movie this weekend?”

I pretended to think it over. “Sounds good.”

“I’ll pick you up on Friday at 7.”

“See you then,” I said.

* * *

I dated Sal for three months before the attraction wore off. He was a gorgeous Latin male, but he was a Latin male. It was 1987, and the idea that I would be subservient because he was the guy grew old quickly.

After we broke up, I found myself missing the stories he told about his job. I didn’t miss him too much, but the day I saw a sign on the subway advertising the next police exam, I realized that I’d been bitten by the bug. I signed up to take it, and I went into the Academy right after my college graduation.

I was glad for the time I’d spent with Sal—it was good preparation for all the crap I had to put up with from the other cops. But I just laid low and smiled through the practical jokes, even the nasty ones. After a while, they stopped. I was pulling my weight, and then some. I started making some good busts, and a few of the old hairbags even gave me some grudging respect. I bumped into Sal once or twice at rackets, and he always made sure to let me know that he was dating a busty blonde. I didn’t care.

When I had five years on the job, I was assigned to a detail that focused on getting the homeless off the streets. The mayor wanted the city to look clean—he didn’t actually want to clean it up, he just wanted it to look better temporarily for political reasons.

One night, after a tour that dragged into overtime, I staggered back to the studio apartment I was renting on the East Side, exhausted. All I wanted was to go to bed because I had to be up again in six hours to head back to work. I had just laid down when Freddie Prinze appeared—on the ceiling this time.

I groaned. “I’m really tired. Do we have to do this now?”

“Hey, what’s the matter? You’re not happy to see me?” He sounded genuinely hurt.

“No, no, it’s great, really. I’m just very tired. Can you come back another time?” This dead guy in my house was just too much after the day I’d had.

“I have something important to tell you. That’s why I show up, you know. It’s my job to let you know this stuff.”

I couldn’t keep my eyes open one more second. “I’m sorry. I really have to go to sleep.” I was out like a light.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting up in bed, only I was fourteen again. I looked down at my knobby knees and tried to figure out what was going on. Freddie was slouching against the wall in Ed’s garage. What was my bed doing in California?

“It’s a dream,” Freddie said. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

I didn’t feel tired at all, so when he spoke, I was happy to listen. I even enjoyed his company.

“If you’re too tired to stay awake, I’ll just have to talk to you while you’re sleeping,” he said. “Here’s the thing: You’re gonna have to make a tough choice very soon. I don’t want you going down the wrong path.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt floaty and good.

“These homeless guys you’re dealing with—one of them is going to try to hurt you. Your instinct will be to shoot him. Do not shoot. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. Think about this. It’s the most important thing you’re ever going to hear.”

He started fading out, and then I wasn’t aware of anything else until the alarm woke me. The noise startled me back into the world, and I wondered whether my dream had been real. I didn’t have time to ponder it later that morning as I hustled homeless people into the converted trailers we had waiting for them.

Scraps of the dream came back to me as the day wore on. Do not shoot. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. I didn’t need a guardian angel to tell me that. I’d been around long enough to know what happens to cops who shoot and kill somebody. They get really messed up.

We were almost ready to go back to the station house when one of the street guys pulled a knife out from under his seventeen layers of clothing and stuck it in my face. My adrenaline jump-started me, and I kicked out at the guy. He was wearing too much clothing for the blow to have any impact. It just made him madder. He slashed at my face with the knife. I felt a trickle down my cheek, and a moment later, fire blazed the same trail. I pulled my weapon.

All my police training screamed at me to shoot. My finger started to pull back on the trigger. I aimed at the lunatic’s torso, just as I was taught at the range, but the view of my target was suddenly clouded. The sounds of the city were blocked out. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears. Each second felt like a month. Over the roar in my head, Freddie’s words came back. Don’t shoot … You’ll regret it …

I lowered my gun. The crazed homeless guy jumped on top of me. Bulletproof vests aren’t designed to stop knives, and mine didn’t slow this one down.

The knife slid in between my ribs, and I felt as though someone had disconnected my electrical charger from the wall socket. My essence just drained away.

I had felt pain at first, but now I didn’t. I noticed a cop lying on the ground, red blood staining the blue uniform. It was me, I realized. What was I doing down there?

Wait a minute, where was down there? Where was I?

I looked around. The street appeared the same as it had moments before, except that I was seeing it from above. Holy Christ, was I dead?

Freddie appeared. “How you doin’? You all right?”

“All right? I think I’m dead.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” he said and looked down. Paramedics were covering the dead cop—me—with a white sheet.

“Why’d you warn me against shooting?” I asked him. Then I realized that I didn’t have to ask. I knew without his telling me that he was just doing his job as my guardian angel.

Then I knew something else. I wasn’t supposed to be dead. Freddie had screwed it up.

“Yeah,” he said, acknowledging my newfound understanding. “What did you expect?”

I thought about it. I really had no one to blame but myself for being dead. After all, what could I expect with Freddie Prinze as my guardian angel?

THE ORGAN GRINDER

BY MAAN MEYERS

Lower East Side

Antonio Cerasani rolled the mobile contraption over the broken cobble where Broome Street met Jefferson. The barrel organ had two wheels and handled like a pushcart. Every part of it gleamed in the bright sunshine. Even the country scene painted on its side seemed to glow with its own light.

He settled the cart as close to the curb as possible in the least of the refuse that layered the streets. With the cart in place, he began to crank the organ. Music poured from the barrel with sweet abundance, almost blocking out the other sounds: babes howling, the scraping of thick shoes on the asphalt pavement, metal-clad hooves and wheels clamoring on the cobblestones, passersby in screaming conversations.

The cacophony of everyday life. But here the very intensity of it was an abomination.

Indifferent to the heat of the day, Tony wore heavy trousers, a vest, and a long brown coat. His shabby, dark brown hat sat atop his black hair. An enormous mustache hid his mouth. Only a wisp of smoke from the stub of the twisted black cigar gave any indication of where it was.

The bitter tang of the cigar almost wiped away the stench of horse shit. Almost. The organ grinder hated the smell from when he was a boy in Palermo and had to sleep in the stable of his father’s padrone. New York was like a giant stable full of horse dung, particularly in this neighborhood where the White Wings, the street sweeping brigade, seldom ventured. Here the streets were ankle deep in dung and garbage, and the air, only barely modified by the briny reek of seaweed from the East River, was putrid with the rot of humanity.

“La Donna e Mobile” rolled from Tony’s machine. He sang in a rich tenor voice. “Women are fickle, like a feather in the wind.” And as always, the children on the street laughed and danced haphazardly to the organ grinder’s music.

He searched the tenement windows where once-white sheets stirred languidly in the tepid breeze. Several pennies wrapped in paper dropped from the windows and landed at his feet. The organ grinder, never stopping his music, tipped his hat to his benefactors, collected the coins, and dropped them into his coat pockets.

One lone coin lay just beyond Tony’s stretch, but he did not want to interrupt the flow of music for the moment it would take to claim it, lest he lose further pennies. Tony cranked and Verdi gushed, but no more coins rained down on him.

There came a loud braying, as of animals. Shouting. Blaspheming. Pounding feet. Racing toward the organ grinder were four boys, arms slender as the sticks they carried, their clothes ragged and dirty.

Tony knew these demon boys; they lived on the street. They would steal the nails from the Savior’s cross. He stopped playing. The noise of the streets held sway again. He bent to retrieve the last coin, his coin, when with a cruel twitch of his ass, the largest of the boys bumped Tony, knocking the organ grinder into his organ, setting it trembling, akilter. He grabbed at the cart for balance, but misjudged and sank to his knees in the gutter filth.

Screeching with laughter, Butch Kelly leaned over and scooped up Tony’s errant penny. The runt of the lot, Patsy Hearn, stuck his tongue through his scabby lips and gave the organ grinder a razzberry.

Tony’s hands were in wild motion. His left felt for the coin no longer there, his right worked at steadying the cart.

He struggled to his feet and brushed what offal he could from his trousers. Rage surged, all but suffocating him. He shook his fist at the rampaging youths and damned them, their forms and faces indelible in his mind.

The organ grinder knew that he could not pursue these filthy little devils. If he did, one would surely circle back and steal his organ. He was not so green a horn to let that happen. No. He clamped his teeth tighter on the twisted cigar.

The boys had shown disrespect. Antonio Cerasani from Ciminna, a village on a hill in north-central Sicily, never forgot an insult.

Anyone watching the rude boys would have seen them running along Jefferson down to South Street. Here the East River and the docks stopped their straightaway rush. Nine or ten blocks farther south was the bridge to Brooklyn. It was their playground, all of it.

The four, dressed alike in tattered knickerbockers and vests, their broken shoes wrapped with cloth and cord, ducked past horse carts and drays, shouting to each other, snatching food from pushcarts, brandishing their broomsticks, jabbing, threatening anyone in their path. Frequently they used their sticks to knock a hat from an unsuspecting head.

At South Street, the broken pavement created a channel that cut through the sidewalk and ran into an empty, filth-ridden lot on Jefferson. South Street and the streets leading to it and the harbor were overlaid with a sludge different from elsewhere in the city. This filth bore elements of tar and seawater, for the East River, like its sister the Hudson over to the west, was not truly a river but rather a tidal estuary.

Ships dotted the harbor. The boys could hear the water lapping at the docks, the noise and bustle of the sawmills at the lumberyards. Sawdust smelled sweet amidst the fetid odor of the salt and the tar. Stevedores unloading a ship shouted at one another and cursed the heat.

Butch threw a rock at a seagull resting on a piling and missed. The gull gave a raucous caw, flapped its wings, and flew away. “Shit. Seagulls make good eatin’.”

“They’re tough as an old woman’s ass,” Colin said, gnawing on the remnant of a potato he’d filched on the way.

“Yeah,” Butch shot back, “your ma’s.”

It was Colin who finally broke the stare between them, saying, “Let’s see if we can get some work on the docks.”

Butch Kelly swung his stick. “Too hot to work.” He pointed the stick into the lot. “Run out, Patsy.”

Patsy made an ugly face.

“Run out.”

Patsy Hearn shielded his eyes from the sun as he ran toward the heap of refuse near the back of the lot. Beyond it was some skimpy brush, and amid more garbage, a dying black walnut tree, its trunk slashed by lightning.

“Feckin’ Butch Kelly with his feckin’ games,” Patsy muttered. Forever making Patsy the goat. When they played pitch-and-toss, Butch always cheated, stealing his feckin’ penny. Just like now with the dago’s coin. Butch would pocket the money and never share. And when they played tag or hide-and-go-seek, Patsy was always it. Now this cat-stick game. Here Patsy was in the hot sun, sweating buckets while Butch was swinging his stick, mostly hitting the air, sometimes hitting the pussy, and Tom Reilly and Colin Slattery was up close and catching it. And dumb shit-ass Patsy was out here in the stinking wilderness being cooked by the sun.

Butch hit the pussy and it flew high, way over Tom’s and Colin’s heads.

“Open your eyes, Patsy.” Butch’s laugh was nasty.

Patsy ran like a greyhound. If he caught the feckin’ thing, maybe they could stop and get something to wet their throats. Nail some bloke toting the growler. Beer would taste good just about now. That’s what he was thinking on when his wiry body slipped in the slimy runoff from the rotting waste. He took a header smack into the disintegrating trunk of the tree. Still, he reached up and damn if the feckin’ pussy didn’t drop right into his hand like it was meant to.

“Hey, boyos,” Patsy yelled, brushing splinters from his hair, “I got it!”

He leaned against the scarred trunk sucking in short gasps of air full of soot and ashes. His eyes wandered to the pile of refuse on the other side of the tree, focused on something among the rubbish that caught the sunlight. Something shiny.

A silver dollar maybe!

Or maybe just a tin can.

He moved closer, then stepped back.

“Holy Mary.” The boy crossed himself, but he was not afraid. He was barely ten and not even a year off the boat from Cork. It was not the first dead body he’d ever seen.

But it was the first naked dead woman he had ever seen.

Curled up on her side she was, the ground a rusty black crust.

What may have been her dress lay in rags all around her.

“Jesus,” Colin said, peering over Patsy’s shoulder as Patsy kicked the refuse away.

They milled around jittery, not able to pull their eyes from the sight until Tom nudged her with his shoe and she slid over on her back, totally exposed. The boys jumped. Her eyes stared blankly at them.

After a moment, Patsy said, “Don’t she stink somethin’ awful?” The four edged toward the body again.

“She’s worm meat,” Butch said. He gave Patsy a powerful push aside and reached down and grabbed the shiny object that had caught Patsy’s attention in the first place.

“Hey, gimme that!” Patsy shouted. “I found it.” He tackled Butch.

Tom and Colin jumped in and they were all trading punches and yelling and raising a huge volume of dust and dirt. Colin head-butted Butch, knocking the wind out of him, making him drop the treasure. Both boys dove for it, as did Patsy and Tom.

A whistle shrieked. “All right, all right, what’s going on here?” A pudgy copper in blue came toward them swinging his stick.

The boys broke and ran.

Patrolman Mulroony grinned as the dust cleared. He made no move to go after the hooligans. He picked up the dusty stone the boys had been fighting over and wiped it on his sleeve. Well, well, well. He put it in his pocket. Hooking the strap of his stick on his badge, he lifted his hat and mopped the sweat from his head with the heavy sleeve of his uniform. Too hot. With August weather in June, the city was a stinking, rotting hell. Besides, they was just boys who had too much vinegar. Boys like that fought over nothing. He patted the object in his pocket.

Mulroony gave the lot a cursory look. Garbage everywhere. Them sheenies think nothing of throwing their refuse right out the window. He shaded his eyes from the sun. What was that odd little flutter of white in all that refuse? He poked his stick into the pile, raising a most horrid stink.

“Mother of God!”

The girl, naked except for a blue hat with a sunflower, lay on her back, arms at her side, her long black hair tangled in the garbage. Her eyes were open, glassy. The hat, which made the forsaken soul look comical, was askew, magnifying the bathos.

Mulroony reckoned the rags on the bloody ground about and under her were what remained of a blue dress and a white shift. The white was what had caught his eye. Poor lass, exposed for all the world to see.

She’d been murdered horribly. Stabbed in the belly and then ripped up to the breast bone. The blood was dried black and the maggots were having their feast. Mulroony reached down, plucked the largest patch of blue cloth, and covered the girl’s parts. Before he put his whistle to his lips, he straightened her hat too, so she wouldn’t go to Jesus looking the clown.

The organ grinder lived in a room on the top floor of a tenement on Prince Street, around the corner from St. Patrick’s.

Not the big fancy church they built for the rich on Fifth Avenue, but Old St. Patrick’s on the corner of Prince and Mott.

St. Patrick was an Irish saint, and this was an Irish church. They hated Italians here, making them go to the basement for a separate Mass. Church was for old ladies in black, not for Tony Cerasani. He hadn’t been to confession since he was twelve. He was thirty now. A man can collect a great many sins on his soul in eighteen years.

His room was small, which was good. He could see everything he owned: the hand organ against the wall, his nice suit hanging under his coat on the back of the door. At this moment, his hat shared the table with his shaving gear.

Tony opened the straight razor. It was the only thing left to him by his father. The face he saw in the small standing mirror was his father’s. He trimmed around his magnificent mustache without benefit of lather. Tony had no use for King Gillette’s safety razor or fancy soaps. When he was finished, he honed the razor on the stone and strap till it regained its perfect edge.

Madonna, he had no use for anything in this terrible country. Once he saved enough money he’d go home a wealthy man and do nothing but drink and eat, have plenty of women, and bask in Ciminna’s nurturing sun.

After filling his cup with Chianti, he plucked a straw from the bottle’s woven covering and picked his teeth. Immediately came a sharp twinge of pain. He opened his mouth wide and held up the mirror. Christo, he’d lost one of his gold teeth. The one in the back on the left. How could this have happened?

He would retrace his steps to try to find it, or if by calamity someone had already found it, get it back.

For now, he needed something stronger than wine to ease the pain and warm his bones. Winter, summer, what did it matter here? He was always cold in this country.

Grappa was comfort to Tony’s belly; it calmed his pain, restrained his anger. He sat in a dark corner of Giuseppe’s saloon for hours chewing his cigar. Drinking, thinking.

It was very late when he started home. In front of St.

Patrick’s, he paused. The rectory door opened. A Sister of Mercy spied Tony, crossed herself, and retreated inside. Tony spat at the door and the Irish bitch behind it. How long he stood there, he didn’t know. He finally decided to go into the church.

In the rear, to the left of the last row of benches, were the two confessionals. No parishioners waited on the benches.

He ran his fingers over the lattice-work screen of the nearest priest door, his nails making a clicking noise.

He was startled when someone, clearly a mick, obviously awakened from sleep, said, “Yes? Do you wish to make your confession?”

“No.” The organ grinder did not even try to keep the sneer from his voice. “Go back to your dreams of plump little boys.”

On his walk home he saw himself as a boy at confession, a wrathful crucifix poised above him. The organ grinder shook his head and the memory disappeared. He had stopped drinking too soon. Instead of going home he returned to Giuseppe’s.

The church was a jail. Worse, a rope around his neck.

Damn the church. There was money to be made. Religion was for the rich. Or the old and the helpless. He was none of these.

“A few cents so I may sup, kind sir?” The hoary man’s voice was frail as the old codger himself.

Dutch Tonneman, a detective with the Metropolitan Police, dropped several pennies into the unkempt fellow’s outstretched hat. He walked into the saloon at 20th and Sixth and sat at the last table in the back. Noisy ceiling fans moved the hot air around, but the heat didn’t budge. Flies hovered over the free eats: the hard boileds and the onions on the bar.

He had met Joe Petrosino once before. Stubby, dark, marked with pox, the Italian cop would be easy to recognize. But he almost never looked so, for his reputation was as a master of many disguises.

Detective Petrosino had a good reputation. The Black Hand’s chief adversary in New York, in all of America, worked out of the Elizabeth Street station in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods, Mulberry Bend. For years he’d been trying to destroy the notorious Italian crime organization.

“Sir.” The old man, dilapidated hat now plunked on his head, had followed Dutch into the saloon.

Dutch sighed. “Twice in five minutes is greedy, Grandpa.”

“I agree.”

The vitality in the voice made Dutch look again. On closer inspection, Dutch realized that the old man wasn’t so old and that the rags he wore covered a rugged physique.

Dutch grinned. “All right, Petrosino, I’m impressed. But why the playacting? You don’t need a disguise to talk to me.”

Petrosino looked around. “You never know. The Black Hand is everywhere. Little Italy. Up in the woods past 100th Street, on the East Side. Why not right on the Ladies Mile with the rich Episcopalians?”

“What?” the squat man behind the bar called to them.

“Two beers,” Dutch replied.

“Grappa,” Petrosino said.

“One beer, one grappa,” Dutch said.

“No grappa, this ain’t no wop house. What I got is a jug of dago red.”

Petrosino nodded, Dutch said, “Okay.”

“I’m not showing off with this getup,” Petrosino said.

“I just came from the Hudson River docks on 23rd Street watching them unload a ship. The Black Hand is stealing some of those shipping companies blind, but I haven’t been able to catch them at it. What can I tell you?”

Dutch drank his beer. “Do you hear about unusual knifings?”

Petrosino didn’t react. “When I pose a question like that to a suspect, it usually means I’m more interested than I want to let on.”

“If you’re that transparent,” Tonneman said, “I would suggest you don’t pose your questions like that.”

“All right. You have your secrets, I have mine.” He rotated the tumbler of wine on the table. “The Black Hand has those who take care of any who cross them. I hear one wields a fine stiletto.”

“I must say, you Italians talk real pretty at times.”

The two smiled goodnaturedly at each other.

“We must have more of these talks in the future,”

Petrosino said. “Who knows what one might know that could facilitate the other?”

The Sicilian sun was warm and good. The young girl had smooth olive skin and big tits. With moist fingers she peeled the grapes and fed them to him. He savored the tart flesh.

Suddenly the grapes were stones. The pain drove him awake.

Marie was always with him, singing a sweet sad love song, promising her tender kiss.

Tony seized the bottle of grappa on the floor next to his bed and filled his mouth with the coarse brandy, then clutched his jaw in agony. He swallowed, took another drink, guiding it away from the left side of his mouth.

He poured tepid water from pitcher to basin and tried to shave. The only place he could stand the feel of the blade was under his chin. He would let his beard grow.

The nick on his throat didn’t bother him, though it was most unlike him, for he was a perfectionist. He knew that only a little pressure and the artery would feel the blade. Death would come in minutes. And for his suicide, he would burn in hell.

He laughed. “What makes you think you won’t burn anyway?” he asked the image of his father in the mirror.

Dressed, he brushed his suit with the damp cloth and reached for the hand organ near the wall. He hesitated. No. Not today. Today he needed to move fast, unencumbered.

One final swallow of grappa. He was going among the micks. That meant he’d have to subsist on watery beer or tasteless whiskey. He would have to be wary because he didn’t look like them and he didn’t talk like them. They would consider him the enemy.

The Harp on Bleecker Street was the fifth mick bar he’d been to. This hole in the wall was near the precinct, where he knew the cops came for the free lunch served with the drinks. He stood at the end of the bar listening.

Next to him was a mick with breath as foul as the dead goat beard on his ugly face. He was running at the mouth about his friend Mulroony and the windfall he’d found in a vacant lot, a nugget of gold. A gold tooth, no less.

Everyone clustered round the goat, some actually drooling.

The goat pushed through the group to relieve himself out back, then returned and lurched along the bar drinking the dregs from glasses. He bumped against Tony, who did not move away. The goat gave him a bleary, pale-blue stare.

“Tim Noonan’s the name. You can call me Wingy.”

“Tell me about Mulroony and I’ll buy you a beer.”

A shrewd glint came into Wingy’s clouded eyes. “I’m fair thirsty. A thirst only whiskey can quench.”

“Beer.”

Wingy sighed. “Beer ’tis, then.”

Tony raised a hand.

Jimmy Callahan took Tony’s measure. Not many Eytalian’s found their way into The Harp. This one’s skin was a funny red, though he was dressed clean and neat. But why wasn’t he with his own kind? What did he want?

Tony didn’t like the scrutiny. “Beer for him, whiskey for me.”

“Now is that fair?” Wingy whined. “I ask you, Jimmy, is that fair?”

The drinks served and paid for, Jimmy Callahan stood off to the side watching as he rolled himself a Bull Durham.

Jimmy didn’t trust dagos. He’d never met one worth a fiddler’s fart.

Wingy slurped beer, Tony sipped whiskey. “If you tell me slow,” Tony said, “I’ll finish my whiskey. If you tell me fast, I’ll leave it for you.”

“What you want to know?” Wingy spoke quickly, but biting each word.

“Mulroony.”

“Mulroony the priest, or Mulroony the cop?”

“The cop.”

“Lost his ma recently. Very tragic.” Wingy crossed himself. “Hail Mary, Mother of God—”

“The longer I wait, the less you get.” Tony took a hearty sip of the whiskey.

Wingy’s face screwed up as if to blubber. “You don’t want to do that, mister. My friend Aloysius Rafferty, the famous bricklayer and stevedore—he seen Mulroony tearing after a bunch of young punks right before he found that dead whore in the empty lot a couple of weeks ago.”

“Where can I find Mulroony?”

Wingy nodded many times. “Him and his wife live with his ma, God rest her soul. She ran a rooming house somewhere on the Bowery.”

From the variety of signs on walls and in windows along the Bowery, there were far too many rooming houses. He would have to sweat to find Mulroony.

The saloons beckoned. Which one didn’t matter. He opened a door and stepped inside to shouting and laughter. An Irish place, by their lumpy potato heads and the stink of cabbage and pig feet.

Irishmen loved to drink and talk and talk and drink and drink. They were braggarts. He preferred to drink alone, left to his own thoughts.

It was dark and dank, the smell of beer and hard-boiled eggs potent. The men sitting around tables or standing at the bar stopped talking to stare at him.

He didn’t waste his time by asking for grappa. “You have red wine?”

“This is McSorley’s. Beer and ale.” The tone was unpleasant. “We don’t serve wine.”

“Or dagos!” a customer yelled.

Then, as others repeated the phrase, a firehouse gong went off behind the bar.

The organ grinder flicked his thumbnail on the edge of his top front teeth, spat on the sawdust floor, and left to loud jeers.

He didn’t want to deal with another mick saloon. He renewed his quest. Two blocks north his luck changed. On the wall, inviting him, was the sign: MRS. MULROONY—ROOMS.

He knocked and pushed open the ground-level front door. This put him in a tiny vestibule. To his left, a small parlor, to his right, another small room that held a long table and ten chairs. The table was set for dinner. A narrow, tilting staircase led up.

“Yes?” A full-figured woman with a rolling pin in her hand came from behind the staircase. Strands of red hair crept from under her kerchief and she had spots of flour on her florid face.

“I need a room.”

She looked him over. “All full up.”

“I hear your husband is a patrolman. Maybe I could speak to him.”

“Ain’t home.”

He tipped his hat. “Sorry to bother.”

Tony walked into the alley to the right of the house. The abrupt scratching shuffle of claws told him he’d disturbed a pack of rats. At the back, keeping a cautious eye peeled, he found an open window. An unoccupied bedroom, by the looks of it. Good, that’s how he’d get in if he had to.

He left the alley and crossed the street to a cigar shop.

The bastard Mulroony was probably sitting in a saloon drinking, showing off Tony’s gold tooth instead of going home.

With one of his twisted cigars between his teeth, Tony stepped out onto the street again and fired it up as he crossed the road.

The organ grinder was a patient man. He would wait. The Bowery was a busy place at night. Carousers and pickpockets. He settled in, back against the bricks.

Every workman who staggered past him he gave the eye. Two men, sailors by the bags slung over their shoulders, stopped at the Mulroony house, peered at the sign, and went in. No one came out, so the woman had lied. She had rooms. But not for Italians.

The tap of a club on bricks was unmistakable. Now the whistling of some awful Irish tune located a policeman on his rounds just a block away.

Tony eased back into the alley. The rats again. This time he saw the bright eyes staring at him from not ten feet away. Glints of white teeth showed in the dim light. Five or six filthy rats, on their guard and enraged, screamed at him.

He found a broken cobblestone, but didn’t throw it lest the cop hear. The minutes passed with Tony and the rats staring at each other. When he could no longer hear the tapping or the whistling, Tony let fly.

An angry screech. When the stunned rat fell, his mates immediately turned and fed on him. It was to be expected. Such was the world. Tony headed back to the Mulroony house.

A heavyset man had his hand on the door.

“Mr. Mulroony?”

“No, I’m O’Neil. What you want with Al?”

“He helped a friend of mine with a problem. I have some money for him.”

“Why don’t you come inside? Money is always welcome. I’m sure his missus will give you a taste for the news of it.”

“No. If she asks for the money, I’ll have to give it to her.

Then Mulroony may never know my friend was grateful.”

The man laughed. “Begorra, you’ve got Alice Mulroony down all right. Don’t you worry, I won’t tell her.”

“Thank you.”

Shortly after O’Neil went in, a pudgy policeman paused in front of the rooming house to straighten his uniform. Just the type to be a cop in this city. Tony could smell the dust and beer on him.

“Mr. Mulroony?”

“Who wants to know?”

“If you’re the right Mulroony, I have money for you.”

“I’m Mulroony of the Metropolitan Police.” His greedy eyes glinted like the rats. “What money?” he demanded.

Tony walked into the alley surreptitiously, drawing Marie from her place on his thigh up through the hole in his pants pocket. Mulroony followed.

The organ grinder fit his gold tooth back in place. He spat at the dead Irish cop and caressed Marie before putting her to bed.

A long day, a bad day. Tonneman was late coming home to the house on Grand Street where he lived with his widowed mother, Meg. There was a light on in the kitchen. She always left a light on for him and food on the stove or in the ice box, fussing over whether he was getting enough to eat while he did the good work of the police.

He came in quietly so as not to wake her, but she was there waiting for him.

“You have a visitor, John Tonneman.” She was the only one who called him John, his birth name. And her tone told

him that she didn’t like his visitor.

“Where is he, Ma?” There was no one in the kitchen. He looked in the parlor. No one there.

“I wouldn’t put him in the parlor,” she said, shocked.

“Then where is he?”

“Out back. And I don’t like the look of him.”

“What’s wrong with him, Ma?” Tonneman splashed his face with cold water and used the cloth his mother handed to him.

“He’s a dago,” she said in a loud whisper. “I gave him a bit of bread and ham. He didn’t want beer. You see to him, and be careful. I don’t trust them.”

Tonneman opened the back door. Sitting on the steps was a man in heavy trousers, a long coat, and a shabby brown hat. An enormous mustache hid his mouth, which was only visible because he was smoking an Italian stinker. The man was a stranger to him until their eyes met.

“Petrosino.”

With a half-smile, Petrosino put aside the empty plate. “Your ma was kind to a poor old dago.”

“You heard about Mulroony?”

“Yes. The story I’m hearing is he found a gold tooth near the body of the prostitute, Delia Swann.”

“So I heard, too. Same sticker. Stiletto. Right up the middle. Killer made off with the gold tooth.”

A small stream of smoke came from the twisted stub of a cigar. “Killer may have lost the tooth when he was gutting the girl.” He puffed on the cigar. “Mulroony took the evidence, a lot of good it did for him.”

“I heard that someone looking like you made the rounds of the Irish bars looking for Mulroony. Wasn’t you, by any chance?”

“No.”

Tonneman sat down on the steps next to the Italian cop.

“Great disguise, Petrosino. If you can sing, you could have a second career as one of those—”

“Dago organ grinders? Yes.”

The organ grinder was back on his corner, where Broome met Jefferson. Marie was always with him, singing a sweet sad love song, promising her tender kiss. He loved Marie. She was no virgin; she had tasted blood many times.

Music, full and mellow, poured from his instrument, and it seemed to the few who took a moment from their hard lives to listen that his voice was the voice of an angel.

WHY DO THEY HAVE TO HIT?

BY MARTIN MEYERS

Yorkville

Maureen Moran was beautiful.

I met Maureen through Ted Stagg. They threw great parties in their small, crowded one-bedroom on East 81st Street between Second and First Avenues.

Barely seconds after Ted introduced us, Maureen dragged me into the bedroom where she proudly showed off her collection of Barbie dolls with a tuxedoed Ken lording it over the girls. We shared a joint and had Speedy Gonzales sex.

Even though Maureen and Ted made out outrageously with others, I knew that first night that they were committed for the long haul.

Ted was a press agent, a great guy. But dumb. He had asthma and insisted on smoking. Ted didn’t have a long haul in him. A year after I met Maureen, Ted had an attack and died.

After that, Maureen, who always liked her booze, revved her drinking up to Mach speed.

My name is Eddie Coe. I’m an actor. You never heard of me.

I make my living doing voice-overs on commercials and documentaries. I pursue what I laughingly call my acting career by doing bits on movies and TV shows. I’m usually the waiter or doorman or cab driver who has great lines like,

“Where to?” or, “Will that be all, sir?”

I used to play leads off-Broadway. That dwindled to small parts on Broadway. The money was better doing the latter but I preferred the glory of the former. Lately, my theater work had melted to nothing.

It became a habit to get together with Maureen for drinks when my girl Louise was out of town touring in a musical. I don’t do musicals.

The deal was, if Maureen met someone I would fade from the scene.

We were at the Bucking Bull on West 72nd Street.

A fervent “Oh!” erupted from Maureen when Vitorio strutted in. It was as if someone had punched her in the stomach.

The first time Maureen and I met Vitorio Valley was the week before. Vitorio Valley. How’s that for a show-biz name?

He was body-builder sleek and she was wearing a tight green sweater with her nipples pushing at the fabric. They looked at each other and it was instant lust. Vitorio was a wrong dude and I knew it. But I wasn’t Maureen’s lover, I was her friend, and it was her life.

Without being asked, Clive the bartender set her drink down, announcing in deep practiced tones, “Chivas Regal.”

Like Maureen and me, and Vitorio, Clive Paige was in show business.

“I’ll have a Chivas, too,” Vitorio said, exuding his sexiest smile for Maureen. I was surprised he didn’t strip, ripple his muscles, and rotate his tits. He sipped the scotch slowly, keeping his eyes on her while he drank.

“Pit stop,” Maureen announced when Vitorio set his glass down. She spun around, twirling her black skirt, before heading back to the washrooms. You have to know that Maureen had a steel bladder; she never went to the bathroom in public places.

In a very short while Vitorio stood. “Must be catching.” He too hurried to the back.

I sat there pissed off, drinking my beer. Why was I so pissed? Was I hoping Maureen and I would make it again for old time’s sake? Would I do that? Could I? I loved Louise. But to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I wanted.

I liked that I was committed to Louise. What I missed—what I missed more and more—was my youth, and the thrills that came with various relationships. Not just the sex. The adventure. The thrill of the chase.

Vitorio returned to the bar first, smirking like the rutting Cheshire Cat he was. Forming a circle with his lips, he made a slurping noise, nodded at me man to man, bragging with his mean eyes. I wanted to knock his fucking block off.

When Maureen reappeared she was glowing. Freshly made-up, she flashed an enigmatic smile. Bar stool to bar stool, torso to torso, she and Vitorio exchanged breathy whispers and biting kisses.

Abruptly Vitorio left. Maureen’s face fell and I thought she was going to cry. I talked her out of another drink and walked her to Broadway, where I watched her board the east-bound bus. Was I hoping she would invite me home for a drink? Would my answer have been yes or no?

She didn’t ask. I grabbed a cab to my place on Central Park West, ate a grilled ham and cheese, and watched a movie on TV.

During the following week while I made acting rounds, I asked some friends about Vitorio. Word was that he lifted weights and fucked anything that moved. His other favorite pastime was getting into barroom brawls. Enough outlet for anyone’s testosterone. You’d think.

I ran into Vitorio when I stopped at Actor’s Equity on 46th Street to relax in the lounge. Flashing that smirk, he bitched about Maureen calling him all the time. I was angry but I’m no tough guy, so I didn’t confront him. I simply walked away as fast as I could.

Friday, Maureen called me again about having drinks at the Bull.

I could hear the wind blowing through the park. It was supposed to rain. I’d ordered Chinese takeout and there was good stuff on TV.

But Maureen sounded so desperate. And I enjoyed going out drinking with an attractive woman other than Louise.

And something could happen. “Okay. See you there about 8:00.”

“I went down on the son of a bitch!” she yelled before I could hang up. “And he walks out on me like that. What a jerk I am.”

My mind buzzed with words like dignity and self-esteem and self-respect, but I didn’t say any of them. I listened to more ranting until we finally said goodbye. I was sure she’d been going to bed sucking on a bottle every night.

The calendar said September. The wind told me December. No rain yet, but the night wasn’t over.

So there we were. She was hoping for déjà vu to happen in the Bucking Bull––that some guy or the same guy would show up. It was a fair bet that she’d buried the degradation down deep.

The Bucking Bull is a steak house with a small bar. The decor is a cliché of snorting bulls and brave toreros in tight yellow outfits and funny black hats, at the ready with red capes in one hand and raised swords poised to strike in the other.

This night the bar was almost as cold as outdoors. I ordered black coffee and a double Courvoisier. On the music machine Wynton Marsalis was blowing the blues.

I had successfully quit smoking the year before. But since Maureen met Vitorio I’d started again. I lit up, chased my booze with coffee, and puffed my cigarette, trying to form smoke rings while Clive made faces at me. It was illegal to smoke in the bar. That was the routine while I waited. Smoking and drinking and breaking Clive’s chops.

Finally, Maureen raced in. She was wearing a shiny low-cut dress. Blue. It looked good with her pale skin and red hair. “Hey, pal,” she said, pressing her cheek against mine, dropping a blue sequined purse on the bar, and draping a small blue cape on the stool next to me. The cold didn’t seem to bother her.

That’s when I noticed her split lip. The kind you get when someone smacks you. Hard.

I thought about asking what had happened but didn’t. In spite of her battle scars she was still gorgeous, acting as if the world was her oyster. She pushed a bunch of quarters into the machine and danced over to me before the Latin music even began.

“Working?”

She nodded. Her right hand mimed holding a tray. Like many Broadway gypsies, she kept body and soul together waiting tables. She showed Clive an index finger.

“One Chivas Regal,” Clive said, pouring and delivering a double along with a bowl full of cashews.

Maureen tossed her drink down and rapped the bar with the heavy empty glass. Clive obliged with another double.

She had a long svelte body, and though she’d gotten too skinny for my taste, she was still a looker. She was also very screwed up.

One of my oddest memories is of waking up with most of those twenty or so Barbies in bed with us, and Ken, the master and daddy, clasped to Maureen’s chest.

Now I was the pal she told her sad stories to.

With a ballet dancer’s grace Maureen leaned forward, and without touching the glass, delicately sipped a taste of her drink. Smiling, she undulated—that’s the only word that fits—to the music, doing that hands-down-her-breasts move and continuing clear to her thighs.

The door to the Bucking Bull opened, bringing in the dark, cold night air, and the real bucking bull Maureen had been dreaming of. Vitorio.

I had a cigarette in my mouth, but I didn’t light it.

Maureen stopped dancing. Her body tense, she stared at Vitorio. It wasn’t all lust. There was dread there, too. Maybe that added to the sexuality. What did I know?

Vitorio glided over to Maureen, pulled her to him, kissed her, then flung her, Apache-style, across the room. Very Rudolph Valentino. Corny but it worked. They danced, looking great together.

After a big finish they settled in at the bar. Vitorio chugged Maureen’s drink and ordered another round. What the hell. She would pay for them. Maureen talked to me a couple of times to support the fiction that she and I were there together.

Pretty soon I was the invisible man. That was fine for me.

But I worried about Maureen. With each new round Vitorio got meaner and louder. He started manhandling her, grabbing her bare arms and leaving welts.

“Take it easy, friend.”

“Fuck you where you breathe. You aren’t my friend and I’ll take it any way I want to.”

I stood. Not to fight, to get out of there. To give me time to think, I grabbed a handful of cashews and popped them in my mouth. “Maureen …” I chewed and swallowed. “I’m working the new Redford film tomorrow. Have to get up early. You want a ride home?”

This was a sham. I lived on Central Park West and Maureen was across town near Second Avenue.

“No, I’ll be fine.” She leaned close and whispered in my ear, “He’s okay. He’s just hot for my body.”

Yeah, I thought.

It must have been 3 in the morning when the phone rang. “Hello?”

I could hear her sobbing. “I’m downstairs. Outside the park. I need you.”

“Maureen! What’s wrong?”

“Come and get me. Please, Eddie.”

I threw my clothes on and hurried out through the side door on 83rd Street.

The night was misty, colder than September had any right to be. Foggy, too. Murky clouds raced overhead, alternately hiding and revealing the moon.

Across the street the large, imposing black boulders in Central Park, looking like monster sentinels, cast great shadows on the street.

The wind wailed across the park, shaking the trees. Me, too. I wanted to rush back to the sanctuary of my apartment.

For a strange instant all was blackness and silence. Next I spotted a glint, then a shadow lurking just beyond the glow of the streetlamp. I ran across to the park side. Maureen stepped out of the shadows, her face highlighted by a macabre halo of lamp light.

Her blue dress, sans cape, was torn and bloody. Clutched against her chest, her sequined purse, a cell phone, and an elegant Barbie doll in a sparkling white wedding gown also specked with blood.

A yellow cab pulled up. “Taxi, folks?”

Maureen was in such a rush to get the door open she dropped her cell.

“Wait a minute,” I said, peering at the shadowy ground.

“Forget about it!” Maureen shrieked. “Hurry.”

The driver headed downtown to come around.

“No!” Maureen cried. “East. We’ve got to go across the park.”

I patted her hand. “He knows.”

She pulled her hand away. “Nobody knows.”

After a few turns we entered the park at 86th and traveled the empty road east, past angry stone walls, moonlit hundred-year-old shuddering trees, and through their ground-bound silhouettes.

Above, clouds were scudding across angry sky while Maureen mumbled variations of, “Look for him by moonlight, watch for him by moonlight, he’ll come for you by moonlight, fear for him by moonlight, fear him by moonlight …”

As we stopped on Second Avenue, thunder crashed.

Then came the deluge.

Maureen paid no attention to the rain pelting down. She jumped out at Second Avenue and ran to 81st Street. Her building was on the left, perhaps a hundred feet away, next door to a book shop.

I shoved some bills at the driver and chased after her. By the time I reached her building I was drenched. Maureen was nowhere in sight but I could hear her running up the stairs reciting her crazed mantra. “Seek the man by moonlight, snatch the man by moonlight, catch the man by moonlight, he’ll come for you by moonlight, beware of him by moonlight, despair for him by moonlight. Despair for me by moonlight.”

I raced up to the fourth landing two steps at a time and found Maureen in her apartment, soaked from the rain, sitting on the floor like a child. Her collection of Barbie dolls was piled in her lap and scattered around her. Within reach was a large, heavy frying pan and Ken in a dinner jacket, his head snapped off. Surrealistically, a bit of blood spotted his headless neck.

Trails of crimson led to the frying pan and to the open door of the bathroom and to Vitorio, his head bashed in.

“Why do they have to hit?” Maureen asked of her elegant Barbie. “Why do they have to hit?”

BUILDING

BY S.J. ROZAN

Harlem

Wouldn’t none of it have happened, hadn’t the Landry boy took to calling him “sir.”

His mama named him Rex and he was still resentful. Might have been okay for some boy with a handsome face, but that wasn’t him, and in school all it got him was, “Hey, lookee, here come that ugly Tie-RAN-o-sore!”

Later, when he did his stretch in Greenhaven, when someone said his name, he only heard “wrecks” because that’s what he’d made of his life.

It was a hard life, and nobody gave him nothing, not that that was some kind of excuse and he didn’t pretend it was.

His daddy could’ve been any of three different men and his mama never cared to find out. They stood around pointing their fingers at each other, and at her too, and so he didn’t want none of them for a daddy even if they’d wanted the job.

It meant he raised himself, pretty much, and he had to say, he done a lousy job of it.

But he wasn’t making excuses, how he ended up at Greenhaven. Berniece rolled on him, but hell, girl was probably scared shitless. He wouldn’t never hurt her, but how she supposed to know? What she see, he blown away her side man and was likely coming after her. Fact was, Chico’d porked the gun out, Rex just going there to talk to the brother, see about the rumors he was hearing down at the

Lenox Lounge. Seen Chico with Berniece, Bighead the bartender raised eyebrows at him, what’s up with that? So Rex just wanted to talk to Chico, and he even laughed, so funny seeing little skinny Chico with that big .45. Then he looked in Chico’s eyes, heard his voice, not the words but the sound just piling on. Chico never did know enough to shut up. Rex stood there as long as he could, looking at Chico, hearing his noise, and then a pressure started building inside him, building, building, and he threw himself on Chico and pulled the gun from Chico’s hand.

Next thing he knows, NYPD Blue is breaking down the door. Door was wrecked, and Rex was wrecked, and Chico sure as hell was wrecked. And he heard his own named different after that.

In Greenhaven, anyhow, they called you whatever damn thing they wanted, whatever they thought would get your goat. Most times he let it roll off, like when it was the C.O.’s jawing. But sometimes he could feel it happening, that building. And the next asshole gave him a hard time would find his teeth in the back of his throat. That right there accounted for Rex not making parole until his third hearing.

But he’d made it, and now he was out. And since he got out, no more fighting. No more brawling, nothing, not even with that crew of hip-hop assholes hung on the corner. They pissed him the hell off, bopping like they do, like they own the world. They didn’t never try nothing with him, though. They showed him some respect, behind his ten years at Greenhaven. Still, time to time he think they could use a little pounding.

But he ain’t gonna be the one. He was on parole, next eight motherfucking years. No way in hell he was going back inside, that was one thing for certain. He reminded himself that every time he felt the building, felt his temper start to go, found himself about to get physical with half-a-dozen boys could’ve been his children. Might have been his children hanging there, too, if Berniece hadn’t gone messing around with Chico, if she’d married him like he wanted, way back then.

Anyway, that was way back then. Berniece was packed and gone by the time he came out, and good riddance. He didn’t want no more to do with her, to do with nobody. He had a steady job, hard enough to come by. All he wanted was to come home, watch TV, drink some beer, and go to bed.

Less people you talk to, less trouble you could get in.

So he never did say nothing to the Landry boy.

That boy, seem like no one never gave him nothing, same as Rex. Raggedy clothes and no-name sneakers, tough way to make it on the street. But his mama raised him right.

Kid wasn’t no sissy. He put on that hard face Rex knew, face he used to wear himself. But he’d move out the way when the ladies come home from church, and he called Rex “sir.”

Time to time, Rex wanted to tell him watch out. Wanted to say, That crew you hanging with, they gonna drag you under.

He seen the kid’s face, seen how it light up when one of them older boys hand him a paper-bagged Bud; the kid way too young to drink. You fixing to turn out like me, Rex thought to tell him. You think these your homies, you think you tight with ’em. Next thing you know, one of ’em’s gonna be facing some serious time. That happen, he gonna sell the cops everyone’s ass, yours included.

But he kept his head down. Kid wasn’t his problem, and he never did say nothing.

Didn’t keep him from noticing, though. Noticing the kid on his way to school every day, take his books, try to keep his raggedy self clean. Didn’t cut school like the rest of them no-accounts. Rex wished he’d thought more about that himself, wished he’d kept up his schooling. Well, too late now. No, no one gave that Landry boy nothing but he kept trying. That’s what Rex noticed.

The night the trouble all started, he noticed another thing. Noticed wasn’t none of that crew on the corner when he come home. Seeing as the only way they could spend more time in that spot would be to drag their mattresses out and sleep there, it was damned unusual to see the streetlight and the mailbox standing by themselves.

Next thing he noticed, he was nearly at the stoop when the Landry boy burst out from the door. He looked wildly both ways, his eyes hitting Rex’s. They had a look, asking for something, begging even.

“You okay?” Rex asked. First time he spoke to the kid.

The kid shook his head. He wetted his lips, like they was too dry for him to talk. Seemed to try to make words, but nothing come out.

“Chill, son,” said Rex. “Something wrong? Tell me.”

The kid moved his lips some more, but still there wasn’t no sound. He shook his head again and charged down the stairs. He raced away, sneakers slapping concrete. Rex stared after.

Thing Rex noticed next, someone was pounding on his door.

First, he was confused. He was back inside, he thought. It was early on, and some damn C.O. was thumping his cell door, telling him if he didn’t come out now he wasn’t gonna get no dinner, fuck if he ain’t hungry, see how hungry he be by morning.

But the pounding kept coming and Rex woke up. He blinked around his room, small and with roaches all over but he could come and go and eat any damn time he wanted.

Grateful for a minute for the noise waking him from that nightmare.

Then some yelling, “Police! Open up!”

Shit, he thought.

He yelled back, “Yeah!” He fought past the sheets, tight around him like they was tying him to the bed. “Okay, okay!”

He slid the chain and threw the bolt.

“Rex Jones?” One white guy, one black, both in suits, saying his name like a question but it wasn’t. They introduced themselves as Detectives Something and Something Else. They pushed in without asking, Something talking to distract him while Something Else looked around.

They couldn’t touch nothing without a warrant. Anyone grew up in Harlem learned that with their mother’s milk.

They had a warrant, they’d have waved it in his face right away. And plus, if they turned his place upside down there was still nothing to find. That was a fact, but he felt the sweat on his lip just the same.

“A few questions,” Something Else said, while Something smiled. The one talking was the black one, he had shiny white teeth. When the white one smiled he showed stained brown teeth. Like they was negatives of each other, Rex thought, and missed the question, didn’t even know they’d asked one until the room got quiet. Hell, he thought, and he said, “Say again?”

“Come on, Rex, it’s not hard. What did Tick Landry say to you this afternoon?”

“The Landry boy? He ain’t said nothing.”

“When you came in, he was going out. Running out, like he was doing something bad. He was, Rex. He ditched a gun that killed an old lady who wouldn’t give up her handbag. Where’s the gun, Rex?”

“How the hell I’m supposed to know?”

“Isn’t that what he told you?”

“Ain’t told me nothing. Just stood a minute, then went on down the steps. You telling me he killed a old lady?”

“We sure are.”

“No way he done that. He all right, that kid. Gotta have been one of his boys.”

“Well, you could be right, Rex. Have to say this, though: Doesn’t matter much to us. That whole crew’s garbage and we’re gonna sweep ’em up. Might be another one who shot the old lady, but Landry’s the one who was running scared that night. That’s what we call ‘suspicious behavior’ in our line of work. All we have to do now is connect him up with that gun. Only we don’t have the gun.”

“I sure as hell ain’t got it either.”

“But he told you where it was.”

“Fuck he did. Why would he do that?”

“Those boys, they look up to you. You did a dime at Greenhaven, Rex; that makes you someone on this block. Maybe you’re even running with them, in a fatherly way.”

“Me? Nuh-uh, man. I’m clean since I got out.” The sweat started on his lip again, and his back, too.

“Are you? You’d better be. Let me tell you something.” The cop stopped smiling. “I was new in this precinct when you went in. I’ve seen a lot of garbage like you go in and come out over the years, and I’m getting goddamn tired of it. In and out, in and out. I’m telling you: If you’re running with these boys, Rex, my man, you are fucked.”

That was the first day. The second day was pretty much the same. He found the pair of them waiting on the stoop when he got home from work.

“Where’s the gun, Rex?” This time it was Something, the white one, doing the talking. Rex preferred the black one, if they was gonna smile. All them brown teeth, shee-it.

“I don’t know.”

“Three people across the street swear you and the kid had a talk when he ran out of here. What did you talk about?

Not the gun, then what? The old lady, maybe, how it felt when he pulled the trigger?”

“Didn’t talk about nothing. Kid just move his mouth around, like he got words in there ain’t coming out. Then he go on down the stairs. Like I told you yesterday.”

“Yeah, that’s what you told us. We’re just having trouble believing you, is all.”

“Ain’t my fault.”

“Well, but see, what it is gonna be, it’s gonna be your problem, if you don’t start making sense soon. Like I told you, we have witnesses.”

“Across the street? What the hell kind of witnesses is that?”

The detective put his arm around Rex, like they was old pals. Rex felt the pressure building. He made himself not move.

“See, Rex,” the brown teeth said, “you’re on parole. Any trouble you get in now—like, say, assaulting an officer who’s just being friendly—that could be bad. What do you have, another eight left?” His free hand brushed dust from Rex’s jacket. “Rex, we want that gun. You say you don’t know where it is. We don’t believe you, but it could be. You might consider making it your business to know.”

“What the hell do that mean?”

The cop shrugged. “These boys. They look up to you. That’s all I’m saying.”

The third day they showed up at his job.

“Rex? You in trouble?” His boss came into the boiler room where Rex was laying down sawdust to soak up spilled oil.

“No,” he said, and added, “sir.”

Before he went in he was a carpenter. Used to build things, good solid things. Something real—something wouldn’t be, wasn’t for him. Coming out, world was different. Not easy for ex-cons to find work, and no chance of getting back in the union. But one of the contractors used to hire him from time to time, he had a cousin, super at a fancy East Side building. The cousin put Rex on the maintenance crew. Now he spread sawdust and hauled the garbage out.

“Because there’s two cops here,” his boss said. “They want to talk to you.”

Shit, Rex thought, but he didn’t say it, just went out to the service alley. “What you doing here?” he said into the two smiles.

“We want that gun, Rex.”

“I told you, I don’t know nothing about that gun.”

His boss was watching from the doorway.

“You shouldn’t of come here,” Rex told the cops. “I need this job.”

“And we need that gun. And funny, we find none of those boys seems interested in talking to us. Can you believe that? Good thing the Landry boy already talked to you.”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, then.” The white teeth smiled, the brown ones following like a shadow. “Then it’s a good thing he’s going to.” The two cops made a point to nod and wave to Rex’s frowning boss as they left.

That night Rex dreamed he was back inside. Not in his cell, but in one of them crooked, leaky passageways they got all over Greenhaven, connecting someplace you don’t want to be in to someplace you don’t want to go. The passageway was filled with garbage and he was digging through it, his heart pounding, fit to burst, things getting scarier and scarier as he went looking for something, he didn’t even know what. He could feel the pressure building, building. And before he got even close to finding anything, a bright white shape and its dark shadow came and swept all the garbage up, and him too, buried him in it.

He woke up all tangled in sweaty sheets. Shit, he thought.

Shit, and shit.

That day he didn’t get as far as work, not even as far as the corner, before Something and Something Else come swooping, one from the front and one from the back, surrounding him all by their two selves.

“Let’s take a ride downtown,” Something said through them damn brown teeth.

“What the hell for?”

“You’re a material witness, Rex. Maybe you remembered some details that might help us.”

“I ain’t remembered nothing because ain’t nothing for me to remember! The Landry boy never said nothing to me!”

“Not even lately?”

“I ain’t spoke to him lately.”

“Why not? I thought we agreed you would.”

“Didn’t agree about nothing! I ain’t spoke to the kid. Look, I can’t go downtown with you. I got to get to work.”

“That’s okay, Rex. We’ll call your boss. We’ll explain where you are.”

Rex looked at them, a matched set in different colors. Looked a couple of times. “Okay,” he said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, I tell you where the gun is.”

Because Rex had an idea, a great one, fucking genius.

Tell them a lie.

Why not? Say he seen someone, not the Landry boy and he wasn’t sure who, but someone, seen him drop a .45 in the basement. Make him up: tall kid, with one droopy eye. Not one of them rapper assholes from the corner. Someone he ain’t never seen before or since. Say, when he run into the Landry boy he’d been out to get some chips and beer, but when he come home from work earlier, he seen this tall kid then. Yeah. Yeah, that would work. Then he take them to the boiler room. They ain’t gonna find nothing, and he’d say, Well, shit, there’s where I seen him drop it. They’d be pissed, bust his balls that he ain’t told them before, but who gives a shit? After that, they’d go away, leave him alone.

“Okay,” he said.

He told them the story, listened to some bullshit about How come you ain’t told us before? He said, because he’s trying to stay out the whole thing, do they want to see the place or not? Of course they do. He took them into the basement.

“Here,” he said, and pointed to the darkest, dirtiest place, the shadows behind the furnace. Above the white teeth and the brown teeth a black nose and a white nose wrinkled all up, like don’t either of them want to go back there. “Shit,” he said, “right here,” and reached like he was gonna find something, moved his hand around. And thought, shit.

Shit if he don’t feel something hard and cold.

He wrapped two fingers around it and pulled it out.

Both cops jumped back, so funny, like Chico. “What the fuck!” one of them yelled, he didn’t see which. Then they both had guns pointing at him, standing legs spread, two hands like in the movies.

“Hey!” Rex told them, his heart thumping his chest like it want to get out and run away. “Chill! Y’all don’t want to get your hands dirty, I’m just taking it out for you.” He held up his hands, the .45 dangling.

Something Else took out a handkerchief, took the .45 with it, while Something kept his gun pointed at Rex. Whole thing over, they looked at it and looked at him. Finally they both smiled, all them teeth gleaming in the dark. “Thanks, Rex,” they told him.

Cops so grateful, they gave Rex a ride to work, so he ain’t late. He tell them drop him a block away, don’t want his boss seeing them.

“You think you’re a pretty smart son of a bitch, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do.” And he did, finding them a fucking gun in a place he didn’t even know no gun was. And he did all day, till he come home just in time to see them two motherfuck-ers hauling the Landry boy out in handcuffs. The boy’s eyes looked right into Rex’s again, like before, and this time they looked even more scared.

More like Chico’s.

“What the fuck? What up with this?”

The white cop shrugged. “His gun, Rex.”

“It ain’t mine!” the boy shouted.

“Street says it’s your brother’s. Same thing.”

“How’s it the same thing?” Rex stood in their way.

“His brother’s in North Carolina, has been for a month. So it wasn’t him used it on the old lady.”

“Wasn’t me neither!”

“He just a kid,” Rex said.

“Old enough to be tried as an adult if the charge is serious. We’re talking about murder here, Rex. Hey, by the way, thanks.” The cop smiled his teeth at Rex. “We appreciate that you gave up the gun. I’d suggest you get out of the way now, though. Unless you want to come with us?”

The kid’s eyes widened when the cop said the part about the gun. He looked like Rex just took away all his candy, and he looked young enough to care.

That night Rex couldn’t sleep for dreaming.

He dreamed the Landry boy’s mama ask him to give the boy a Hershey’s bar but he can’t find him. He started to eat the chocolate himself but when he looked at it, it wasn’t no candy, it was old smelly garbage.

He dreamed Chico was walking down the street and he wouldn’t turn around when Rex called his name.

He dreamed he was standing in the middle of his apartment, pressure building inside him. The door and windows had bars on them, and he was stuck in there with the roaches.

At work his boss asked him, “How long did you work for my cousin, Rex?”

“Three years,” Rex said. “On and off.”

Rex could see him doing the math, see him thinking, How much do I owe this guy? Rex figured one more visit from them two detectives, he have his answer. Then where was Rex gonna get rent money from, even for that dump? And how was he gonna explain to his parole officer how come he can’t keep a job shoveling shit?

That night, same as the one before. This time when he woke up, Rex couldn’t remember what he dreamed, except all three of his mama’s men pointing and laughing at him, him being so little and them real big. Make him so mad, make all that pressure begin building, but nothing he can do.

Next day on the way to work he saw the Landry boy’s mama dressed in her church hat, getting on the subway. From the look in her eyes you might’ve thought someone punched her in the stomach. Long ride down to Rikers, Rex thought.

And more dreams the next night. This time he woke up at 4, sat staring out the window until the sky got gray.

When morning finally came, he called in sick. He spent the rest of the day getting let into Rikers to see the Landry boy.

Shit, he thought, check out this shit, busting my hump to get into Rikers. Finally, they put him in a room and brought the kid in to sit across the table.

When he saw Rex, the boy put on that hard face. “What you doing here?”

“Got some questions.”

“Who give a shit?”

“You just answer me.”

“Why you tell them where my brother’s gun at?”

“Didn’t mean to.”

“What the fuck do that mean?”

“Thought I was giving them a story. Trying to do the right thing.” He shook his head, to leave that be. “Must be me and your brother just think alike. How come he put it there?”

The boy stared. Seemed like the air went out of him. His shoulders slumped, the hard face sagged. “My moms don’t let no gun in the house.”

“Did you know where it was at?”

“No.”

“Did your boys?”

The kid moved his shoulders, didn’t say nothing.

“Suppose they drop the charges, let you outta here. What you gonna do?”

“’Bout what?”

“You tell me.”

“Don’t know what you mean.”

“You going back to school?”

The kid blinked. “Sure.”

“Why?”

“Why what?

”

“Why you going back? You got plans?”

For a minute, the kid didn’t answer. Then he nodded, real slow.

“What plans you got?”

“Gonna be a engineer.”

“Why?”

“So I could build stuff. Bridges and shit. Buildings where there ain’t nothing now.”

Rex looked at the kid, watched him sit there, watched how young he was.

“That take college. You got a chance?”

“Grades, you mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Got a A in math, A minus in physics. B’s, everything else.”

“You got a sheet?”

The boy looked around the scuffed room. “Till this, I ain’t never been arrested.”

“If you get outta here,” Rex said, “I ain’t gonna tell you stop hanging with your boys. They your boys, you ain’t gonna turn your back. But you got choices. They got some shit going down, you stay out of it. You following me?”

The boy shrugged. “Don’t see how it matter. Cops got my ass. I ain’t getting out.”

“Are you following me?!”

The boy jumped in his chair, to hear Rex shout like that.

The guard in the corner turned to look.

Rex asked one more time, quietly, “Are you?”

The kid gave him a wide-eyed nod. “Yes, sir.”

“Okay,” said Rex. “Now you tell me one more thing. You kill that old lady?”

Right into Rex’s eyes, the Landry boy shook his head.

“No, sir.”

Something and Something Else was both surprised to see Rex walk into the precinct squad room. “Hey, look who’s here,” the white one said, but Rex sat in the chair at the black cop’s desk. Might as well give him the collar.

“Came to confess.”

The cop’s eyes opened wide, got white all around them.

Matched his damn teeth.

“Confess? To what?”

“Was me shot that old lady. That gun I give you, it belong to me.”

“Jesus, Rex, what kind of bullshit is this?”

“That kid ain’t done nothing.”

“Neither did you.”

“You got a witness seen him?”

“We’ll find someone.”

“You won’t, ’cause he ain’t done it. You got his prints on the gun?”

“No, but—”

“You got mine?”

“Yeah, but I saw you pick it up!”

“Can you prove that’s when them prints come from? Nah, forget it, I know you can’t. I shot the old lady and I give you the gun, with my prints from when I done it.”

“Rex,” the white cop said from his beat-up desk, “you did this, tell us why.”

“He was robbing her,” said the black cop. “Wanted her pocketbook.” Way he said it, it was clear to Rex he wasn’t buying that.

“Uh-uh,” Rex said. “Not that. ’Cause she look like Berniece, that’s the reason right there.”

“Who’s Berniece?”

“Skinny-ass bitch that sent me up.”

Something looked over at Something Else and Rex knew he had them.

“Fuck,” Rex said. “Why you think I been jerking you ass-holes around? Do that kid a favor? Why I’m gonna do that? Do I owe him something?

“Then why’d you change your mind and give us the gun?”

“You was gonna take me in! I thought I could give you some bullshit story, put my hands on the gun so you’d think my prints come from then, and you’d be dumb enough to buy it.”

The white one flushed. “And why’re you having a change of heart now?”

Rex shrugged. “Didn’t expect you to be so dumb to where you gonna go pick up that kid. He all right, that boy. Ain’t done nothing.”

“So you’re just gonna give it all up? You’re gonna go back inside, just like that?”

“Shit,” Rex said. He thought about the room with the roaches, the job with the sawdust. He thought about the Landry boy’s eyes.

He thought about things that wasn’t there before someone made them, and he thought about the pressure building, building.

“I was going back in, sooner or later,” he said. “I got tired of it, is all.”

“Well, damn,” the cop said. “What the hell, garbage is garbage, I guess. If we can’t get one of those kids, I suppose we’ll take you.” He looked over to Something’s desk and waited for the brown teeth to smile. “All right,” the white teeth said, “if that’s what you want, I’ll book you. That it, Rex?”

“Yes,” said Rex, and added, not to neither of these fools, but to himself, definitely to himself, “sir.”

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENT IN NEW YORK

BY JUSTIN SCOTT

Chelsea

I will cut her heart out,” Tommy King announced in a loud, clear voice, placing near equal emphasis on each word.

I said, “You shouldn’t be saying that.”

“Who you going to tell?”

“See the blondes at the bar? How do you know one of them’s not a cop? Or a cop’s sister looking to get him promoted?”

Tommy King lowered the decibels to a vodka mutter. “Whoa. Almost blew it. Thanks, Joe.”

We were seated at a four top in the back of Morans, an expensive Irish joint on Tenth in Chelsea around the corner from what I was already thinking of as “my apartment.” Which was premature, considering how negotiations had gotten jammed up. Tommy King was the real estate agent who had steered me to it after a six-month search. The table was roomy because he always reserved for three and gave his name as “Dr.” King.

“I don’t want to give the cops any ideas. Shouldn’t even tell you.” He was finishing off his second martini, not drunk enough to ignore. I was used to his harping on his ex-wife, but suddenly he was vicious, gripping my arm and pulling me close to whisper, “I’m going to buy a surgeon’s scalpel.

What she did to me. I just have to figure out how not to get caught—What’s the matter? You’ve never been mad enough to kill anybody?”

Hoping to shift the subject from ex-wife killing back to business, I said, “Right this minute I could kill the owner of that apartment.”

“No, no, no. Jesus H., don’t even say such a thing.” He ducked lower. “You don’t want to do that. Kill him and you’ll end up negotiating with his heirs. I’m telling you, heirs are the worst. Soon as they inherit free money, it’s not enough.”

“It’s the most beautiful apartment in New York.”

“I used to say that about my wife. The most beautiful woman in New York. She still is, I’ll give her that. Opens up that big smile of hers, she lights the whole street.”

“I didn’t realize you were still seeing her.”

“From a distance. You have to get right in her face to see the evil.”

Tommy waved his glass for a third drink.

I stood up. I’d heard enough evil-ex for one night. From a distance almost sounded like he was stalking her. “I’m out of here. We’ll go up again tomorrow, right?”

“Seven p.m.”

“Why so late?”

“He wants you to see the sun changing colors on the Empire State Building.”

“He’s enjoying jerking me around.”

Tommy put down his glass and said, seriously, “Two things you want to keep in mind, Joe. He can only jerk you around if you show him he’s getting to you. And, he knows what he’s got.”

“What’s that?”

“What you just said, man. The most beautiful apartment in New York.”

It was a walk-up. And the kitchen was a bad joke.

It ran the full length and breadth of the parlor floor of a Greek Revival town house built in 1840. It had two fireplaces and nine-foot ceilings. Listed as a one-bedroom, it had the extra nooks and crannies you find in an old house. One would hold a desk. Another, the upright piano I’d had in storage since I came to New York. It had a view in the back of narrow gardens and a view out front, across the street, of a gigantic plane tree in a green field beside a gothic stone seminary whose church, gardens, and dormitories occupied the entire block from Ninth to Tenth Avenues.

The plane tree spread its branches in a hundred-foot circle that screened the only ugly thing in view, the seminary’s 1960s-modern three-story office complex that had all the charm of a suburban elementary school. When I asked how the church had skated it past the Landmark Commission—which maintained strict architectural control of historic blocks like this one—Tommy had answered, “This city was built on loopholes.” The tree blocked most of it. Above the tree the Empire State Building sailed into the sky like a vertical ocean liner.

“Hard to believe you’re in the city,” said Richard, the owner. Richard had renovated the building forty years ago when—he told me every time I went back for another look—brave pioneers could buy crumbling property on a dangerous street for what today would buy a time-share in a parking garage. He had knocked down rooming house partitions and opened it up into floor-throughs, occupying the ground floor himself and renting the rest. Now, old and Florida-bound in a booming market, he had emptied the rentals by the simple expedient of jacking the rent to Park Avenue penthouse rates and had sold the third, fourth, and attic floors. “Mine” was the last and most expensive, since, Richard assured me, it was the best.

His negotiating strategy was effective, and downright intimidating. I had instructed Tommy to offer forty thousand less than his exorbitant asking price, then Richard raised his asking price by forty, making it insanely exorbitant. I should have walked away. Instead, I walked in at 7 o’clock, agreed that it was hard to believe we were in the city, and admired the light on the Empire State Building shift color from a metallic tan to red to blue-gray as the sun crept past the city.

It took a while, but Richard was in no rush. He was a non-stop talker who loved a captive audience. He told me that the reason the staircase sagged was some idiot had cut a main beam in the basement while running a new sewer line when they converted the original town house into a rooming house for the dockworkers back in World War II. He told me he put a new roof on the building. He told me that a disused air shaft could be converted to a kitchen exhaust fan in “your apartment.”

He told me a bunch of gossip about people on the block who fell into two categories: amusing eccentrics who owned buildings and apartments, and gypsy peasants who rented.

He cackled that the house of a neighbor he was feuding with was haunted. “Really is. You could buy an apartment in his building for half what it’s worth.”

I had checked that out already. It was going cheap all right. I didn’t see any ghosts. But it was completely ordinary and the only view was of a housing project on 18th.

“Having the seminary across the street is like having a country house outside your window. Except you don’t have to drive there and mow the grass. You want to get outdoors, you walk two minutes to the river.”

Then he made my blood run cold by telling me that a couple had looked at the apartment this afternoon and seemed to like it a lot. Money was no problem. The guy’s parents were rich. And if they wouldn’t help, the Swiss bank that employed the woman would front the down payment. He watched me react and seemed to like what he saw.

“You really should live here,” Richard said. “You’ll never find another place like this. Chelsea Piers, best gym in New York, is right down the street. I’m selling paradise.”

I turned my face to the window. The Empire State Building had almost disappeared in the dark. Just then, they switched on a thousand floodlights, painting it white as an iceberg.

“Look at that,” Richard crowed. “I just have a feeling in my gut you belong here. I don’t know if I ever told you, but this apartment has a track record when it comes to romance. Everyone who ever rented it met somebody and had a love affair. Right here in these rooms.”

I should not have told Tommy King that I wanted the kind of home that a woman would like to share.

“You’re asking a killer price,” I said.

“It will only get more valuable,” he countered. “Nothing will bring it down. It didn’t go when the Towers went down. I was watching on CNN thinking, Oh, God, the Empire State Building’s next, I’ll never get my price without the view. Then I realized the terrorists don’t know from shit about the Empire State Building. You gotta be a New Yorker to love the Empire State Building—sure enough, they went for the Pentagon.”

He was right. It would not be the most beautiful apartment in New York without that spire changing colors by the hour.

Richard said, “Nothing but a haunting will ever bring it down, Joe. And don’t get any ideas, because this building is not haunted and never has been. No scary ghosts, no evil spirits. It’s a great investment. Turn around and sell it in a flash. For profit.”

“I’m looking for a home, not a stepping stone.”

“Everyone wants to move up.”

“Not me. This is up.” Another mistake I realized as soon as I said it. I had told him exactly how much I wanted it and he didn’t bother to conceal a smile.

Tommy King stepped in, too late to repair the damage, saying, “Listen, Richard, thanks. We gotta split. We’ll come back tomorrow. Seven o’clock?”

Richard touched my arm, exuding fatherly concern.

“You might want to think about if you really belong in New York.”

“Beg pardon?”

“A lot of people your age who can’t afford New York are buying in Brooklyn. Manhattan may not be your town.”

On the street Tommy said, “I thought you were going to slug him.”

I turned on him. “Next time you see a class of high school tourists from the boonies? Look for the straggler staring at the skyscrapers. That’s the kid who’s coming back. Manhattan’s been my ‘town’ since I came here on my senior trip. I don’t care who’s moving to fucking Brooklyn, I’m not.”

“Whoa. I believe you, man. You turned red as brake lights. First time I’ve seen fire in your eyes.”

“I’ve settled for second best too many times.” I couldn’t believe I had just admitted that out loud, but I was so upset I dropped every defense and proceeded to spill my guts to Tommy King. “I didn’t hold out for an Ivy League college. I didn’t fight to get into a first-rank law school. I didn’t hold out for the job that really would have gone someplace.”

“You’re general counsel of the biggest printing company in the city.”

“I sign off on contracts. If a problem gets interesting, I’m told to hire outside counsel. I married a woman mainly because I didn’t know how to say no when she asked. And I didn’t fight for a fair divorce. I’m through settling. I’m through letting things happen to me. I want that apartment.”

“I believe you, man. You look like I feel about my ex.”

“I really blew it with Richard, didn’t I?”

Tommy said, “I bought it today.”

“What? Bought what?”

“Scalpel.”

“What?” I said again, though I knew what he meant.

“It’s just a skinny little handle with a bunch of blades. Like razors. Cops’ll figure some kid got her with a box cutter.”

I figured it was time to get a new real estate guy. Tommy King was nuts—creepy nuts—telling me all this because in his twisted heart he really believed that he was right and she was evil. It didn’t matter that he was the listing broker. Richard would sell to whatever fool paid his ridiculous price.

On the way home I got a call from another broker at Tommy’s agency, a partner named Marcy Stern, a woman with a shrill, demanding manner that matched her pointy face and darting eyes. “Listen, Joe, you’re out of there tomorrow morning.”

I was living rent free, baby-sitting an apartment for sale.

Tommy had gotten me the gig and I figured I was safe until I found a place of my own because the plain white box in an ugly white box building was listed for an insane price. Wrong about that. “How can you close in one day?”

“All cash deal. The client wants to dump his stuff before he hops his flight to Singapore. Get your junk out by 8.”

“Didn’t I sign something that said I’d get a couple of days notice?”

“Not if you want help getting another free place. Call Tommy King.” Tommy had a similar live-in security guard arrangement, sleeping in a succession of apartments on the market since he lost his home to the ex-wife he hated so much he wanted to cut her heart out.

I called Tommy.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll get you another one soon as I can. Bunk with me till then.”

I thanked him for his generosity and he repeated what he had said when he first offered me the apartment-sitting deal.

“Why watch your down payment get smaller? Bad enough watching prices go higher.”

At a quarter to 8 the next morning, Marcy unlocked the door with the agency key and looked surprised that I was still stuffing clothes into bags. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll be right out of your way.” I picked up a garment bag, a laptop backpack, and a suitcase—everything else was in storage. The suitcase, which had been damaged by an airline, broke open. My laundry fell on the floor.

Marcy and the new owner, a Chinese guy in a blue suit, along with a huge guy who appeared to be his bodyguard, watched me crawl around picking up my underwear, and shut the door firmly behind me as I shuffled down the long, dreary hall to the elevator.

Tommy was on the phone when I got uptown to his latest temporary place—a glass and mirrored palace in the sky with views of the park and both rivers. He pointed me toward one of the halls and mouthed, “Third bedroom on the left.” Then he continued loudly on the phone. “Hey, by the way, my ex is looking in Chelsea. She’s got a new boyfriend wants a pied-àterre. No, leave me out of it. If she hears I’m involved she’ll run the other way. I might have something you can show her. I’ll give you a heads-up.”

As soon as I bundled my stuff into the bedroom, which had hardwood floors, a marble bathroom, and no bed, Tommy wandered in saying, “You gotta raise some more cash for a bigger down payment so the bank’ll cut you a mortgage to meet Richard’s price. So the question is, where do you get the cash?”

“I wish I knew.”

“Most clients’ parents chip in.”

“My folks don’t have that kind of money.”

“Can’t they take a home equity on their house?”

I explained that a bank appraiser would not bother getting out of his car for their tiny ranch with a shallowly pitched roof on a quarter-acre lot. “If every neighbor on their block chipped in with a home equity loan, they might raise enough to send a crippled kid to Disneyland. No, Tommy, not everybody is rich. It just seems that way.”

“I gotta tell you, Richard is not lowering it. There are no minuses in that apartment. Once you accept the stairs and the kitchen—which you already did—there’s nothing wrong to make him lower his price.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

“Think about Brooklyn.”

“No!” I felt my face burn red again.

“Man, you’re looking obsessed.”

I repeated what I had said yesterday: “I won’t settle for second best.” Then I changed the subject to get him off my back. “I heard you on the phone. Sounds like you got un-obsessed with your ex.”

“What do you mean?”

“Helping her look for her boyfriend’s apartment.”

“Is that what it sounded like?”

“Sounded like you got over her.”

His face hardened up. “After what she did to me?”

“What did she do to you?”

His eyes widened. “Are you kidding? What did she do to me?”

“You keep saying it, but I don’t know what it was.”

“I told you. She got the apartment.”

“My ex got our apartment. But I’m not going to kill her for it. Much less cut her heart out.”

Tommy got really mad and started hacking away at me.

“She got your apartment? What kind of apartment? Tell me about it. View? Big? Classy building? High ceilings? Skylights?

Granite and nickle bathrooms?”

“No. No. No. And no. It was just a nice apartment. Nice layout.”

“Nice layout means small.”

“It was small. It was a New York apartment.”

“Yeah, well I wouldn’t cut my ex’s heart out for a piece of shit like that, either. But my apartment was fantastic. First of all, it was the best deal in New York. I bought it right out from under my firm—previous firm. Went to check it out.

Found this old guy, just got widowed, starts weeping while he’s showing me. It was gorgeous. He had no idea what it was worth. He just wanted out. I made an offer on the spot.

Condo, so I didn’t have to go through board shit. Gave my banker oral sex to get a bridge loan to close the deal—Hey! Lose the I-just-got-here-from-Topeka expression. She wasn’t that bad.”

Maybe she wasn’t, but Tommy had no smile for the memory.

“I thought I was made,” he raged. “Fucking brass ring at last. It had it all. Views, high ceilings, kitchen to die for, class building. She turned around and flipped it for ten times what I paid five years ago. She is fucking rich and I’m sleeping in a sleeping bag. Which is why—”

“I know, I know. You’re going to cut her heart out.”

That afternoon he called me at work. Richard had canceled our 7 o’clock meeting. I felt a cold lump in the pit of my stomach. It sounded like he had gotten the higher offer he’d been waiting for. “Any idea why?” I asked.

“No idea,” said Tommy.

“Can you reschedule?”

“I’ll talk to him next week.”

I had an awful feeling Tommy was trying to blow me off. In fact, I had an awful feeling that he himself had found the client who had made the higher offer. Hating myself, I did a terrible thing, telephoned my folks in Missouri and asked to borrow the fifty thousand dollars they’d been saving, buck by buck, so they could move south when my father finally retired from teaching.

The damnedest thing was how they didn’t even hesitate. I promised I would pay it back as soon as possible, thinking maybe I could in five years, and right after work hurried down to Chelsea prepared to meet Richard’s insane price with an extra ten thousand to beat the offer I just knew he must have gotten.

Richard was sitting on his front step, leaning against a pillar that was topped with a welcoming wrought-iron pineapple he’d had recreated by Spanish craftsmen to match one stolen. The front door closed behind him and I could hear somebody creaking up the steps.

I said, “I got the money. I can meet your price.”

“Too late. A woman’s buying it right now.”

“I can top it by ten thousand.”

“Top what by ten thousand?”

“The extra forty you wanted.”

Richard laughed. “She’s already topped that. I’ve got seven hundred thousand on the table.”

“Seven hundred thousand? Sight unseen?”

“She saw it this afternoon. Woman looking for a pied-àterre for her boyfriend.”

“Seven hundred thousand?”

“This woman is so in love she’d have paid a million.”

Richard shook his head. Even he seemed awed and it made him seem more human as he asked, “You know how when somebody is really happy after being unhappy for a long time?

How they glow? This woman is glowing like Venus on a dark night.”

“How’d she find out about it?”

“Your friend Tommy showed it to her broker. Tommy was so excited he was red in the face. He really is a greedy prick.”

“Is Tommy up there?”

“No, he and the broker were here earlier.”

“Did you actually see Tommy King leave?”

“No.”

I thought to myself, Tommy wouldn’t kill her up there.

Richard knew he had set it up with her broker. He’d get caught. Except he didn’t care about getting caught. He thought he was right.

I hesitated for longer than I should have. I knew exactly what would happen, and when it did, the price of that apartment was going to plummet. A bloody murder would knock the price lower than a ghost. All I had to do was walk away from a crime about to happen. Or better yet, just stand innocently chatting with Richard who, as usual, was talking up a storm. All I had to do was listen and wait.

“Hey, Richard,” a woman called down from the front window of the apartment. “Where is that air shaft for the kitchen exhaust?”

She was not the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in New York, but she came close—a perfectly lovely blonde, slim, not boney, sky-blue eyes set wide in a heart-shaped face, and a mouth that wanted to smile. Quite a few years older than Tommy, I thought. I wasn’t surprised they had gotten divorced; what I couldn’t figure out was how they had hooked up in the first place. She just seemed better than Tommy, who while handsome enough to squire a beauty like her around town, had an empty mind and soul even when he wasn’t threatening bloody murder.

She looked down at me gaping up at her, and her smile erased every line that hinted at age. As Richard had said, she glowed. “Hi. I’m Samantha King. Do you live in the building too?”

Before I could answer, she disappeared—like a reverse jack-in-the-box—and the window slammed shut. I ran up the front stoop. The door had swung closed and locked. “Open it,” I yelled. “Unlock the door!”

Richard located the key on the crowded ring on his belt, inserted it, and unlocked the door. I pounded up the stairs.

Halfway up the flight I heard her scream. When I reached the landing something heavy slammed against a wall. The old house had thin paneled wood doors and I ran full tilt into the nearest, splintering it open with my shoulder.

Tommy had chased her into a corner, bent her backwards over a radiator, and was hacking at her chest with his scalpel. He looked up at me crashing into the room. His face was covered in her blood.

“Stop!” I shouted, too late to do any good.

Tommy let the poor woman go and her body slipped off the radiator onto the floor. “I can’t get it out,” he said.

“Should’ve brought a fucking saw.” He reached down and tried to close her staring eyes, but the lids popped open again and all he did was leave bloody prints on her cheeks. He gave up trying, pressed the scalpel to the left side of his neck, and gouged deep.

I got what I deserved.

The Post and the Daily News exaggerated the blood, of course. Times and Sun readers learned that Tommy did not cut his ex-wife’s heart completely out, but had given up halfway and ripped the scalpel across his own throat in what the Sun writer had termed “a spasmodic mea culpa.” Still, there was blood enough.

Marcy Stern, speaking for the real estate brokerage, swore that Tommy King had been “terminated for cause” before the attack. Asked what effect the crime would have on property values in Chelsea, West 20th Street, and Richard’s 1840 town house in particular, she fired back, “Don’t even think of lowballing us.”

Unfortunately for her and Richard—and fortunately for me—no one thought of making any offers at all, lowball or otherwise. I got the apartment for the original asking price and didn’t have to tap my parents’ little nest egg. Richard, shaken, agreed to all my terms, especially a floor-to-ceiling cleaning by professionals before I moved in and a repainting of the room where most of the attack had occurred. I moved in the afternoon of the closing to a home smelling of fresh paint and floor wax.

Samantha was waiting in the window, her heart-shaped face super-imposed on the Empire State Building. Her ghost? Or just my guilty imagination reflected in the glass? Didn’t matter which, I saw her clear as I saw the sunlit spire by day and the white iceberg at night. I tried moving around the room, shifting perspective. At angles, the nineteenth-century glass distorted the light, but she kept moving with me. Wispy hair, blue eyes, paler than in life, and a small, sad smile that grew sadder every day as the lines around her mouth deepened. “Why didn’t you stop him?” she asked one morning. And that night, “You knew he wanted to hurt me.”

After a couple of weeks of her, I called in a broker for a hint of what I could get for the place. He liked it, at first. I didn’t have much furniture yet, but my piano made it look lived in and there were the fireplaces and the killer view from the front windows. All of a sudden he shivered.

“Weird feeling in this place. Like something’s here? You ever notice? Hey, is this where that woman got killed?”

He didn’t wait for my answer.

Samantha was waiting in the window. She said, “The thing that makes me saddest is that I had finally found a great guy. My friends were asking me, does he have a brother?”

I said, “I can’t sell this apartment. I can’t move. I can’t change what I did to you. So I guess I’ll have to get used to you. With a view like this I’ll get used to anything. If I have to live with you, I will. If you can stand it, I can too.”

I awoke the next morning to a mind-shattering screaming roar echoing in the street, looked out the window, and saw a bunch of guys with chainsaws and a crane lopping branches off the plane tree.

I raced downstairs in pants and socks. Across the street sawdust was flying from the main trunk. Marcy Stern was on the sidewalk, taking people’s business cards and handing out pictures of model apartments slated for a new twenty-story residential tower. Each had a wonderful view of the Empire State Building.

“You can’t build here!” I and several panicked neighbors screamed. “The seminary is landmarked.”

“Not this part.”

“The whole block.”

“Not the new part.”

“But—”

“We found the same loophole they did when they built the new part.”

Steel rises quickly in New York. The last Samantha and I saw of my view was a hard-hatted iron worker silhouetted against the Empire State Building like King Kong.

THE LAST ROUND

BY C.J. SULLIVAN

Inwood

Danny Stone woke up angry. He sat up in his lumpy double bed and felt a rage tearing through him. His fists were clenched and he was breathing hard. He knew it was the dream. It was always the dream.

He shook his head and tried to erase the images of his long night. He knew he threw punches in his sleep and that is why he slept alone. Since he lost his wife, every woman he went to bed with woke him yelling that he was hitting them while he was dreaming. Sleep boxing, he told them, he suffered from sleep boxing. He said it as a joke but none of the women found it funny. Or slept with him again. In his waking life he had never struck a woman, and even in his dreams it wasn’t a woman he was trying to hit.

He got out of his bed and stretched his tight body. The cold linoleum felt good on his bare feet as he walked over and looked out his bedroom window down to Sherman Avenue. A cold blast of wind blew brown leaves around a fire pump. Danny watched an elderly man carrying a plastic black bag and rummaging through a garbage can looking for beer and soda cans for the nickel reward.

Danny turned away from the window. He felt a lump in his throat. He blocked that out with another long stretch. His muscles and bones popped and then he dropped to the floor to do one hundred sit-ups followed with fifty push-ups. Some men woke up to coffee, some to brushing their teeth. Danny Stone woke up and worked out. He did this every morning since he could remember. As a young boy he wanted to be a boxer and that is where it began. It took him through his fighting career and it would now take him into retirement.

“Too old, boy … you too old.”

He tensed up on his last ten push-ups as he heard those words in his mind. His trainer, Victor Garcia, had said that to him at Obert’s Gym yesterday when Danny floated the idea of one more fight.

Too old? How is thirty-five too old? he thought. Thirty-five is the prime of life for most men. But for a boxer? He knew the dirty secret of his profession. You didn’t slowly lose your skills in the ring. They deserted you in seconds, and a contender for the middleweight crown—which is how Danny thought of himself, although Ring Magazine had never ranked him higher than number ten—could go from youthful potential to a washed-up bum in under three minutes. That is all it took. One bad round. You cannot hide in a boxing ring and all your weaknesses are eventually exposed. In his last fight, one of the best middleweights of all time, Roy Jones Jr., looked old at thirty-five, and Danny knew he was no Roy Jones Jr.

“You too old.”

Those words.

Cutting and cruel.

He knew there was something to them. Age for a boxer is deadly. It is like a door you pass through, and when it closes behind you there is no going back. A part of Danny Stone knew that was true, but like most boxers he thought he could go one more time. He figured he could get a $50,000 pay date as an under card at the Garden. Good enough for a stake.

Start a business. Maybe use it as a down payment for a condo. Take on some rising young kid and drop him on his cocky ass with his still-powerful left hook.

He could see it as he laced up his running shoes. The bright lights. The blood. The crowd yelling. The punch as Danny stood over the kid with his gloves raised. Danny smiled as he threw on his gray Champion sweat suit and burst out of his third floor apartment and ran down the stairs.

“Hey, Champ, what are you doing? Lock your door!” Mr. Ruiz, the super, yelled at him as he swept the floor.

“Nothing to steal,” Danny called back with a laugh.

He ran out of the lobby and his legs tightened up as they pounded on the cement. The cold air hit his lungs like he had inhaled pipe tobacco. He put his head down and ran along the street toward Inwood Hill Park. The first ten minutes of every run was a killer for him. Even when he was young he hated the start of the run. But after ten minutes, even now, when he found his rhythm and groove, it got good. Real good. Running and boxing are what kept him sane all these years and he wasn’t ready to let go of them. If no one else believed in him, Danny thought, at least he did.

At least he did. Those words comforted him as he ran up Dyckman Street. He passed the Alibi Inn and a white-haired man waved to him from the window. Danny smiled and waved back. Everyone in Inwood knew him as “Champ.” He thought not many knew anything about him other than he was a boxer. The furies that drove him. He passed Sherman Avenue and made a right to avoid Pitt Place.

Danny knew that was where the ghosts lived. 209 Pitt Place. The last time he had seen his wife and baby daughter alive was in their tidy two-bedroom apartment there. He was deep in training out in the Poconos when the house was hit by a crew of home invaders. They came for the money they knew he had hidden in the closet. He had made some offhanded comment to a New York Post boxing writer about not trusting banks, and it cost his family their lives.

That the men were arrested, tried, and convicted with life sentences never gave him peace. That he won the fight was no solace. The only time he felt good was when his fists were pounding another man.

He shook his head to chase that ten-year-old memory away. He turned into the park and picked up his pace as he ran up the first hill. A mother pushing a baby carriage smiled at him when he huffed by. He kept going deeper into the park, deeper into his run. Away from the cruelty of life in New York City. Where the streets can snatch your whole life from you for a few thousand dollars. He went faster. His body felt good. He threw a few punches and let out a grunt.

He turned onto a path through the old woods and now ran on the dirt. As he came to the top of the hill, he saw a man standing in a thicket of bushes. The man looked up and Danny knew it was the guy he called the Mad Russian.

The Mad Russian was a local character who once told Danny his name was Yuri and he was once a Soviet botanist, now reduced to manual labor by the cruel capitalistic system of America. He said he came to the park to study the flora and the fauna. Danny waved to the Russian, but the guy looked through Danny like he wasn’t even there.

Just another New York psycho, Danny thought. The city was full of them, and if he kept it up, Danny Stone would join them. Lonely displaced people haunted by their past. The ghosts of your horrors were always chasing you.

He came out of the park and leaned against a stone wall to stretch his legs. It was a good run. Five miles. Good pace.

Good wind. He was still in shape.

Danny walked down 207th Street and grabbed a newspaper and went into the Loco Diner. There, the waitress, Rosa, smiled at him and motioned him to a front table. She yelled to the cook to make an egg white omelet.

“How was the run, Danny Boy?” Rosa said as she put a cup of coffee down in front of him.

“Good. Five miles in twenty-eight minutes.”

“Damn! You can run.”

“You should come out with me sometime.”

Rosa smacked her wide hips. “Not built for running, and I do enough running around here. Now, if you took me to dinner …”

Danny blushed as Rosa smiled at him. They had been doing this for the last year. Two thirty-five-year-old people acting like school kids. Rosa was pretty enough. A little heavy, but she carried it with a Latin charm.

Danny knew he needed something to change in his life. He was tired of being alone. He was ready. For anything. So he asked.

“Hey, Rosa, so why not?’

“Why not what?”

“Why don’t me and you go out. Tonight. Benny’s Steak House on 194th is good. You want to come with me?”

“You asking me out?”

“I think so.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

“I work slow.”

“I’ll say.”

“So we’ll go. I’ll meet you, like, 7.”

“Yes, Danny, I would like that. I would like that very much. Seven. Now here …” She put his omelet down in front of him. “You better eat this. You might need your strength. You ever been with a Latin woman?”

“Not one as pretty as you.”

Nice line, Danny thought. Rosa smiled and went over to a couple at a booth to take their order. Danny sipped on his coffee and picked at the eggs as he read the lead story:

“Inwood Jogger Missing.”

A twenty-year-old college student had been last seen running through Inwood Park and she never got home. A runaway, Danny thought, as he turned the page and read about a elderly jeweler stabbed on Sixth Avenue. Crime is down in New York, but there’s still enough mayhem to go around.

Danny finished his eggs and gave Rosa a wave as he threw ten dollars down on the table.

“Seven, Champ, I’ll be here,” she called after him.

Danny walked down to Obert’s Gym and said hello to the regulars. He walked past Victor Garcia without saying a word. He put on some light gloves and worked the speed bag.

He loved it when he got the rat-a-tat-tat sound as the bag hit the wood and then his glove with blinding speed.

He walked over to a heavy bag and motioned Khalif Little to hold it. He slammed the bag for three minutes, then held it while Little pounded it. Kid is strong, Danny thought.

The day dragged on. Danny trained a couple of local kids in the ring. He did foot work and shadowboxing with them.

Good kids, but no real boxing talent. They were in the gym because they couldn’t play baseball or basketball. Boxing was their last shot out of Inwood, and it was a cancelled check they were holding.

As Danny moved around the ring his mind kept going back to Rosa. That warm smile. Those big hips. He needed a woman and he needed a fresh start. Maybe she could be the one. That is, if he didn’t knock her out of bed.

Danny decided to skip some rope. Victor Garcia leaned on the ropes and watched him.

“You know, Danny, I was thinking about what you said. Maybe you’re right. You can still fight. I’ll look into it. We could both use a payday, and who knows.”

“You know me, Victor. I never back down from a fight. You get it and I’ll give it my all.”

“You always did, kid. You always did.”

Danny jumped out of the ring and said his goodbyes. He left the gym feeling pretty good. He walked home singing a song from the 1970s. Johnny Nash. “I can see clearly now the rain is gone.”

In his apartment he watched the evening news. A local TV reporter did a story on the missing jogger of Inwood Park. He heard her name. Sara Miller. Twenty. Blond. Pretty. Full of life. Honor student. All the things Danny never was.

The news went on with the weather report and he got ready for his date with Rosa. He took a hot shower, and as he dried off he threw talcum powder on his body. He went to the closet and put on a crisp, white button-down shirt and new black jeans. He thought about a tie and knew that wasn’t him. He looked in the mirror. Not bad, he thought. Slim. Face not too banged up. Maybe Rosa saw something in him.

He threw on a black leather jacket and walked out the door. He stopped at the corner florist and bought a rose. A Rose for Rosa, he said to himself and smiled. He walked with an easy stride and felt good in his body. Then he turned the corner on 207th Street and felt his gut tighten as he saw the Loco Diner.

No time for doubt, he thought, and walked inside with a goofy smile. Rosa was standing there in a flower print dress with her black hair up.

“God. You’re beautiful,” Danny said, handing her the rose.

“A rose. How sweet. Shall we?”

Danny helped her with her coat and then they walked out of the diner. On the street she put her arm in his and matched his stride down Broadway. Danny felt good and kept taking sideway glances at her and smiling.

“We should have done this a long time ago. This …” he said, patting her arm with his hand, “feels good. Feels right.”

“You asked when you did. Who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t have went if you asked in the past. It all happens when it is supposed to.”

They walked down Broadway chatting about their days.

They entered Benny’s and Rosa smiled as he led her to the bar.

“They’ll get us a table in like fifteen minutes. The Times did a review last month. A good one. All the Manhattan people are coming up now.”

“Danny, we are Manhattan people.”

“Rosa, geographically Inwood might be in Manhattan, but it is more like the Bronx. We are Inwood people, not Manhattan people.”

Rosa laughed at that. He ordered a red wine for her and water for him. Danny learned years ago that alcohol and staying in shape did not mix. As they finished their drinks a waiter took them to a back booth for privacy. Danny had called in a favor with Benny and they were treating him like the Champ he always wanted to be. He hoped Rosa was impressed.

They each ordered a steak and it came fast, hot, and rare. They were both hungry and ate their food with passion.

“Man, that was some good steak.”

“I’ll say. We ate like we’ve never been out before,” Rosa laughed.

Over coffee Danny started to talk about his past. He felt like he had to. Like she had to hear what made him the way he was. And if she didn’t run away screaming … then maybe . ..

When he got to the part of his family’s murder, Rosa held his hand.

“I know, Danny. I am sorry.”

“You know about what happened?”

“Well, yes, it was horrible. The whole neighborhood felt for you.”

A tear fell down Danny’s face. He never talked about that night. He only dreamt of it. As he talked of the hurt, he felt something leave his body. Something bad and bitter. He just rambled about his broken heart and his eyes never left Rosa’s face. She sat in silence, just watching him with soft, brown eyes. Eyes like a healing light, he thought. She has a face like a saint on a church mural.

Danny ordered Rosa another glass of wine while he had a coffee, black.

“I just want to thank you for listening, Rosa. It was like taking bad air out of me. God, it felt good telling you all that.”

“I’ll listen anytime, Danny.”

He asked about her life and Rosa told him the sadness of a divorce and the ruined dreams of her youth. She was going to be a lawyer but a child and an angry husband made her put that on the back burner. Where it stayed simmering into a bitter stew.

They left Benny’s, and on the corner Danny stopped and held Rosa’s face in his hands. He lightly kissed her lips and she caressed his neck.

They walked up Seaman Avenue and Rosa pointed to a “Missing” poster on the light pole. “That’s the jogger in Inwood Park that went missing.”

“Yeah. That is weird. You know, I run every day through that park and never saw her. I see that psycho Yuri but not Sara Miller.”

As they walked, Danny told Rosa how the Mad Russian looked right through him earlier that day in the park.

“He creeps me out, that Yuri,” said Rosa. “About two months ago I saw him running down 207th Street after some young college girl, cursing at her. The girl got away but Yuri had this sick look in his eyes like if he had caught her he would have done something bad.”

“Really? You think …”

Rosa exhaled. “I don’t know, but I got a feeling about him. Show me where you saw him.”

“Rosa. It’s dark out. That park is dangerous at night.”

“Oh, come on. I go out with a boxer and he’s afraid of the dark. Here …” She reached into her purse and pulled out a small flashlight. “Come on, it will be romantic.”

They walked up the street and followed Danny’s running route. As they entered the park, Danny’s body tightened. He looked everywhere and anywhere.

The woods were empty and dark and Danny needed the flashlight to find the trail he took. He held Rosa’s hand as they headed up the hill.

“There. He was standing right there.”

Rosa walked into the thicket carefully and shined the light on the ground.

“What are you looking for?” Danny asked as he looked around. Who knows what’s in here at night.

“I don’t know. Anything.”

Rosa took another step and hissed, “Oh my God.”

Danny went over to her side and saw a body under a bush. Then he heard a low moan. Rosa shined the light into the bush and Danny reached in. He felt an arm and gently pulled it toward him.

“That’s the jogger. That’s her. Sara Miller,” Rosa said, as they looked down on the young girl. She lay on the ground unconscious and barely breathing, but it was her. Her blond hair was a dirty mess and her face had cuts and bruises.

“We got to get her to a hospital,” Danny said, as he bent down and picked her up by the torso and put her over his back.

“Careful, Danny.”

Rosa lit the way as he tried to gently carry Sara Miller. He could feel her body moving on his back like she was trying to get away. They got back on the path and Danny picked up his pace.

“Memorial is like ten blocks. Call an ambulance. Have them meet us by the park entrance on 207th Street.”

Rosa took out her cell phone and tried to keep pace with Danny’s long strides. As Danny walked down the path, he sensed something coming at him from his left side. He turned and saw Yuri charging out of the trees with a huge limb.

“That is mine!” Yuri screamed, and swung the branch at Danny’s leg. Danny’s knees fell from under him. He was in a kneeling position and was able to lay Sara Miller down, when the branch hit his back, knocking him to the ground. His mouth tasted dirt. He saw Rosa swinging her purse at Yuri.

“Get off him, you friggin’ psycho!”

Yuri grabbed Rosa’s purse and punched her. She fell onto a park bench. Danny was on his feet now. Woozy. Unsteady.

But ready for a round.

“Hey. Fight me. Fight a man.”

Yuri turned and came at Danny. Jesus, Danny thought, this guy is big and moves like a boxer. A heavyweight. He hit Danny a glancing blow, and Danny came up inside of him and landed a body shot. Yuri gasped and punched Danny’s ribs.

The punch hurt. Worse than anything he had felt in years. Like something went inside of him. Then he saw the knife in Yuri’s hand. Yuri lunged at Danny and missed.

Danny pivoted, and with everything he had, he hit Yuri with a left hook to the temple. It was a career punch. Maybe the best one he ever threw.

The Russian fell to the ground. Out. Danny jumped on top of him, beating Yuri’s face. He punched until his hands were a bloody mess and he felt Rosa tugging on his shoulders.

“Danny, come on. Stop. He’s done. You’re hurt.”

She helped Danny to his feet and he limped over to the bench. He put his hand on his ribs and felt the thick blood.

It was like something was leaking out of him. Hate. Strength.

Sadness. He felt like he could float away.

Rosa wept as she looked at his white shirt stained with blood.

“Just hold on, Danny. Just hold on.”

“I’m cold, Rosa.”

She embraced him, and in the distance an ambulance siren wailed. He leaned into her neck and smelled her. Then he kissed her neck and moaned.

“You’re bleeding, Rosa. He hit you. Your lip,” Danny whispered.

Rosa licked the blood off. “I’m okay. Just a fat lip. You just hold on, Danny. Hold on! That ambulance is for you and Sara. You saved her, baby. You saved her.”

Danny looked up and smiled at Rosa. He felt lighter than he had ever been. All the weight he carried for years was leaving.

“I won, Rosa. I knocked him out.”

“You did, Champ. You did.”

Danny’s eyes shut as Rosa held him and cried.

CRYING WITH AUDREY HEPBURN

BY XU XI

Times Square

for William Warren

Yeah, the ring’s for real. Why would I pretend about that?

So what is it you want to know, kid? That I wouldn’t be “dancing” if not for Ron? That things might be different if he hadn’t pulled his vanishing act? Ron never introduced me to his family. Said they didn’t give two shits about him after his mom remarried, so why stay in touch? Guess I can’t blame him.

Of course, I’m hardly one to talk.

Still, though. Might have been nice to have some American in-laws, even if they’d never come to Manhattan.

Okay, kid, write this down.

Mother cried over Audrey Hepburn movies …

* * *

“She’s so elegant,” she sniffed, “and helpless. No wonder men look after her.”

On television, Sabrina was approaching its illogical conclusion. It was Saturday, February 29, 1964, the night of my father’s fifty-ninth birthday. I was fourteen. A-Ba was at a dinner hosted by my three older brothers. We didn’t go because of Audrey, but also because Mother said fifty-nine wasn’t a big deal, and that my brothers and their wives were wasting time sucking up to A-Ba, hoping to get his money.

“I don’t know what you’re crying about,” I said. “It’s just a movie. It isn’t real.”

My mother dried her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “It wouldn’t hurt you to soften up a bit and be a little more elegant.”

Mother was Eurasian, but if you looked at her face front, she passed for Chinese. Exotic perhaps, but Chinese. Her mother was an American missionary’s daughter who married a wealthy Cantonese trader against her parents’ wishes. My father was a Cantonese businessman who made and sold soy sauce—“Yangtze Soy”—when he wasn’t boozing. Whenever his commercial aired, the one where sauce cascades down cleavage to the opening of Grieg’s piano concerto, Mother switched off the television in disgust.

“Here,” she said, handing me her crochet work. “Put this away, please.”

I complied and escaped to my bedroom, grateful to surface above the vale of tears.

Elegance. Facing the mirror in third position, I studied my feet. Six and a half and still growing; already, it was hard finding shoes my size. Mother would die if she knew I danced all the boys’ parts. “Ballet will help you be more graceful,” she insisted when she started me up nine years earlier. “It’s important for young ladies to be graceful because gentlemen like that.” Mother’s graceful. She had jet-black hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, and a figure like Audrey’s. I could imagine her in Humphrey Bogart’s arms, dancing to “Isn’t It Romantic.” Mother loved to dance, but A-Ba couldn’t foxtrot to save his life.

Sabrina is such a silly story. Bogart and Holden are these unlikely brothers of a wealthy Long Island family. Audrey’s the chauffeur’s daughter who has a crush on Holden. She dis-appears off to cooking school in Paris, returns grown up and sophisticated, which is when he finally notices her. But the family doesn’t want her marrying Holden, so Bogart turns on the charm, intending to pay Audrey off. Instead, Bogart falls for her, and they end up getting married. The End.

My hair’s limp and a faded mousy brown. I have Mother’s height and A-Ba’s frazzled eyebrows, beady eyes, and ugly mouth. I look pathetically Eurasian. My brothers inherited the best of my parents; they pass for Chinese and all made it over 5'8", a real asset among Hong Kong men. Leftover blood coursed through me, the accident, seventeen years after the last boy. Good thing I was a girl. That way, Mother fussed over me in her old age and didn’t even mind the way I looked.

In the living room, Bogart and Audrey were sailing off to their Parisian honeymoon in black-and-white. Personally, I couldn’t see what she saw in him. I would have taken Holden any day, philanderer though he was. After all, there was no guarantee what Bogart would be like after Paris.

But kid, I’m getting too old for this.

What? You think Ron happened yesterday? Audrey Hepburn died, that’s what happened yesterday. Papers said cancer. Too bad Ron’s not here. We’d have honored her passing together.

So you want to hear the rest of this story or not?

On her way home from lunch with friends the next afternoon, my mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

“She was running across the street again,” my father shouted.

“Always running!”

He had seldom been as angry. A-Ba’s an ugly man who was once better looking. Smashed his face against a cracked toilet bowl when he was drunk one night, and emergency did a lousy job on his jowl. In his fury, his gnarled, contorted face resembled a lion’s head in the dance—a shiny red and gold mask with fierce eyes.

“It was an accident,” I said. “The police said so. Besides, the driver should have stopped.”

“Always running,” he muttered.

Can’t recall much about the funeral. My three brothers did the adult things and said very little to me. We were virtually strangers, since they were gone by the time I was born. I wanted to scream at everyone to shut up and stop crying. I didn’t cry. My thoughts zigzagged from the driver who left my mother on the road to die, to my father who never spent time with her, to Audrey, dancing in the moonlight in the arms of Bogart, the ugly industrialist, the man who would look after her for the rest of her life as Sabrina. Only in celluloid, not in Hong Kong.

Hey kid, I’m on. We do five shows Friday night. You’re going to wait? Suit yourself. Back in fifteen, max.

How did he get me started? Asked about the ring, that’s how. This one’s different. Got a little class. Been in a few times, always buys me a drink. Looks at me when he speaks. Most guys can’t. All they see is … well, you know.

Ron couldn’t even watch me dance, never mind this act. But if it weren’t for my little specialty, I couldn’t keep this job, not now. Occasionally, he’d wait outside, even in the snow, before things got bad. “Times Square’s no place for a girl after dark,” he’d say, whenever he walked me home. Afterwards, we’d watch movies together till sunrise.

I miss that.

Vegetables? Funny? I suppose they are. There was the cigar, until some joker lit it. Scorched thighs hurt. Like the boss says, every act needs to change. Cucumbers taste better anyway.

Oh, so now you want to know what happened next? You’re the funny one, kid.

Six months later, A-Ba sent me away to an all-girls boarding school in Connecticut.

“You’ve been begging to go to the States,” he said over my protests. “I’ve made all the arrangements. Besides, I can’t look after you.”

He hadn’t touched any of Mother’s stuff since the funeral.

I wanted to find a keepsake among her silks and jewelry, but didn’t dare without his permission. Being the only girl, it was my right to have the first go. Once I was gone, my sisters-in-law would ransack all her beautiful things and there’d be nothing left for me.

I sulked my way to Connecticut.

Didn’t like the school. We weren’t allowed late-night TV. Despite the rules, we sneaked out after dark to meet boys. My classmates were in competition to lose their virginity. I won on my sixteenth birthday, easy. You don’t have to be either graceful or beautiful in the backseat of a car. Being the only foreigner added to the freak factor. Anyway, it’s not like those boys would bring me home.

I wrote home, dutifully, once a month. My brothers I never heard from. A-Ba only wrote brief notes with money, once each semester.

Mother would have written me long, gossipy letters, full of movies and news of society friends. If she’d seen an Audrey, her words might have flown. Mother survived on sentiment. She used to say, “One day, I’m taking you to New York where we’ll do ‘breakfast’ at Tiffany’s. We’ll buy the diamonds for your wedding there.” When it all got too much, I’d shout, “Mother, don’t be silly! Who’d marry me?” And she would hold me tight, tears rolling down her cheeks, promising, “Trust me, my darling, someone will. Someone will.”

I never wasted time crying.

Fantasy home. That’s what this club is. Guys come in for escape or relief because they can’t make it. A-Ba wasn’t like them. He had Mother because he was successful. Problem was, she needed someone classier. Wasn’t his fault. Other than his temper, he wasn’t all bad. It’s just that you can’t manufacture class the way you can soy sauce.

Maybe I came along too late and caught a dismal closing act. They must have had a better life once.

I didn’t talk about family to anyone.

Summer after graduation, I finally was allowed home. In Connecticut, it was possible not to think about her or her miserable life with A-Ba. But home, without Mother, was worse than being kept away at school.

In late August, Wait Until Dark made it to Hong Kong’s cinemas. It was petrifying, watching a blind Audrey stumble around, stalked and terrorized like prey. I’m glad Mother didn’t have to watch. Fear isn’t romantic.

Listen, kid, you want to tell this story? I’m getting to the Ron part. Didn’t you learn in your writing school that stories need history, plot, suspense? Character flaws? Otherwise the beginning muddles to the middle and you thank god it’s The End.

Southern Connecticut State was a bore, but it was better than high school.

The boys were less frantic. I majored in something. All I cared about was dance. My feet, though! They felt way too big, having ballooned to a seven and a half.

Fall of sophomore year, Ron Andrews danced into my life.

His troupe was performing “Dance Nostalgia.” Astaire routines. Porter, Kern, Gershwin. Ron did this solo soft-shoe number. The grand finale was him leaping onto a straight-back chair, tipping it over, and sliding toward the apron’s edge on his knees. I jumped up, shouted, “Bravo,” not caring what anyone thought. Maybe I started something, or maybe he was just that good, because the whole audience rose in a swell, cheering.

Later, backstage, Ron stood there, a towel round his neck. In his T-shirt and tights, one leg cocked on a stool, he looked like a blond William Holden. People congratulated; voices rose in a frenzy. He wasn’t very tall, but there in the center of all that adulation, he was a giant.

When we were introduced, I couldn’t help gushing, “You were incredible. Absolutely, amazingly marvelous!” He smiled, nodded in acknowledgement, and that was that.

Back at the dorm that night, I cried myself silly. It was such a weird sensation. I mean, I didn’t know the guy to save my life, and crying wasn’t my thing.

The next day, I went along to audition for their troupe’s summer stock.

I was a good, but not brilliant, dancer. The point was, it didn’t matter a whole lot whether or not I performed. Other students had rehearsed for weeks, desperate to make the cut.

My friend Sara co-opted me as her “male” partner. I’d agreed, but that was before Ron. Of course, I couldn’t very well back out now, not when the show had to go on.

“Smile, will you?” Sara hissed, just before we made our entrance. “Don’t be such a dog face. Think Astaire.”

We did “Dancing in the Dark.” Sara was this tiny brunette, graceful as sin. In her white ball gown, fitted to her gorgeous figure, she was stunning. I was in tux tails, my hair pinned tightly in a net, a mustache pasted on for effect, feeling absurd. Sara was a strong dancer, but she hammed things up too much. Every dip swooped a bit too low, every turn was overdone. Friends applauded, but I knew we weren’t much above passable.

Later, while removing makeup, I looked up in the mirror and saw him. He wasn’t as young as he appeared onstage. He pressed both hands down on my shoulders and studied my face. “Do you ever dance the lady’s part?” His voice resonated. Baritone.

Nodding and shaking my head simultaneously, I stammered, “Sometimes.”

“Come on, then.” Taking my hand, he led me onstage. In my tux shirt and tights, I looked ridiculous, but Ron didn’t seem to care as we stood side by side, arms outstretched, my hand in his. I was the taller, and nervous.

“Dancing in the Dark” came on.

“Follow me,” he commanded.

My feet flowed. It was better than magic, because all of me danced, guided by heaven and his lead. When the music faded, it segued to “In the Mood.” His hands gripped my waist and he swung me in the air. A perfect partner, confident without being bossy, leading without stifling my movements. When we finished, the applause went on for a long, long time.

Onstage, I smiled at him, exhilarated, my heart pounding from exhaustion. Ron had barely broken a sweat. He pulled me toward him in a final twirl. “What’s your name?” he asked. His eyes were a deep blue-green, as deep as the ocean, only deeper.

I quit school and followed him to New York. He was thirty, the senior member in the troupe.

“A dancer?!” my father screamed over intercontinental telephone wires. “You’re living with a baahk gwai dancer?

What are you, crazy?”

“But you married one. Or at least, a half–baahk gwai. I just wanted you to know.”

“You’ll get no more money from me.”

“I don’t need your money. I can work.”

“Doing what? Shining his shoes? What do you expect to make without a college degree?”

I hung up. Ron never got to speak to him.

That was the last time I communicated with my family.

What do you suppose Mother would have said?

I remind you of your sister? Another funny face, huh? Everything comes back to family, kid. We all start there, even if we end up someplace remote. Like Ron. Despite his step-dad, who beat him up and hadn’t a clue, calling him a fag and all, he still thought about his mom. Oh, he’d never admit it, but I knew. Every Mother’s Day, he used to cry in his sleep, like clockwork.

Ron and I got married six months later.

Life was great. He scored tickets to Broadway shows because he knew people in the business. Ron had tons of friends.

He was like this solar system, burning bright, in whose orbit everyone sparkled and spun. He found places to perform, way off-Broadway, all across the country, even in Alaska, while other dancers waited tables or collected welfare. “I’ve got to dance,” he said. “Doesn’t matter how or where.”

We did dance contests and exhibitions for money whenever he was between real gigs. Other than that, we didn’t work together much. His act, the dance of his heart, was solo. Money was tight, but that never mattered because I loved him and we were rent-controlled. He used to work a lot then, going to every audition, trying for the big break. Such energy! “Disco won’t last,” he predicted. “It’ll bore itself to death. You wait and see.”

We talked. I told him all about my mother, about my Tiffany’s “wedding,” about her crying with Audrey Hepburn. Sometimes, talking made me weepy. He’d hold me until I calmed. Blood talk, he called it. Healing that scabs the pain.

After two years in New York, I took a job as a typist and filing clerk. It was way more lucrative than dancing and had health insurance. Ron didn’t want me to do it. “What about your career? You’re a good dancer when you try.”

“You dance,” I replied. “I’ll feed us. Anyway, we’ll still do the contests.”

He picked me up, effortlessly. “Lazybones. Always wanting the easy way.”

Up in the air, I laughed. “Life doesn’t have to be tough all the time.”

“Then what would you say if I tossed you out the window?” He swung me horizontal and held me there.

“Don’t you dare.”

He gave up when he saw I wouldn’t budge. That was Ron: never made me do anything against my will. As long as he was our star, I was happy.

Besides, I liked shining his tap shoes. His feet were small and elegant, as if they’d been bound and sculpted to dance from the womb.

This rock? It’s fake. You think I’d be dancing if it wasn’t?

After I heard about Audrey yesterday, I hauled myself up to Tiffany’s. Some things you just do. Colorless things, diamonds.

Don’t know what Mother saw in them. At least she loved me in her own silly way. Ron was right about that. He was right about a lot, especially love. He said deep down, my father loved me because I was his flesh and blood. His own father had been a dancer, but died when Ron was eight. So he knew all about what he called the “empty spaces of the heart.”

But Ron was wrong about A-Ba. All these years and he’s never once tried to find me, I don’t think.

When Audrey Hepburn made her comeback in ’76, it was all Ron and I talked about.

We’d missed her. I’d seen every one of her movies, in memory of Mother, but Ron liked her too. She looked pretty good for her age. You know, if you look at her face front, she could almost pass for Eurasian.

That year, I dyed my hair and eyebrows coal-black, and cut a young-Audrey bob. Ron said it made me look exotic.

All the guys at work noticed. That was also when I started wearing makeup every day.

Funny stuff, makeup. One reason I never took performing too seriously was because I didn’t like all that stage goo.

Ron was tireless and careful about his; he needed to hide the lines. Mother wore makeup like it wasn’t there, long before the natural look. Her foundation and powder blended into the skin tones of her neck, unlike women who didn’t match their complexion properly and looked as if they’d severed and reattached their heads. She painted on eyeliner with a brush, rapidly, expertly, like an artist, but never used eye shadow. “Women with blue lids,” she declared disdainfully, “look frostbitten.”

Letting Ron pluck my eyebrows was a revelation. “You see, you do have eyes,” he said. “They were hidden by all that bushy fuzz.” With a little eye liner, my eyes became wider, brighter, more open.

I smiled at people now, instead of looking down all the time. I even admitted my feet were not too big. As Ron said, seven and a half is an average size in America. I began wearing stylishly nostalgic dresses from secondhand stores. Ron loved my quirky new look. “Lady fair,” he declaimed, “you put the stars and models to shame!”

That was the happiest time of my entire life. I felt elegant, even graceful.

Trust me, I don’t talk to just anyone. It’s not like I tell every writer who asks. What, you didn’t think you were the first, did you?

I started dancing here because welfare ran out. After getting laid off, it was great not working for a while. Like vacation. I loved playing housewife and not having to answer to anyone. Ron said not to worry about getting another job, something would turn up. He even suggested auditioning. But at twenty-eight, I felt silly competing with the kids. Wouldn’t say that to him, though. Why hurt his feelings?

In the beginning, I just used to dance. I tried a striptease, but it wasn’t a success. As the boss says, you have to have tits for that, and I wasn’t about to go silicon. So I stuck to the cage, or pole, because gams I’ve got. I’d come up with costumes for variety, like a see-through cheongsam with the waist-high slit, the Suzie Wong look? Oh well, I guess you are too young. Anyway, that was a big favorite. The act didn’t come about till much later.

I don’t remember exactly when Ron and I stopped dancing together.

What is it you want to know, kid?

Shortly after Audrey’s comeback, things started going badly for Ron.

He didn’t let on at first, laughing off problems and carrying on as if he were eternally onstage. First year, his agent was slow about returning calls. He talked about getting another.

Then, even friends in the business stopped returning calls, and his agent only had truly awful gigs, like the commercial where he had to wear a cow costume and tap dance around these giant milk bottles. I told him it was just the times, that the economy sucked and things were bound to get better. There were still occasional road shows in Alabama or someplace. We’d saved a little money, which was enough to live on, because I was a careful housekeeper, although Ron teased, calling me stingy.

Then I lost my job, it was tough finding another, and yadda, yadda, you know the rest. But back then on 42nd Street, they always needed fresh girls.

By daylight, Times Square was seedy, but not terrible.

Reminded me of Wanchai back home. When I was thirteen, I used to hang out on Lockhart Road after school. The mama-sans would stand around posing, fat old broads with painted masks and too-tight cheongsams. They’d catcall passing American sailors, pointing at the curtained doorways. It was like watching a show, somewhere very far off-Broadway, right at the edge of the grid. I gawked and giggled with my friends until they shooed us away.

Don’t know where I found the guts to walk into the biggest joint that day. Looking good helped, and I could still dance. They hired me right off. I was nervous the first night. It was a Tuesday. Place was dead except for a bunch of geezers in the corner. “Pretend you’re in a movie,” one of the girls told me. “That way, you’re not flesh.”

Ron was mad, but kept quiet because we needed the cash. After the first three months or so, he relaxed when he saw I always came straight home. “Just a job, I guess,” he’d say. I never expected him to dance, never breathed even the slightest hint, though he would have been terrific. He was way too fine for all this.

If only he’d kept going.

The kid. He looks a little like Ron.

You’re leaving town tomorrow? Getting married?

Ron went away, oh, ages ago.

Before he left home that winter afternoon, he claimed he was tired of the whole damned thing, said I would have been better off with Bogart. I didn’t get what he meant because I was running late for work.

In the morning, they found his tap shoes on the Brooklyn Bridge, his wallet and wedding band inside them. All I remember is, it was the day before he turned forty.

See you, kid. Good luck with the writing and all. Hey, what’s your name? I’ll look for your book someday.

So that’s the end. No one listens after the story’s over.

I cried myself to sleep for months afterwards. Ron kept me going, gave me hope, made me feel I was as good as any star despite my life. “Audrey Hepburn doesn’t hold a candle to you,” he’d say. He filled up my heart with so much love I thought it would burst. What more could a girl want?

Crying over Ron made me remember Mother. They would have adored each other. There were days I thought about going to join them both. Every night, I’d get up onstage and dance to whistles and catcalls, or the dead space of labored breathing, and I’d be okay. But away from here, alone in daylight, the space in my heart became immensely empty and bare. Tears cascaded from some mysterious source, against my will, until the day ended and night returned again.

And then one day, I’m not sure when or why, I just stopped crying.

Dancing’s been a kind of life. You get used to it. It’s better than hammering away at a noisy electric typewriter, mucking with carbons, hoping the cartridge won’t run out halfway. Plus no office politics. Girls who dance, they’ll be friends or leave you alone, whatever you want. Independent types. I like that.

The boss was good about things. Kept me on after Ron died, mostly because he felt bad for me. But business is business, and let’s face it, I was over thirty and this place is about fresh girls. So I came up with the cigar. He was skeptical, but gave it a whirl. I was a big draw. After the lighting incident, we moved on to vegetables. These were fine except for dai-kons, because those taste bad raw. But the boss was right.

Variety is spice, so out I strutted on spikes, hiked up the skirt, sucked in, spat out, and caught each tubular from between the legs, shoved each one between the lips, and crunched, hard, the pale, peeled daikon being the finale. Like juggling, with dance.

When I turned forty a few years back, the boss and girls gave me this big party. I look pretty good for my age. You can’t see the lines unless you look close. Makeup works. The girls come and go while I hang on. You have to keep going.

The act keeps me going. These days, we need to be careful. There’s less you can get away with. Mood of the times; a conservative feel’s in the air. That’ll blow over, like disco. Besides, it’s time to think about retiring. Economy’s improving. Ballroom’s hot again and there are gigs at shopping malls and the Y. I could do those. You don’t need to be either young or brilliant to foxtrot or jitterbug. All you need is a partner.

It was a silly way for Ron to exit. I would have supported us forever. He was all the home I wanted, even on those days when he couldn’t get out of bed. If only he hadn’t given up. He would always have been my star.

Show time. Feet hurt.

Funny Face is on later. That’s my favorite. Yes, it is just an earlier Fair Lady, except she does the actual singing. Astaire’s supposed to be this famous fashion photographer who turns plain-jane bookworm Audrey into a top model. Naturally, they fall in love, and their wedding day is the grand finale.

Astaire dances delightfully, and Audrey wears the most delicious dresses. Story’s hilarious. I love it where she’s all in black, among the Parisian pseudo-intellectuals, dancing past their stony faces. And the corny ending makes me laugh. Fred’s way too old for her, of course, and the plot’s quite impossible. But in the movies none of this matters, because it’s always a perfect match, made only the way those can be, in heaven, and never on earth.

With great admiration, the editor dedicates this book to

Grace Paley, whose childhood in the Bronx was happy.

INTRODUCTION

WELCOME TO DA BRONX

The Bronx is a wonderful place.

“Wonderful” in the literal sense: full of wonders. Wonders everyone’s heard of, like the Bronx Zoo and Yankee Stadium; wonders that make presidents cry, as Jimmy Carter famously did in 1977, standing in the rubble of the South Bronx; and wonders only we Bronxites seem to know about, like Wave Hill, City Island, and Arthur Avenue.

People are always discovering the Bronx. Native Americans, of course, discovered it first, fishing and hunting in its woods and streams long before Europe discovered the New World. The first European to settle north of the Harlem River was one Jonas Bronck, in 1639. Jonas and his family worked part of his huge swath of land and leased the rest to other farmers. Everyone in the area gave their address as “the Broncks’ farm,” giving rise to the “the” and eventually the “x.” (There—we’re giving you not only great stories, but a party trick fact.) And development and industrialization, sparked by the railroad in the early 1840s, probably took care of the “farm.”

In 1895, New York City discovered the Bronx, and Westchester discovered it didn’t own the place anymore. In 1914, New York State discovered it needed a sixty-second county, and Bronx County was born.

Immigrants discovered the Bronx in waves. Germans, Italians, and Irish came early, and then European Jews. The Grand Concourse, modeled on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, was built to draw them northward. In the 1960s, as the second and third generations of those immigrants moved to the suburbs, Puerto Ricans and blacks took their places. Now they’re being joined by Latinos from all over Central and South America, Caribbean islanders, Eastern Europeans, Africans, Asians, and, of course, yuppies. Sooner or later, everyone discovers the Bronx.

Parts of the Bronx suffered badly from the governmental anti-urbanism and heavy-handed “city planning” of the ’50s and ’60s, and to a lot of people “the Bronx” became another term for “urban decay.” ’Twas never true. Though the worst America has to offer its poorer citizens can be found in some areas of the Bronx—this is what brought Jimmy Carter to tears—great stretches are what they’ve always been: neighborhoods of working-class people, native-born and immigrants, looking for a break. And there were two-family row houses along Sedgwick Avenue, mansions in Riverdale, and fishing boats sailing out from City Island before, during, and after the filming of Fort Apache, The Bronx. (A personal note: In my previous life as an architect, my firm did the new building for the 41st Precinct, which had been Fort Apache until the city clear-cut the blocks around it and the NYPD started calling it Little House on the Prairie.)

If you want to discover the Bronx yourself, you might go up to Van Cortlandt Park to watch white-uniformed West Indians playing cricket on the emerald grass. They’re there most summer Sundays, just north of the swimming pool, south of a rowdy soccer game, west of the riding stable, and east of the elevated subway that runs along Broadway. That subway line—the Number 1, by the way, and need I say more?—ends there, at 242nd Street, but the Bronx goes on for another mile. Or you might try the Botanical Garden, the Zoo, the House That Ruth Built—Yankee Stadium, for you tinhorns—or the new Antiques Row just over the Third Avenue Bridge. These are all terrific destinations, but the real discovery will be the size of the place and the diversity of the lives you’ll glimpse as you pass through.

And in this wondrous Bronx, the exceptional writers in this collection have found noir corners, dark moments, and rich places of astonishing variety. You can’t pack so much yearning, so many people, such a range of everything—income, ethnicity, occupation, land use—into a single borough, even one as big as the Bronx, and not force the kind of friction that slices and sparks. The Bronx has been home to big-time gangsters—from the Jewish organized crime of Murder Inc. and the Italian Cosa Nostra to the equally organized drug-dealing gangstas of today. The Third Avenue El was a Hopperesque symbol of urban hopelessness; it’s been demolished, but trains on other lines still rumble through the roofscapes of the borough. Prosperity is increasing and drug use is decreasing, but the public housing projects in the Bronx are some of the nation’s largest and remain some of its toughest. Many places in the Bronx seem hidden in shadows, just as the Bronx itself is in Manhattan’s shadow. And dark stories develop best in shadows.

* * *

From Abraham Rodriguez, Jr.’s South Bronx to Robert Hughes’s Fordham Road, from Joseph Wallace’s Bronx Zoo to Terrence Cheng’s Lehman College, from Joanne Dobson’s post—WWII Sedgwick Avenue to Lawrence Block’s new wave—yuppie Riverdale, it’s all here. In this book, we offer a hint of the cultural, social, economic, and geographic range of the only New York City borough on the mainland of North America. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Da Bronx.

S.J. Rozan

The Bronx

June 2007

PART I

BRING IT ON HOME

WHITE TRASH

BY JEROME CHARYN

Claremont/Concourse

Prudence had escaped from the women’s farm in Milledgeville and gone on a crime spree. She murdered six men and a woman, robbed nine McDonald’s and seven Home Depots in different states. She wore a neckerchief gathered under her eyes and carried a silver Colt that was more like an heirloom than a good, reliable gun. The Colt had exploded in her face during one of the robberies at McDonald’s, but she still managed to collect the cash, and her own willfulness wouldn’t allow her to get a new gun.

She wasn’t willful about one thing: she never used a partner, male or female. Women were more reliable than men; they wouldn’t steal your money and expect you to perform sexual feats with their friends. But women thieves could be just as annoying. She’d had her fill of them at the farm, where they read her diary and borrowed her books. Pru didn’t appreciate big fat fingers touching her personal library. Readers were like pilgrims who had to go on their own pilgrimage. Pru was a pilgrim, or at least that’s what she imagined. She read from morning to night whenever she wasn’t out foraging for hard cash. One of her foster mothers had been a relentless reader, and Prudence had gone right through her shelves, book after book: biographies, Bibles, novels, a book on building terrariums, a history of photography, a history of dance, and Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, which she liked the best, because she could read the little encapsulated portraits of films without having to bother about the films themselves. But she lost her library when she broke out of jail, and it bothered her to live without books.

The cops had caught on to her tactics, and her picture was nailed to the wall inside post offices, supermarkets, and convenience stores; she might have been trapped in a Home Depot outside Savannah if she hadn’t noticed a state trooper fidgeting with his hat while he stared at her face on the wall.

Pru had to disappear or she wouldn’t survive her next excursion to Home Depot or McDonald’s. And no book could help her now. Travel guides couldn’t map out some no-man’s-land where she might be safe. But Emma Mae, her cellmate at Milledgeville, had told her about the Bronx, a place where the cops never patrolled McDonald’s. Besides, she hadn’t murdered a single soul within five hundred miles of Manhattan or the Bronx. Pru wasn’t a mad dog, as the bulletins labeled her. She had to shoot the night manager at McDonald’s, because that would paralyze the customers and discourage anyone from coming after her.

She got on a Greyhound wearing eyeglasses and a man’s lumber jacket after cutting her hair in the mirror of a public toilet. She’d been on the run for two months. Crime wasn’t much of a business. Murdering people, and she still had to live from hand to mouth.

She couldn’t remember how she landed in the Bronx. She walked up the stairs of a subway station, saw a synagogue that had been transformed into a Pentecostal church, then a building with mural on its back wall picturing a paradise with crocodiles, palm trees, and a little girl. The Bronx was filled with Latinas and burly black men, Emma Mae had told her; the only whites who lived there were “trash”—outcasts and country people who had to relocate. Pru could hide among them, practically invisible in a casbah that no one cared about.

Emma Mae had given her an address, a street called Marcy Place, where the cousin of a cousin lived, a preacher who played the tambourine and bilked white trash, like Prudence and Emma. He was right at the door when Pru arrived, an anemic-looking man dressed in black, with a skunk’s white streak in his hair, though he didn’t have a skunk’s eyes; his were clear as pale green crystals and burned right into Pru. She was hypnotized without his having to say a single syllable. He laughed at her disguise, and that laughter seemed to break the spell.

“Prudence Miller,” he said, “are you a man or a girl?”

His voice was reedy, much less potent than his eyes.

Emma Mae must have told him about her pilgrimage to the Bronx. But Pru still didn’t understand what it meant to be the cousin of a cousin. His name was Omar Kaplan. It must have been the alias of an alias, since Omar couldn’t be a Christian name. She’d heard all about Omar Khayyam, the Persian philosopher and poet who was responsible for the Rubaiyat, the longest love poem in history, though she hadn’t read a line. And this Omar must have been a philosopher as well as a fraud—his apartment, which faced a brick wall, was lined with books. He had all the old Modern Library classics, like Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov, books that Pru had discovered in secondhand shops in towns that had a college campus.

“You’ll stay away from McDonald’s,” he said in that reedy voice of his, “and you’d better not have a gun.”

“Then how will I earn my keep, Mr. Omar Kaplan? I’m down to my last dollar.”

“Consider this a religious retreat, or a rest cure, but no guns. I’ll stake you to whatever you need.”

Pru laughed bitterly, but kept that laugh locked inside her throat. Omar Kaplan intended to turn her into a slave, to write his own Rubaiyat on the softest parts of her flesh. She waited for him to pounce. He didn’t touch her or steal her gun. She slept with the silver Colt under her pillow, on a cot near the kitchen, while Omar had the bedroom all to himself. It was dark as a cave. He’d emerge from the bedroom, dressed in black, like some Satan with piercing green eyes, prepared to soft-soap whatever white trash had wandered into the Bronx. He’d leave the apartment at 7 in the morning and wouldn’t return before 9 at night. But there was always food in the fridge, fancier food than she’d ever had: salmon cutlets, Belgian beer, artichokes, strawberries from Israel, a small wheel of Swiss cheese with blue numbers stamped on the rind.

He was much more talkative after he returned from one of his pilferings. He’d switch off all the lamps and light a candle, and they’d have salmon cutlets together, drink Belgian beer. He’d rattle his tambourine from time to time, sing Christian songs. It could have been the dark beer that greased his tongue.

“Prudence, did you ever feel any remorse after killing those night managers?”

“None that I know of,” she said.

“Their faces don’t come back to haunt you in your dreams?”

“I never dream,” she said.

“Do you ever consider all the orphans and widows you made?”

“I’m an orphan,” she said, “and maybe I just widened the franchise.”

“Pru the orphan-maker.”

“Something like that,” she said.

“Would you light a candle with me for their lost souls?”

She didn’t care. She lit the candle, while Satan crinkled his eyes and mumbled something. Then he marched into his bedroom and closed the door. It galled her. She’d have felt more comfortable if he’d tried to undress her. She might have slept with Satan, left marks on his neck.

She would take long walks in the Bronx, with her silver gun. She sought replicas of herself, wanderers with pink skin. But she found Latinas with baby carriages, old black women outside a beauty parlor, black and Latino men on a basketball court. She wasn’t going to wear a neckerchief mask and rob men and boys playing ball.

The corner she liked best was at Sheridan Avenue and East 169th, because it was a valley with hills on three sides, with bodegas and other crumbling little stores, a barbershop without a barber, apartment houses with broken courtyards and rotting steel gates. The Bronx was a casbah, like Emma Mae had said, and Pru could explore the hills that rose up around her, that seemed to give her some sort of protective shield. She could forget about Satan and silver guns.

She returned to Marcy Place. It was long after 9, and Omar Kaplan hadn’t come home. She decided to set the table, prepare a meal of strawberries, Swiss cheese, and Belgian beer. She lit a candle, waiting for Omar. She grew restless, decided to read a book. She swiped Sister Carrie off the shelves—a folded slip of paper fell out, some kind of impromptu bookmark. But this bookmark had her face on it, and a list of her crimes. It had a black banner on top. WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. Like the title of a macabre song. There were words scribbled near the bottom. Dangerous and demented. Then scribbles in another hand. A real prize package. McDonald’s ought to give us a thousand free Egg McMuffins for this fucking lady. Then a signature that could have been a camel’s hump. The letters on that hump spelled O-M-A-R.

She shouldn’t have stayed another minute. But she had to tease out the logic of it all. Emma Mae had given her a Judas kiss, sold her to some supercop. Why hadn’t Satan arrested her the second she’d opened the door? He was toying with her like an animal trainer who would point her toward McDonald’s, where other supercops were waiting with closed-circuit television cameras. They meant to film her at the scene of the crime, so she could act out some unholy procession that would reappear on the 6-o’clock news.

A key turned in the lock. Pru clutched her silver Colt. Omar appeared in dark glasses that hid his eyes. He wasn’t dressed like a lowlife preacher man. He wore a silk tie and a herringbone suit. He wasn’t even startled to see a gun in his face. He smiled and wouldn’t beg her not to shoot. It should have been easy. He couldn’t put a spell on her without his pale green eyes.

“White trash,” she said. “Is Emma Mae your sister?”

“I have a lot of sisters,” he said, still smiling.

“And you’re a supercop and a smarty-pants.”

“Me? I’m the lowest of the low. A freelancer tied to ten different agencies, an undercover kid banished to the Bronx. Why didn’t you run? I gave you a chance. I left notes for you in half my books, a hundred fucking clues.”

“Yeah, I’m Miss Egg McMuffin. I do McDonald’s. And I have no place to run to. Preacher man, play your tambourine and sing your last song.”

She caught a glimpse of the snubnosed gun that rose out of a holster she hadn’t seen. She didn’t even hear the shot. She felt a thump in her chest and she flew against the wall with blood in her eyes. And that’s when she had a vision of the night managers behind all the blood. Six men and a woman wearing McDonald’s bibs, though she hadn’t remembered them wearing those. They had eye sockets without the liquid complication of eyes themselves. Pru was still implacable toward the managers. She would have shot them all over again. But she did sigh once before the night managers disappeared and she fell into Omar Kaplan’s arms like a sleepy child.

GOLD MOUNTAIN

BY TERRENCE CHENG

Lehman College

He knocked on the door and waited. A voice called out in English. Usually it was a white man, older, wearing glasses or with a beard or both. Usually the older white man looked into the bag, then at the bill, then went through his wallet for money. Usually the tip was a dollar or two, sometimes more. This did not happen often and he did not expect it.

He heard footsteps and then the door opened.

He stared at the man as he fumbled with his wallet; he was not white and not older, but Chinese—not Japanese or Korean, he could tell right away from the pallor of his skin, the shape of his eyes and nose and mouth. In his mid-thirties, he thought, he wore glasses and a blazer, a pair of dark pressed pants, and shined shoes. A few small moles dotting his right cheek, otherwise his skin was light, his hair longish and wavy, swept back as if blown by wind.

The man gave him a twenty and said, “Keep it”; he could not speak English, but this phrase he had come to understand. He nodded, turned to go. Then he heard the man say in his own dialect, “You are from Fuzhou?”

He stopped, did not turn back right away. When he did he said in his own language, “Yes. Are you?”

“No,” the man said, “My family is from the north. But I’ve traveled.” He paused, then said, “Is my pronunciation okay?”

“Yes, very good.”

“I’m a professor here. I teach history.”

“Right,” he said. “Thank you.” He turned and went downstairs and out to the fence where he had chained his bicycle. He looked at his watch. He had two more deliveries across campus, had to hurry or else they would call the restaurant and complain.

* * *

The orders coming from the college had picked up since the end of August. Now there were people everywhere—the faces black, brown, white, most of them young, some older, even old. Many pensive, serious, many jubilant and smiling. There were Asian faces as well, but only a few, and he did not stare at them too long or try to make eye contact, did not want to seem conspicuous. Most of the buildings were gray and blocky, others weather-blasted with regal columns and stone carved façades. He liked riding by the baseball field, watching people jog along the gravel track or playing ball in the midst of all that green.

The rest of the day he could not stop thinking of the professor who had given him the good tip and the chance to speak in his own dialect, and not Cantonese (to the other delivery men) or Mandarin (to his boss). On sight he had known the professor was Mandarin, northern Chinese, but he was speaking Fukienese and so he had to ask. Maybe his father had been from Fujian province, or his mother. He wondered why and how much traveling the professor had done to acquire a dialect so different from his native one, how he too had wound up in a place like this.

He rode and kept his eyes roving. Too many times during the summer he had almost been clipped by a speeding truck or car while enjoying the warmth of the sun on his back or a cooling breeze in his face. For this he was teased by the other delivery men.

“Pay attention or you’ll get run down like a rat,” said Fong. He was in his forties but already quite bald, one front tooth capped in gold, a cigarette perpetually dangling from his lips. He had been in the U.S. for over ten years and liked to brag that he could navigate the streets of the neighborhood with his eyes closed. The other delivery man was Wai-Ling, twenty-one or twenty-two, a few years younger than himself, small and quiet with bushy eyebrows and beady eyes. He laughed at whatever Fong said.

Not long after he had arrived, the boss, Mr. Liu, gave him the college campus and neighboring streets as his delivery area. “Can you handle that without getting killed?” Mr. Liu had asked him. He was a wiry old man, originally from Beijing, who ran the restaurant with his small but angry wife. They gave him a map, which he folded and put in his back pocket as Fong and Wai-Ling laughed.

“Like a schoolboy,” Fong said. “Don’t get lost!”

When a delivery was wrong or late he would be yelled at and sometimes cursed at—he recognized the loud sharp tones, fiaring in the eyes. Times like this he was glad he did not know what was said. He would just hand over the delivery and a few times the food was taken with a door slammed in his face, leaving him empty-handed. He thought Mr. Liu would scream at him for this, but he didn’t. “It happens sometimes,” his boss said. “Better not to make enemies.” He thought Mr. Liu was right, but in the end he knew that none of it would matter if no one knew who he was, which was why he had told no one his real name.

After his last delivery of the day he returned the bicycle to the restaurant and counted out with Mrs. Liu. His tips for the day had been poor, except for the professor who had given him almost four dollars. He left Fong and Wai-Ling smoking out in front of the restaurant. As he walked away he heard Fong shout at him, “Don’t get lost, eh?” The same joke every day; he heard Wai-Ling snicker and laugh.

He lived close to the restaurant in a stone and brick building, a steel gate in front trimmed with razor wire. His apartment was small: an open kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom. He had found a mattress on the street and scrubbed it clean and now it lay in the corner covered with a blanket. The black-and-white television sat on a plastic crate, and there was one rickety wood chair against the wall that he never sat in but used as a small table instead. He had his dinner in a bag taken from the restaurant—leftover rice and greasy noodles, a slop of chicken, and overcooked vegetables in brown sauce. He set it on the chair and dug in; he didn’t like the restaurant’s food, but it was easier than cooking and still the closest thing he could get that reminded him of home. Since he had come to this place his pants and shirts now fit more snugly, and there was a thickness growing around his face. Maybe it was the food, or maybe the place itself was changing him. He thought his parents, if they had been alive, would not recognize him. And maybe this was part of the luxury in coming to the Gold Mountain, where food was hearty and plentiful enough to fatten up even a skinny farm boy like himself.

He turned on the television and watched the baseball game. The score was six to two, and only from the body language of the players could he figure out who was winning. When the score became ten to two he turned it off.

He went to the closet and dug out the small suitcase hidden at the bottom beneath empty boxes and rags. He looked out the window, as if someone might be spying on him, then turned back to the suitcase and popped it open. He stared for a moment, then dug his hands down through the four thick layers of wrapped and bundled American bills. He did not know the faces and could not read the words on the bills, but he knew the numbers: 100, 50, 20. When he had first opened the suitcase, months ago, the bills had all been sopping wet, but now they were wrinkled and dry, loose inside their bands. He had never counted it all to the dollar, bill by bill, but he had counted the bundles and estimated: close to a million U.S. More than his entire village back home could have earned in a lifetime.

He closed the suitcase and shoved it back in beneath the junk and waste. Then he flopped down on the mattress with the window open and slept with the sound of the city rumbling in his ear.

* * *

A few days later he knocked on the office door again, looked at the order ticket as he waited: beef with eggplant, brown rice, egg drop soup, can of soda. He did not blame the professor for ordering this muck; the restaurant was one of only a few in the neighborhood that made deliveries.

The door opened. The professor smiled at him, was wearing a dark blue suit and pink tie. He handed over the bag and again the professor tipped him more than three dollars. Then the professor asked him, “How long have you been here? In New York.”

He said, “One year,” even though he had only been in the country since June.

“How is your English?”

He shook his head and said, “Not very good.”

The professor nodded, stood in the doorway with his brow furrowed. “Have you thought about taking classes?”

He glanced behind the professor into the office, did not see anyone else in there with him.

“No time for classes. I’m always working.”

“If you are interested I can make a few suggestions. I know it can be hard not knowing the language.”

“Right,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I have to go. Thank you.”

The professor nodded again and closed the door.

* * *

That night before the dinner rush he sat in front of the restaurant smoking. Fong and Wai-Ling kept to themselves because they were Cantonese and thus did not like him; and because he was originally from Fuzhou, they knew that he did not like them either. He watched cars pass by, admired the curvy women with long braided hair sauntering down the avenue. Eventually, he started thinking about the professor and what he had said. A part of him was offended; they didn’t know each other, and yet he had presumed that because he did not speak English and because he was delivering food that…that what?

Had he meant to be disrespectful? To speak out of place to a stranger back home might cost you. But this was not home, and maybe he was just trying to offer some advice, one countryman to another. But were they even countrymen? Here, in New York, in the Bronx, it might appear to be so, a bond in the shape of the face and eyes. They were from China, but certainly they both knew that there were different Chinas—like the U.S., there was the top of the Gold Mountain, and then the rest.

He decided to take a quick walk, turned off the main avenue, and passed a small party happening on the street in front of the cluster of brick buildings that lined the road. He had seen these parties all summer: There was music, smoking food on a grill, even dancing. The smells intrigued him. People drank beer from big bottles and laughed. Girls wore short shorts and tiny tops, men in baggy shirts and shorts that came down past their knees, some with bald or close-cropped heads or even big tufts of bushy black hair. Everyone wore pieces of glittering gold—around their necks, in their ears, on their fingers, and around their ankles and wrists—so that with each movement they seemed to glimmer and shine.

All the voices, the bodies, the faces, so new. The skin of one so dark and smooth like a fine leather, and then another so light like rays of melted sun. Men with gold teeth, women with firm bodies, thick in the legs and butt. It was not just a different place, but a different planet, and only by not being there anymore could he sense how thick and smothering his life in Hong Kong had become: the rush and hum of constant millions buzzing his senses, ready to shatter like a crystal cage and crush him. Here he felt free, could move, think, listen. It did not bother him that he did not understand what was being said around him. When he stepped out into the streets there was maybe a woman with a child in a stroller, another in tow; or a small gang of dark-skinned boys cajoling and roughhousing, making their way down the block; or girls walking tall and brazen, whispering to each other and shaking their heads and waving their fingers as they spoke back to the cat-calling boys. On every other corner was an old man or woman with a big umbrella and a two-wheeled cart selling paper cups of crushed flavored ice in the slate of summer heat.

He went back to the restaurant, found Mrs. Liu looking for him. He took the new orders, hung the bags on his handlebars. His first drop was to one of the bigger buildings in the neighborhood, where he buzzed and had to wait for the person to come down. A young woman opened the door. She had dark half-slanted eyes, her skin like a pale chocolate cream. She was his height, but seemed taller because she was so thin, her arms and neck stretched, scrawny. If her face, like her body, had not been so sucked out and sickly he might have thought her beautiful. He took her money and handed over the bag. Her hair was long but stringy and tangled, and the skin on her arms and face and neck was mottled, blotchy. A stained sour smell came from inside the door. He counted the money; she was short more than two dollars, but he looked at the woman and smiled and said, “Okay.”

* * *

That night in his apartment he kept thinking of her, the woman with the scrawny wrists and neck.

He finished eating, then took a shower, put on a clean shirt and fresh pants, combed his hair, and went out.

He knew his way, though he never made deliveries in this area north and west of the college, which was Fong’s area. The roads were mostly quiet and empty, the murmur of traffic on the expressway nearby, the occasional screech and rattle of the train that snaked overhead and through the neighborhood. When he had first arrived he would kill hours on the trains, would pay the fair and ride them end to end. Either the 4 train or the D—he preferred the 4 because it ran above ground in the Bronx, past the enormous stadium with the bright white lights. The trains were much dirtier here than they were in Hong Kong, but this did not bother him. He liked the tossed feeling of motion, liked to think that he was traveling from one end of New York to the other.

When he got to the building he went to the pay phone on the corner. From his wallet he pulled a business card and dialed. Then he stood at the phone booth and waited, knew he was being watched now through an apartment window. It was like this too in Hong Kong, when he went to one of those places, being watched at the front door by a camera or spy making sure he was not a policeman or vagrant or gangster who could not be trusted. He counted to fifty in his head, then he went to the front door and was buzzed in, took the stairs to the fourth floor. He knocked on the door and it opened just a crack. He saw her eyes, the dark painted lashes, then she unlatched the lock.

The place looked exactly as it had the last time he had come. Neat but spare: a flowered curtain, candles on the table, the smell of jasmine and incense. He looked at the woman, short and small, older than he, her breasts squeezed into her low-cut blouse. She had long flowing hair and light gold skin, and from a distance one might think she was ten years younger than she was. He had found her randomly one night. It had been late and he had been wandering, trying to learn this new place so that he did not get lost. She had walked up to him and started talking to him, and by the way she smiled and ran her hand up and down his arm he knew who and what she was.

He gave her sixty dollars as he had that first night. She took him by the hand into the bedroom which smelled thick with perfume. Inside there was only a bed and a chair against the wall and he wondered if she slept on the same bed where she worked. She slid her shirt over her head and he did the same. She smiled and said something to him, but he did not know or care what she was saying. He lay naked on the small soft bed and she on top of him, and for the next thirty minutes he closed his eyes and thought of the women from home he had known and thought he could love.

When they finished he dressed quickly as she smoked a cigarette. His stomach felt empty, his legs rubbery and weak. She laughed and said something but he already had his shoes on.

Walking home he wondered why he had taken a shower to visit a whore. It didn’t make sense, but so many things didn’t make sense to him these days. He could have stayed home and watched the game, or he could have taken the subway or bus to a restaurant out of the neighborhood where he could have eaten and drank something other than the slop Mr. Liu and his wife served. But he knew the best food was all the way down in Chinatown, and there he could not go.

He walked and smoked and thought again about the sickly girl who had not had enough money for her food. It was her wrists and her neck that had stayed in his mind, and how her hair was so thin like it might fall out of her head. And he remembered the ship, the woman who had been one of the few wives on board. Three hundred of them packed into the freight, and these two men (one taller, the other very short) started to squawk over a mess made in someone’s space. He watched as they argued, did not try to stop it. They had been on the ship for over two months, and below deck, amongst the hundreds of compartments and partitioned areas they had created with cardboard and hanging shirts and towels and clothes, how could anyone tell whose mess was whose? In one corner were big buckets filled with piss and shit that were emptied each day, puddles of waste on the floor where people had spilled. In another corner on a rusted table they tried to cook with two burners and two big propane tanks, the floor littered with empty cans, filthy rags, and ripped empty boxes.

The floor and air stank with their sweat and metal and waste, but still the two men argued and accused. Then they fought.

It was not the first fight that had broken out. People gathered in a circle, some yelling, shouting. Then the tall one had both hands around the short one’s throat, choking him down to his knees until his eyes fluttered and a bubbly foam dribbled from his lips. The short one’s wife came from behind, hitting the tall man on the back of the head with double-hammer fists until he had no choice but to turn and hit her in the face to make her stop.

The short man lay there gasping, twitching. The tall one turned and looked at the woman lying on the ground. She had bobbed stringy hair, her shirt filthy, too big for her, hanging down off her shoulder. Her neck so thin like a sick bird or child. The tall one reached down and began pulling at the legs of her pants and then she was bare.

He knew he should step in, but he did not. No one did.

When the tall man finished—it did not take long—he stood and pulled his pants up, turned and saw the other man still lying on the ground. He spit on the short man, and then moved through the crowd to the other end of the hold, where he disappeared inside a wall of faces. When the short one came to and saw his wife, he gathered her into a corner where he held her and wept.

A world unto itself: no ruler, no rules.

In the morning they found the woman by the kitchen area. She had used the lid of a rusty can to carve open her wrists. Her bottom still naked, she sat with her eyes open against the wall in a wide dark puddle. The short man was dead too, no signs of trauma beyond what he had suffered during the fight. He had just stopped living. No one knew if he or his wife had died first.

They were still far enough out at sea to dump the bodies, so he was picked to prepare the woman and her husband on the deck to make sure they sank and stayed sunk. He tied them together with rope, stuffed their clothes with any random refuse or wood or metal he could find. Then he rolled them overboard and thought at least they had finished their voyage together.

* * *

When he got back to the apartment he found his neighbor knocking on his door, an old woman with white hair and leathery wrinkled skin. A few times she had offered him food—yellow rice with beans and some salty shredded meat—that he gladly accepted.

Now she spoke very fast, kept poking up the corners of her own eyes, then flashing two fingers, then pointing at the floor. She did this over and over again. Finally he took her wrists in his hands and smiled at her and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Sank you.” She took a breath and shrugged, then went back to her own apartment.

He could still smell the perfume of the whore on his skin, so he took another shower. Then he turned on the television and sat on the mattress. He knew what the old woman had been trying to tell him: Two men with slanted eyes had come looking for him. This was not a shock or surprise. Since his first steps here, in this new place, this new world, he had known that they would find him, that someone would.

* * *

Here the dreams were always the same: the taste of the water, the bubble of salt and surf, smoke and gas and oil in his nose and mouth, leaking down his throat. Knowing that his eyes were open in the water and yet all he could see was black; the floating, the flash and flail of his limbs. Was he watching his own death? He did not know then, but it was what he felt now. He woke in the middle of the night and drank a glass of water. Then he sat in the chair he never sat in, sat by the window smoking and watching the sunrise over the highway.

He thought about home, the person he used to be. How he had grown up in a fishing village in Fujian province, learning to farm as well, to make a living with his hands and back. How his family had no money to send him to school; and how he had come to realize around the age of thirteen that he had no talent for the life that his family and ancestors had paved for him. When his parents died (he was twenty by then), he left.

It took him days to get to Fuzhou, walking and stealing rides with strangers. Finally a truck filled with workers took him into the heat of the big buildings, the lights, the colors, the taste and smell of so many people, so many machines. He was afraid he would be swallowed by it all, that everyone around him would know he was a country boy. He found work in a hotel restaurant cleaning dishes and taking out garbage. He worked as many hours as they would let him, slept little, saved all of his money, but still he did not feel like a rich man.

Then one day in the hotel he was relaxing after his shift. The bar and lounge were half-crowded. A man sat down next to him wearing a dark suit and collared shirt with no tie. The man’s watch shined in the lights around the bar. They began talking, and then the man said, “Have you ever thought about going to America?” His face appeared to be young but his eyes made him look old. They stared at each other.

“No,” he said, “never thought about it.”

The man gave him a card. “Call me if you want to stop wasting your life.”

The man paid his bill and walked out. He looked at the man’s card and called him two days later. He said he did not want to go to America, but wanted to stop wasting his life.

His job was to recruit, to work the city for potential clients. He was trained to spot who and what they were looking for.

“Dressed shabby, looking a little lost. You know, country folk.”

“Is that why you came up to me in the bar?”

The man stared at him and told him to pay attention.

“The police are paid off. So are the officials we need. But don’t be cocky. If you show off they will make an example of you.”

He learned to spot them in crowds, in markets, on the street. He had his pitch, all the facts that anyone in the beginning would need to know: thirty-thousand U.S. total, at least five to ten up front, the rest when you get there. “How?” they would sometimes ask, and he would tell them by boat or by plane. It cost more if you wanted passports and special work papers.

“We know your relatives, we know where you live. We are watching you on both sides. We are taking big risks to give you the chance of a lifetime. Don’t disrespect us. Don’t make us or your family lose face.”

He knew when clients were satisfied. People would find him to thank him, tell him how well their sons and husbands and fathers were doing over there, the riches they were making, the opulent lives they would all someday lead. “He’ll be a citizen in a few years, then he can bring us all over,” one wife told him. “He sends me beautiful clothes and jewelry,” said another. “We’re going to live in a big house with big cars.” He would smile and nod and later more people from the same family, the same clan, would come to him to make the journey. They borrowed money from relatives, from friends, from anyone who could afford to give just a little to send them away to find their dreams. No one talked about the ones who did not make it, who were caught and shipped back, held by police and beaten; then sent back to their villages to pay a huge fine, only to begin planning when they would try again.

He worked Fuzhou for two years, then his boss asked him to help with operations in Hong Kong. He practiced his Cantonese, learned the new landscape of police and officials, who knew what, what areas were safe to work. Now he helped to coordinate and find secure holding areas while the boats and ships and passports and payoffs were taken care of. He learned the routes that spanned the world—from Hong Kong or Fuzhou or ports out of Malaysia or Thailand, across the ocean and into South America or Europe. Groups as small as two or three, sometimes as big as twenty, thirty, fifty, more. They might wait in a holding area in a strange country for months, kept by enforcers in a house or warehouse or apartment, until it was safe to move again.

Because they did not want to wind up in the Netherlands or Peru or even Canada. America was where they wanted to go, and even though he was no longer pitching and recruiting the dream, it was still the backdrop of his thoughts—places like New York, San Francisco, cities within cities filled with Chinese; piles of money waiting to be made, the fine clothes and food that would adorn their lives, teachers and schools that would educate their children and make them citizens, so they would never have to suffer.

He had talked so much about it that even he began to believe. But he did not have thirty thousand dollars, and he wondered if he was still wasting his life.

Then he was told about the next big plan: a new shipping route, from Thailand to Kenya, then around the tip of Africa, then on to the U.S. Almost three hundred passengers, they would need extras to work the crew.

“Are you interested?” his boss asked him. “Think of it this way: You get to see the world, spend a few days in New York when it’s over.”

He did not see any way to disagree.

* * *

That afternoon he went to the school to deliver the professor’s meal. The professor handed him two brochures, one in Chinese.

“For classes,” he said. “The school is close to Penn Station, easy to get to.”

He looked at the brochure written in Chinese, on the front a picture of a young Chinese woman, smiling, a book splayed open in front of her. Learn English—live life!

The professor said, “It’s cheaper than taking classes here, which you might not be ready for anyway. This would prepare you.”

He kept staring at the brochures, did not know what to say, what to do.

The professor said, “Let me know if you have any questions, if you need help filling out the forms.” The professor reached out his hand. He looked at the gold band around the professor’s left ring finger, then shook his hand without thanking him.

The rest of the day, as he made his deliveries he wondered about the professor’s life, compared it to his own. On days off he sometimes took the bus to the movie theater in the shopping plaza, and like the baseball games, he could surmise what was happening by the the tone of voice and look on an actor’s face. Afterward he would browse through shops in the plaza, sometimes buying socks or undershirts or small things that he did not necessarily need. Other times he went to the open market and bought vegetables and meat and went home and tried to cook, but always seemed to burn his food. Then he would go to a restaurant where he would be surrounded by brown and black people—no whites, definitely no Chinese. He would look at the menu and point, a kind of guessing game, and he knew that no matter what they brought him he would eat it.

No one bothered him in these places, and was this so different from what an American might call life? He did not feel he was much better or worse off than anyone else around him. Except for when he was lonely, when he would argue with himself as to whether or not to go to the whore.

The professor, he thought, did not need to visit a whore. Nor did he wile away his time watching movies or burning food or hording money and constantly looking over his shoulder. The professor had a wife and children, he imagined; a big house somewhere in a neighborhood of identical houses, did not live within the rows of blocky brick buildings with rusted fire escapes draped top to bottom that surrounded the school. He pictured the professor’s home decorated with classical Chinese paintings and calligraphy, a shiny new car parked in the driveway, next to a green lawn where his children could safely play. He was sure he had more in that suitcase than the professor had in any bank, but the thought did not make him feel any better. What good was it if he could not spend it?

Maybe that was the problem. He could buy a small restaurant, but he knew nothing about the business except how to bus tables and make deliveries. Or he could open a store here in the Bronx that sold groceries and goods for Chinese people; but that would be silly because there were not enough Chinese. In the end he knew there was no way he could do any of these things without spending money and drawing attention to himself; and this was not like Chinatown where he knew he would feel less lonely, feel as if he were part of something again.

He remembered going just a few days after he had arrived, taking a car from the hotel into the city, all arranged by the desk clerk. (Americans, he thought, were no different than Chinese: You give them enough money and they will do anything for you.) The car dropped him off and the white driver got out and leaned on the hood, smoking and reading the paper, and he began walking toward the crowd of Chinese faces, felt relief hearing his own dialect and Cantonese and Mandarin street to street. The stores selling big crates full of herbs and spices, vegetables, fresh fish, roasted ducks, and barbecued meat hanging in the greasy windows. They sold clothes, shoes, perfume, watches, toys. He had been to a thousand markets like these in Fuzhou and Hong Kong, but here the feel of the air, the smell of the streets, even the ground beneath him felt different.

He walked below an overpass and past plain storefronts with Chinese signs advertising for workers. Here there were no blacks or whites or browns, only others like him. “You want to work? You—you want to work?” They were calling out in Fukienese, Cantonese. He ignored them, kept walking, felt his heart and stomach go slithery inside. He knew this was what everyone on the ship had come for—the chance to work nonstop every day to repay the debt that was their lives.

He went to a small restaurant on a side street and ordered a bowl of beef noodle soup and small dragon buns. When the food came he did his best to eat slowly, the taste of the broth and beef slivers and noodles soaking into his mouth, his first real meal in months.

He picked up a Chinese newspaper from the table next to him and read about the ship, the Golden Venture, stranded just off the shore of Long Island, filled with illegal Chinese: two-hundred and eighty-six captured, ten drowned, six escaped. He stared at the pictures of them all on the beach, wrapped in blankets, herded like animals. He tried to recognize the faces but could not.

Six escaped.

He lit a cigarette and the waitress came over and said, “No smoking.”

He finished his meal and left. As he walked back to the car he felt the eyes of the city pressing in on him—the people, the buildings, the cars, the birds, the cracks in the concrete walls and streets surrounding. Maybe someone had spotted him and was already following, because this was America, a fast and wild and frightening place. Here, even among his own, he could feel how they were outsiders, transplanted.

On his way back to the hotel he stared out the window, remembered how he had heard the captain and the crew leader talking, how they had not received communication from shore, did not know if and when the boats would meet them out at sea as planned or if they were supposed to press on and dock.

He knew from all the muttering and murmuring that the situation was not good. They had been at sea now for three months. It had been bad from the beginning—those who grew sick and delirious right away, puking and shitting on themselves as if indigent and mad; then the fighting each day, passenger versus passenger, enforcer versus passenger; all of them hungry; breathing the air heavy with the smell of saltwater and sea-soaked metal and piss and shit and bodies festering and congealed. He dreaded his rounds below deck, could not imagine what it was like to be down there every minute of every day, as the passengers were not allowed above deck lest they be spotted from the air.

The things he had done, the horrors he had seen: the short man and the short man’s wife, letting them both die, then rolling them into the sea; swinging a club and cracking a man’s skull for stealing the crew’s water and food; a woman held down and fucked until she bled, and by the time he was inside her, her eyes were still open but she no longer screamed.

He had always thought of himself as a good and simple man, but now he knew this was not true.

He was in one of the sleeping cabins when he felt the crunch of the boat, heard the thunk and grind, thought that they had smashed their way onto shore. He was up on his feet, gliding toward the deck, heard the screaming, the footsteps and pounding, scrambling in the hold below, heard the thwack of the helicopter above, being chased by a swirling beam of light. Then he saw the flood of bodies coming up through the doors and hatches, spewing like a fountain, spreading across the deck like ants. More lights attacking, the helicopter circling, electric voices in English, boats closing in, engines ripping the water.

In the distance he could see the shore, big spotlights and smaller yellow dots maybe three hundred meters away. He looked around for his crewmates, for an escape boat or plan, but the frenzy was too much, people pushing, shoving, the twist and shriek of the fray. He heard the splashing first, then turned and saw them going over one by one near the bow, in groups over the side. He ran for the side and jumped out as far as he could, feet first into the water, flesh locking, the freeze crushing against him. He told himself that he was the son of a fisherman and that he would not die in the water. His arms and legs began to move even though he could not feel them.

Waves crashing over his head, he went under for as long as he could, kept kicking, thrashing, just trying to pull away; opening his eyes, trying to see, thinking of the boats and the helicopter and what they would do to him if he was caught. He came up for air and went under again, and when he came back up he was further away from the ship and there were more boats now closing in, but he was behind it all, off to the side.

He knew he would not make it like this, his arms and legs like lead, trying to take in as much air as he could, water in his mouth, bloating his stomach, seeping through his lungs. Then he heard a voice, saw his crew leader’s head bobbing up and down. He was holding onto something, using it like a flotation device, saw the crew leader paddling in his direction in the hard and heavy surf. They swam toward each other, and when he was close enough he saw his own arm swing up out of the water and then down, his fist landing with a crack against the crew leader’s nose, then he was wrestling the small case away into his own arms as the other man’s head disappeared. He held onto the case and kicked, kept his head on a swivel as he swam for the dark water and stretch of lights.

When he finally felt the sand in his toes it was so quiet he thought he was dead already. He saw houses with big wooden decks lining the shore. He could not stop his teeth from chattering, could feel all his bones and flesh shaking, his stomach and head filled with fire, and this told him he was not dead. He hugged the suitcase close to his chest even as he crawled onto the beach, spitting and coughing, his innards burning like oil and acid in his blood. When he looked back he saw the lights still shining, the freighter locked down. He had swam more than three hundred meters to get to shore, felt like a kind of superman, alone, freezing, but uncaptured and alive. His father, he thought, would be proud.

The sky was black, but he knew he did not have much time. He would need a change of clothes, and under the wooden deck of one of the houses he fumbled with the suitcase latch until it opened. He stared in, his blood and brains squeezing. Then he closed the suitcase and walked further down the beach along the row of houses until he had brushed himself off, could still taste the sea and sand in his mouth as he willed his arms and legs to move, his breath thin and wheezing. He made his way in between two houses, and when he came to a main road there was no traffic and no one on the streets. He looked at the signs and recognized only one in glowing neon—HOTEL. He had seen it in Fuzhou, and in Hong Kong. He took from the suitcase a handful of wet hundred-dollar bills, walked quickly through the front glass door and up to the counter.

The young man with glasses behind the counter did not look up until he was standing in front of him, waving the money. The young man stared back, wide-eyed, gape-jawed, nodding.

* * *

Two hours later he brought him shorts, sandals, a pair of jeans, T-shirts, and underwear. The clothes were big but comfortable. He gave the young man more money, and for the next three days he was brought egg sandwiches and coffee early in the morning, hamburgers and french fries and soda in the evening. All of it was greasy, salty, disgusting, but he ate it. Each time the door knocked he thought it could be the police, but it was always the young man’s glasses that shined back in the light.

After his excursion into Chinatown he knew he could not go back. Not now, not like this. In the big yellow phone book in his room he found a map of New York City, and with the desk clerk’s help (he must have given him a thousand dollars by now) figured out where Chinatown was. From the young man’s finger he then looked north, up the map, pointed at the highest part and nodded.

When he left in a car early the next morning he gave the young man another handful of money. The driver was and wore several gold chains around his neck. The car stereo was loud. An hour later he was dropped off on the main avenue. He gave the driver two hundred dollars without him asking, and the man stared back at him with wide incredulous eyes.

He found the restaurant a half hour later, walked in, and asked for a job.

“You just move here?” asked Mr. Liu.

“Yes,” he said. He looked down at the suitcase in his hand.

“You’re lucky, I just lost a delivery man. You have any experience?”

“Yes. Back in Hong Kong.”

“If you can find your way around Hong Kong you won’t have a problem here.” Mr. Liu peered at him for a few moments, then said, “You’re not a troublemaker, are you? We run a simple family business. We don’t need any problems.”

“No,” he said. “No problems. But I need a place to stay. Do you know where I can look?”

“Sure,” said Mr. Liu. “Do you have enough to cover the first month’s rent?”

He gripped the handle of the suitcase and said, “Yes, I think I do.”

* * *

After his final delivery of the day he rode back to the restaurant, the professor’s brochures folded and tucked in his pocket. He had never planned on being a deliveryman for the rest of his life, and so maybe it was fate, or a sign from the heavens that now was the time to move on. Wherever he might go, he would take classes. It was a good idea.

As he pulled up to the restaurant he expected to see Fong and Wai-Ling out front smoking, but the sidewalk was empty. The neon sign in the window was off. He looked at this watch—it was only 10, not yet closing time. He tipped his bicycle down to its side and walked up to the open front door. He peeked in, heard nothing. The two front tables were empty with no chairs. The menu signs above the counter were off, leaving only the fluorescent lights from the kitchen aglow. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys, clenched them in his fist with the tips like metal spikes jutting between his fingers.

He stepped in slowly, passed the front counter, peeked around the wall, then came to a stop, staring into the kitchen. Pans and bowls still filled with food, cartons half-open, spatulas and tongs left on the counters, as if they had evacuated in an emergency, the restaurant abandoned.

Except for the shoe in the corner by the fryer, Mrs. Liu’s shoe; and then he saw the tooth, chipped and glowing like a speck of gold dust on the floor.

He knew that when he died he would meet an army of demons who would make him pay for his sins. He was not afraid, but still he was not ready.

He rode his bicycle back to his apartment, went upstairs, and stood in the hallway outside his door for ten minutes, listening, waiting. When he finally went in everything was as he had left it. He took only the suitcase, and when he got back downstairs his bicycle was gone and so he walked with the suitcase to the whore’s apartment. He called from the pay phone and she buzzed him in. When he got upstairs he gave her three hundred dollars and she closed the door behind him.

* * *

In the morning he washed himself, wet his hair and combed it back, used her razor to shave his face. He left her naked and curled and sleeping, felt bad for her though he could not say why. He left her an extra hundred dollars, then went to the diner by the college next to the subway station and drank tea and waited.

He still had the professor’s brochures in his pocket, along with a map that he had torn from the whore’s telephone book. Around noon he walked onto campus, past the security booth and parking gate, through the roaming clusters of students. He headed into the building, up the stairs, knocked on the professor’s door.

The professor answered and said, “Hello.” An awkward smile. “I didn’t order.”

“I know.” His suitcase in one hand, brochures in the other, he said, “I had some questions about these classes. Could I ask you?”

The professor paused, looked at his watch. “Sure. I have a few minutes. Come in.”

* * *

The professor was bigger than he had thought. His pants fit him so loosely he needed to pull the belt in as tight as he could. The shoes were at least a size too big, as were his shirt and undershirt. The blazer was big enough to cover him so he did not look saggy and suspicious. All over he could smell the professor’s cologne, but there was nothing he could do about that right now.

He had left the empty suitcase in the office, had moved the money into the professor’s book bag and another bag he had found in his desk drawer. Close to the train station he found a barbershop where he pointed at a picture on the wall and the barber cut his hair down close, then closer, so when he was finished he looked like a teenager again. Inside the station he looked around and did not know where he would go. He looked at the professor’s watch on his wrist, then walked through the massive corridors of the station. With the professor’s glasses he saw things with a new clarity. He got his shoes shined, then stopped at a rack with postcards of New York’s wondrous sites: the big famous buildings, the pretty parks and rich museums, the baseball stadium with the crossed N and Y emblazoned in white over the field. He took a card out of the rack and gave the man at the counter a dollar.

A young Chinese couple helped him figure out the schedule. He paid for his ticket in cash, pulled the bills from the professor’s wallet. He would hold onto the IDs just in case he needed them, until he felt it was safe to be no one again.

On the train he kept both bags at his feet. There were mostly old white people around him, some in suits, some dressed for a day of leisure. No one looked at him or bothered him. The train car was air-conditioned and very cold. The conductor checked his ticket and nodded and then the train was rolling. He pulled the postcard from his blazer pocket and stared at the green field, trying to imagine the next mirage of his life, until they were out of the tunnel and barreling beyond the city.

HEY, GIRLIE

BY JOANNE DOBSON

Sedgwick Avenue

Hey, girlie,” the voice rasped down at me from the fourth-floor window. “I want you should get me a coconut cake over by Phillips the baker. Make sure it got a nice red cherry in the middle. And don’t smoosh it on the way home like you do the bread.”

A coconut cake? Holy crap—Mrs. Blaustein must be in the money. It was usually a nineteen-cent loaf of Wonder Bread with her. The quarter’d come spinning down from the fourth floor, and I’d catch it in my skirt before it hit the sidewalk. Magic: money out of thin air. All I’d have to do was run the bread from the grocer at the corner of Kingsbridge up to 4-C, two blocks round trip and four flights of stairs. I got a nickel, but she always wanted the penny back.

Everyone knew Mrs. Blaustein took care of a crazy lady who never came out of the apartment. Katy-Ann Cooper said she was a maniac killer, the crazy lady, and that’s why she wouldn’t show her face. But my mother said Katy-Ann was full of shit—excuse her Irish—Miss Cohen was just a poor unfortunate who had gotten in the way of history. My mother said things like that. She liked to read, and not just the racing forms like my father, but books from Kingsbridge library. Me too. The day I bought the coconut cake I’d just come back from the library with a stack of books up to my chin, and I knew I’d finish them all by Sunday night. I flopped right down on the green couch and started The Yearling, but my mother said, “Go out and play, for Christ’s sake—it’s such a nice day. You can read anytime.”

So, I was the only one of us kids who ever saw the crazy lady. It happened this way. Mrs. Blaustein made a toss over the window guard, and I made my usual brilliant catch. This time it was a dollar bill wrapped tight around a half-dollar and held together with a big fat paperclip. I bought the best cake at the baker. It cost the whole dollar-fifty. Lemon-filled. Spinkled all over with fluffy coconut. A perfect red circle of a cherry. I carried it careful in its white cardboard box like it was the coronation crown jewels, down Kingsbridge, past the Veteran’s Hospital, round the corner onto Sedgwick, my braids for once hanging nice and straight over my shoulders like the good Lord intended instead of slapping my face like when I run with the bread.

I was younger then. Ten. I thought I was tough, but I didn’t know nothing. Anything. That was two years ago, there was a new queen in England, Maxie Isaacs next door died of polio, and Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg went to the electric chair. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, that is. Not the Rosenbergs from 5-F. My mother said the judge should burn in hell for that verdict. My father said, “Now, Tessie…”

We didn’t go to church anymore, not since Father O’Mally said little Maxie Isaacs was a baby Christ-killer and that he would burn in hell instead of going to heaven like a good little Catholic child. We’re big on hell in my neighborhood. So I went to P.S. 86 instead of Our Lady of Angels, and I didn’t have to wear a uniform, and Mrs. Marrs didn’t yank my braids when she caught me hiding a book on my lap during Math.

I walked that coconut cake into the courtyard, past the stoop, up the three steps. The lobby smelled like apple kugel, the second-floor landing like Mrs. Costigan’s cats, the third like sauerkraut with weird Jewish stuff in it, caraway seed, maybe. A radio was playing piano music, but suddenly it stopped with a crash that almost made me drop the cake, then started again from the beginning. Not the radio, then. A real piano. I had just rounded the fourth-floor stairs when Mr. Schmidt came out of 4-C, Mrs. Blaustein’s apartment, with his big toolbox. “Vot you doing here, girlie?”

Mr. Schmidt was our new super. German. My daddy said all supers in the Bronx were Krauts. I hoped they weren’t all the same kind of Kraut Mr. Schmidt was, with a voice that crunched like broken glass. Mr. Schmidt scared the hell out of me. Maybe it was how big he was, fat, with fists like Sunday hams. Or the way he was always chewing, jaws going from side to side like that hippopotamus at the Bronx Zoo. Or maybe it was his daughter Trudy, the only other not-Jewish kid in my fourth-grade class at P.S. 86. She gave the nastiest Indian burn of any kid on Sedgwick, Trudy did, then batted blue eyes like an angel at the poor kid’s parents. Even Lennie Foreman walked the other side of the street when Trudy Schmidt was on the sidewalk. But not me. Not even then. If anyone even tried it I would’ve bent their little pinkie back till it snapped. Nobody messed with me—not even Trudy Schmidt—not after my daddy taught me the cop moves. Did I say he was a cop? Well he is, and a good one.

“Vot you doing, girlie?” I never knew anyone before who shaved his whole head, but Mr. Schmidt did, and the red stubble made it look like it was coated with corroded rust. Corroded. I like that. It’s a good word. Corroded.

“Just around Mrs. Blaustein a coconut cake.” The super had eyes on the cake box, but I slipped past him without another word. My mother said you had to watch out when he came around—things would go missing. Cookies or muffins. The week before, when he was working on the pipes in our kitchen, a pork chop disappeared. A pork chop! Cooked! And her with five mouths to feed. So I held the cake box tight to my chest and got past Mr. Schmidt safe, and this was the first time I was ever in 4-C. Mrs. Blaustein came rushing to the door, all out of breath, said to wait a minute and she’d get me a dime for a tip (a whole dime!), but she had to go talk to someone first. Then she went out of the apartment, fast. So I nosed around. It was a big place, two bedrooms. Nothing like our one-bedroom apartment with five people sleeping in shifts night and day. This living room was…classy. Pictures on the walls—actual paintings. A piano in one corner. Glass doors with sheer curtains leading into yet another room. Through the half-open door I could see into this second room—shelves and shelves of books, like a library. They were a magnet to me, those books. I couldn’t help myself.

At first I thought the gloomy room was empty. The drapes were closed, except for one little slit in the middle, and dust danced in the narrow light. Narrow light. Maybe I read that somewhere: narrow light. I tiptoed over to the nearest shelf. Mrs. Blaustein wouldn’t mind if I looked at just one book…

“Iss he gone yet?” It was a woman’s quivery voice.

I dropped the book and screamed.

A gasp came from right behind me, and a small woman hunched in a wheelchair spun around. “Mein Gott. I thought you vere Hilda.” Her accent was sort of like the Jewish mommas who schlepped their folding chairs in front of the building on sunny mornings and talked and talked and talked. Something like the mommas—but different. More like music. “Vere’d you come from, child?”

“From the baker.” This must be the crazy lady. She was scary, all right, one eye pulled down, a huge red puckered scar from her forehead to her chin, one shoulder higher than the other. Her eyes were open really, really wide, even the droopy one. Her head was shaking on her neck. I wanted to get out of there—bad. But I wasn’t leaving without my money. Where the hell was Mrs. Blaustein? “I’m the cake girl.”

“‘The cake girl’?” She laughed—and for a minute the air in the room got…not so heavy. At least I think it was a laugh, a wheeze and a dry chuckle in her throat, and her head stopped shaking. “The cake girl. Oh, it vould be a pity to vaste that.” She picked up a little notebook on her lap and scribbled in it with a gold pencil. Her hands were thin and very white. They looked more like they belonged to some younger woman than that horrible scarred face. “Now,” she said, “I vill write a poem about the cake girl.”

“A poem?”

“Yes. And someday vhen you’re in college maybe you vill read it and think of me.”

“College?” Me?

“That vas vun thing they couldn’t take away from me—my poetry. Do you like them?”

“Like what?”

“Poems?”

“Dunno,” I said. “They’re okay, I guess. By the shores of Gitche Gumee, / By the shining Big-Sea-Water, / Stood the wigwam of—”

“No. No. No,” she said. “Not that drivel. That book you just dropped on the floor? Pick it up, girl, open it and read me a real poem.” She had wheeled her chair to the window, and now she pulled the drapery cord. Light came streaming in, and I could see to read.

I could also see Mrs. Blaustein standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. I cringed, expecting her to yell. But she was looking at the wheelchair lady. “Rachel, I think you might be right.” I never heard her sound so quiet.

“Iss he gone?” The wheelchair lady’s voice was quivery again.

“For now. Just off the boat last year from Bremerhaven, Esther Meyer says.”

The head started shaking again, like this toy I used to have where you turned a key and the tin Chinaman nodded and nodded and nodded. It was like the springs in her neck were broken.

Mrs. Blaustein’s lips got white and thin. She turned to me. “Girlie, do like Miss Cohen says. Read a poem from the book.”

So I opened the book and read. “After great pain, a formal feeling comes—/ The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—” I looked up…Pain?…Tombs? But the sound of the words seemed to calm her—Miss Cohen—so I kept reading “…This is the Hour of Lead—/ Remembered, if outlived, / As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—/ First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—”

I was still there when Miss Cohen’s visitor came. The one I got the cake for, I guess. Not many men in suits around our neighborhood. Father O’Mally. Claire Heidenreich’s father. Insurance collectors. Fuller Brush men. But none of them wore suits like this one. It fit him like he was born in gray wool. No knee wrinkles or ass sags. Just shoulders and shirt cuffs, pleats at the belt and a sharp crease down the pant legs. I was old enough to know better, but I gaped at this handsome stranger like a two-year-old until Mrs. Blaustein pressed the dime into my hand. “Here’s your money, girlie. Go on home now. Miss Cohen has to talk to her publisher.”

* * *

“You know the crazy old lady in 4-C?” I said at supper that night. “She’s a famous poet. A publisher came to see her today. What’s a publisher?”

“She’s not crazy and she’s not old,” my father said. “It’s just that they experimented on her in the camps.” He took the bowl of boiled potatoes, ladled out three, spread them with margarine.

“They? Experimented?” The meatloaf looked good. Tomato soup on top and slices of bacon.

“What’re you now, ten, right?” He took two slices of meatloaf and reached for the ketchup bottle.

“Mike!” my mother said. “She doesn’t need to know about such evil—”

“She’s a tough kid. She can handle it.” He gave me a straight look. “You’ve heard of the camps, right?” He poured himself more beer from the Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle.

“You mean, like in the Catskills, where Jessica goes?” “Jeez—what’da they teach you in that school? The concentration camps, I mean. Auschwitz. Dachau.”

He told me, but I didn’t want to believe it. “They really did those things?” That’s how dumb I was.

“Yeah, and worse.” He spooned canned peas next to the potatoes. “That’s what we fought for in the war, to beat those Nazi bastards. If they won, who’da been next? First the Jews and the Polacks and the qu—”

“Charlie!” My mother clamped a hand over his mouth.

He pushed it away and gave a short laugh. He drinks a lot of beer when he’s going on night shift. “Maybe the Irish were next, for all we know. Jews. Micks. This whole neighborhood woulda been wiped out.” He laughed again and took another drink.

I put my fork down. I’d lost my appetite.

* * *

That night there were Nazis in the closet by my bed. I didn’t know what they looked like, not exactly, but I could feel them there. Maybe my father was wrong. Maybe we didn’t win the war. Maybe…

* * *

Mrs. Blaustein called the next day. My mother frowned. “Rachel Cohen must be lonely. She seems to have taken a liking to you. You want to go have cake with her?”

“Okay,” I said. I don’t know why. I didn’t really want to.

Mrs. Blaustein had set the table with a lace cloth and some nice china dishes with gold rims. Very la-tee-dah, my father would have said.

“I don’t like cake,” Miss Cohen said. “But you go right ahead.” She drank cup after cup of the blackest coffee I ever saw from what looked like dolls’ cups, while I ate two slices of coconut cake. The filling was so sweet I almost couldn’t taste the lemon, so sweet it made my teeth ache. I loved it.

Miss Cohen talked almost the whole time. About knives and needles. About acid and electric shocks. About cattle cars full of Jews. About barbed wire. About ovens that weren’t for baking cakes in.

“The day they took us away, I put on my white linen dress with the eyelet embroidery. I thought if I looked nice, they’d know I was a nice girl,” she said. “Stupid. I was twenty when I went in…a pretty girl. When I came out seven years later I was a hundred and twenty. Can you imagine it?”

I could. All too well. It was time for me to go home.

“You come see me again,” she said, “and I’ll read you some of my poems.”

“Okay.” But I didn’t think I could stand it, to go back again.

There were two more slices of cake left, on a yellow china plate. How could she not like cake? Poor Miss Cohen.

When I got home, I looked all over for my communion dress, white with eyelet embroidery, and then I buried it in the very back of the closet where nobody, not even the Nazis, would ever find it, behind my father’s old wedding suit that didn’t fit anymore. All night long something tried to drag me through thick, hot air into the dark depths of the closet.

* * *

“You been up to 4-C, ain’t you?” Katy-Ann Cooper skated around me in circles, her wheels rolling thumpeta-thumpeta over the sidewalk cracks.

“What’s it to you?”

“My daddy says just because that lady’s famous doesn’t mean she’s not a Jew and a Commie. He knows. He alla time used to listen to Father Coughlin. You should stay out of 4-C—she’s nutso.”

“Is not.”

“Is so.”

I wanted to grab that chain around Katy-Ann’s neck, the one that held her St. Christopher medal and her skate key. I wanted to grab it and twist. Katy-Ann’s big mouth was the one thing that made me decide to go back to 4-C.

Or maybe it was the two leftover pieces of coconut cake. Or maybe it was just because Miss Cohen said I should come, and I was a good girl who did what I was told.

* * *

They were horrible, Rachel Cohen’s poems, two books of them, and some in magazines. We sat in the library by a table covered with medicine bottles. Tall brown ones with skinny necks. Small fat green jars. But the poems were beautiful/horrible, if you know what I mean. Like—fascinating. That’s another good word, fascinating. Blood. Bone. Shoes and wedding rings and greasy smoke.

* * *

She read them out loud, one first and looked at me, and then another and looked at me, and then just when I wanted her to stop she wouldn’t stop. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but my mother taught me to be polite. I wanted to run out of the apartment. I got up to leave, but she kept me standing by the door while she read one about a red-haired guard named Heinrich.

Helpless. Helpless.

I was his brown-eyed

Dolly. His daily treat.

He gobbled me up in slices,

In blood and bone and ashes.

I was his nobody.

His nothing.

His sweetie, sweetie, sweetie.

Oh, shame. Oh, shame.

No mercy left to me.

No anodyne.

It was the worst of the poems and I had my hand on the knob of the library door, but that last word kept me there. I was…snagged…by it. “What’s an-o-dime mean?”

“Anodyne. It means painkiller. I studied to be a pharmacist before the war. I learned all about the drugs you could take to ease pain. And cause it. Now I’m good for nothing but to sit in this damned chair—” she smacked the armrest. “Sit in this goddamned chair—and remember.”

“What happens to people’s souls to make them do such…bad…things?” I really wanted to know, and I thought if anyone could tell me, she could. In spite of how much her poems terrified me, I kind of admired Miss Cohen. She knew all about words.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she replied.

“But not you and me, right? We could never do anything evil, right?”

“Maybe you’d better go home now, girlie.”

I peeked in the kitchen on my way out. One slice of cake left, sitting under a glass dish. The red cherry tempted me, but I got past it okay. The faucet on the sink was dripping bad.

* * *

Outside, the sky was as hard and gray as the cracked sidewalk. Someone had drawn a potsy, but I didn’t feel like hopping the squares. The red bricks on the walls of our five-story walk-up stared across the street at the yellow bricks of the elevator building. The mommas were talking Yiddish on their folding chairs, Mrs. Yellin rocking the big black carriage back and forth. I looked at them different. The Jewish mommas knew about the camps, for sure. Was that what they talked about in their weird foreign language? Oy veh. Oy gevalt.

Oy gevalt—my mother said only the Jews could come up with such a useful cosmic summary. Cosmic. Summary.

Oy gevalt.

I said hi to Mrs. Bradford, my father’s bookie, and walked past her—right in the middle of the sidewalk as usual. No one could ever get me that way. Terrible things could happen to a little girl on her own. If I walked in the exact center of the sidewalk no one could grab me into a car at the curb or pull me into the cellar of a building. I was religious about it. Mrs. Bradford’s peroxide hair was pinned up in curls underneath that ratty green wool scarf of hers, and she was carrying a string shopping bag with a tissue box in it. Everyone knew what the box was for—she hid the betting slips underneath the tissues. Mrs. B. was breaking the law. My father said it was no big deal, but I wondered: Would Mrs. Bradford burn in hell? Would Adolf Hitler?

Usually, running to Daitch Dairy for my mother, or to the butcher or the fish store, I stayed on the far side of the street from the huge brick Veterans Hospital with its green lawn and big trees behind the iron-spiked fence. My father said the soldiers in the hospital were ones that got hurt in the war. You saw them sometimes, in wheelchairs or wandering around the paved walks with whacked-out looks in their eyes. Usually I don’t pay the place much attention, but that day I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I don’t remember crossing the street, but next thing I knew I’d grabbed an iron fence spike in each hand and was just standing there, staring in. My father said there was nothing to be scared of—the guys in that place were heroes. Some of them even went into the camps and liberated the Jews. He was in the war too, but I guess he wasn’t a hero because he’s not in a hospital and the shrapnel in his back only hurts when it’s raining out, and he never, ever, talks about it. I watched a dark-haired man on crutches move toward me across the grass. He looked like a tall boy in a robe and striped pajamas. He was walking on one leg—the other one…just ended. No knee, no nothing. The man in the pajamas was inside the iron fence, I was outside. I couldn’t stop staring at him. I couldn’t let go of the bars. “Hey, girlie,” he said. “What’re you doin’ here? God, look at you—aren’t you a little sweetie?”

I screamed and ran, and he called after me, “What did I say? What did I say?” I zigzagged across Kingsbridge Road, still screaming and almost getting clobbered by a big cream-and-red bus. The sidewalk swarmed with people. Outside a Kosher bakery I dodged three baby carriages and Julian Levine from school. “Hey, meshuggeneh,” he yelled, “what’s the matter by you?” Sister Mary Michael from Our Lady stuck out her arm to stop me, but I slapped it away and kept going. I’ll pay for that, I know, hitting a nun—even a gazillion “Hail Marys” won’t atone. So many people on the sidewalk and they were all gonna die. Could it happen again? Like the Jews in the camps? Was Julian Levine gonna burn in an oven? Was Sister Mary Michael? Was I? I whipped past the big stone armory to Jerome Avenue, then up Jerome around the reservoir, past the colleges. It was all I could do to keep from howling the whole time. My legs pumped like those wheel rods on a freight train with cattle cars. What was I running from? From the man with the leg? From Miss Cohen’s poems? I didn’t know, but I couldn’t stop. It was like something was sick in my stomach that I didn’t want to vomit into my head. No, that doesn’t make any sense. I ran like I had the Gestapo at my heels. I tripped on broken concrete and fell and skinned both knees, and it didn’t slow me down one bit. When I turned onto the far end of Sedgwick, I knew I’d never get away from whatever was chasing me so I might as well go home.

* * *

In front of our building an ambulance idled, ashy smoke puffing from the tailpipe, revolving lights turning the neighbors’ faces red and white. Blood and bone. Blood and bone. Ashes, blood, and bone. Two men in white carried a stretcher out from the courtyard. A sheet strained to cover a huge belly but missed the top of a red-bristled head. A couple of policemen followed the stretcher. One of them was my father.

I grabbed his hand. “Is that Mr. Schmidt?” I heard my voice rise to a screech.

“Yeah, it’s Henry, all right—poor son of a bitch.” He pulled the sheet from the gray face. “Looks like someone poisoned him. Vomit all down the stairs. Funniest thing—there was a big red maraschino cherry smack in the middle of it.”

But I didn’t need him to tell me that. Flecks of coconut were stuck to Mr. Schmidt’s stubbly chin with lemon goo. It looked like the unbaked scones my mother painted with egg and sprinkles. His chin was like a raw lumpy coconut scone. I never wanted to eat again.

The kids were crowding around now. “That crazy killer lady in 4-C did it,” Katy-Ann Cooper said. “Remember, you got her that coconut cake? I just know she did it.”

“Shut your mouth, Katy-Ann,” I hissed. “You don’t know nothing.”

* * *

That was two years ago. I was a kid. This morning, when I looked for the Daily Mirror, my mother lied to me. She said the papers didn’t come. Then I saw them at the candy store on the corner. Big headlines—the Mirror, the News, the Herald Tribune.

Concentration Camp Victim’s Appeal Fails.

Bronx Killer Gets Chair.

Rachel Cohen, Poet, to Die.

I’m looking for Katy-Ann Cooper right now. When I find her, I’m gonna give her the worst Indian burn of her whole entire life.

I think she’ll burn in hell forever.

Somebody ought to.

THE WOMAN WHO HATED THE BRONX

BY RITA LAKIN

Elder Avenue

Linda Blue came from nothing and wanted everything. With the small amount of money she inherited from the last of her soul-numbing foster parents, she was able to go to nursing school. She became a nurse so she could marry a doctor. She would marry a doctor so she could become a doctor’s wife. She didn’t have the confidence to nab one who was already established, so she played the odds; she picked an easygoing, nice-looking young resident.

Frank Lombardi, who saw himself as just an average guy, thought Linda looked like the movie star Grace Kelly, aloof and unattainable. Grace was soon to become the Princess of Monaco and he felt he’d found a princess too. He was amazed at his good luck.

Linda chose Frank Lombardi as the answer to her prayers. He would save her.

The problem was, Linda picked wrong.

She didn’t go to heaven. She went to hell.

He took her to back to the Bronx.

* * *

They’d had a whirlwind courtship. During their short engagement, she spelled out her dream, many times, in great detail. She would live in the country, perhaps near Scarsdale, in a pretty house with a little garden, and maybe one child.

He didn’t hear her.

Frank shared his goal—giving back to all those who made it possible for a poor kid to get so far. He was talking about his family who supported him through med school and his friends and neighbors who encouraged him. So he intended to heal the sick in his old neighborhood. To take care of those who took care of him.

She was tuned into her own fantasies, and didn’t listen.

She talked him into eloping. He wanted a wedding with family and friends. “I want to see my princess in a white gown.” She told him she had no one to invite and that he should save his money for setting up his practice.

The first thing brand new Doctor Lombardi did before they left Newark in June was to buy a slightly used ’50 Buick LeSabre—he thought the tail fins were nifty, and it was perfect to carry his adored wife to their new home. During the drive up from Jersey, Frank had been secretive about their destination. He couldn’t wait to see her response to the place he’d picked out. Linda could hardly wait to see her dream house.

On route, he told her they had to start out modestly until he made some money. She told him she didn’t care about money. She thought White Plains would be pretty too. She’d even thought about the new Levittown she’d read about in Life magazine. As she told him many times, she just needed peace and quiet.

On the Cross Bronx Expressway, she’d been dozing. When he turned at Bruckner Boulevard, she woke up and found herself looking at ugly brick buildings and vacant lots filled with trash and scruffy children playing in the streets. What shortcut was he taking? Was he lost? But in moments he stopped at a corner and parked. She read the two intersecting street signs, Elder Avenue and Watson Avenue.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked.

“The Bronx,” he said proudly. “The East Bronx, to be exact. On the Pelham Bay elevated line.”

She turned her face to the window and pressed her throbbing head against its coolness. Oh God, no. Not the Bronx again.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She wouldn’t look at him. “This place will be the death of me.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re gonna love it here.”

* * *

He helped her out of the car and grandly showed her around like a docent at a fine museum. “Welcome to my neighborhood. Look across the street.” He pointed to a brick two-family house directly opposite. “I grew up in that house. Mama and Papa are on the left. My sister Connie and her husband Al and their kids live in the other. You’ll meet them tonight.”

So close? No, not so soon. I’m not ready for any of this…

He fondly recollected for her. “I played stickball in these streets. I rode my sled down that hill. I played immies in these gutters. God, it’s great to be home.” She turned away and he assumed she was ready for the rest of his tour.

“Here’s our building. Six stories high.”

What she saw were over-filled garbage cans. Dogs running loose. People. So many people. So much noise.

Practically shaking with excitement, Frank turned right and walked her to a door, the only break in the brick structure. “My office! My patients will use this entrance. And…” He led her again, this time into the three-sided courtyard. “Look at our great brick courtyard.”

What she saw were little boys riding bikes dizzily around small patches of wire-enclosed dirt that looked like scraggly attempts at flower beds. The flowers were all dead. The boys shouted at one another, unmindful of anyone but themselves. Linda looked up. The sun was blocked by crisscrossed clothes lines filled with hanging laundry.

“Come on inside.” Now he navigated her through the large lobby, where he hurried her to another door. Tarnished brass letters indicated it was apartment 1A. “Ta da! Our very own private entrance. Isn’t it great?”

He took out a set of keys and opened the door. As Frank bent over to lift Linda and carry her over the threshold, they heard clapping.

“Put me down, Frank,” she said. He did.

She looked around the lobby. It was very large, and had seen better days.

The floors were black and white tiled squares. With imitation Greek columns and metal ceilings and a long bank of mailboxes against the wall next to the elevator.

There were people in the lobby staring at them. A couple of old guys were playing chess at a card table with a third man watching them. Two women with baby strollers sat on a marble bench. A woman with groceries had just removed mail from her box. They were all grinning as they clapped.

“Hey, Frankie, you’re back!” This from one of the chess players. To Linda he said, “I’m Irving Pinsky. 5F. You must be Frankie’s new wife.”

Frank waved. “Hey, Irv, it’s Doctor Frankie now. Show some respect.”

The lady with groceries said, “Welcome back from the Schwartz family too. Apartment 3D. I’m Helen,” she said to Linda. To Frank she said, “So what’s the bride’s name?”

“This is Linda, my wife, and also gonna be my nurse. Isn’t she gorgeous?”

Linda turned sharply at this unexpected piece of news. His nurse?

“Too good for the likes of you, you, pisher. Just call me Phil,” the other chess player told Linda. A man who introduced himself as Sam teased Frank. “We always had Jewish doctors in this building. When Dr. Mayer retired to Miami, we didn’t expect a goyish kop like you to show up.”

Frank laughed aloud. “I promise I’ll be just as good.”

Phil shrugged. “Who said he was good?”

“Nice people, your in-laws,” said one of the mothers, Alice. “They got great food in their Italian restaurant on Arthur Avenue. That’s the Little Italy of the Bronx,” she informed Linda.

She shuddered. Don’t tell me about the Bronx. I could tell you horror stories.

“And speaking of food, don’t mind the smell.” Mrs. Schwartz pinched her nose with two fingers to make her point. “That’s Flanagan in 1G. They always have corned beef and cabbage on Thursdays.”

“Phew,” agreed Irving. Turning to Mrs. Schwartz, he said, “And your gribbines don’t smell all that great either. That chicken fat stinks up your floor pretty good.”

She made a face and waved a dismissive hand at him.

“Hey, doc.” Irving started to take a shoe off. “One of my big toes hurts. Could you take a look at it?”

Again Frank laughed. “Call my nurse for an appointment.” He hugged Linda, who stiffened.

“What a blondie, such a cutie,” the third man, Sam, commented with a leer. “She can take my temperature any time.” There was group laughter at that.

“Frank, get me inside right now!” Linda grabbed his arm, squeezing it hard.

Frank waved again. “Gotta go. Just drove in. The little woman needs her rest.”

With that, he lifted her up and carried her into 1A to a chorus of cheers.

When the door closed behind them, Frank faced his wife, beaming with pleasure. He waited for her to say something.

Linda turned away and walked from room to room examining the apartment.

“Swedish modern foam couches,” Frank recited, following after her as she looked at the bilious green fabric covering hard-looking flat pillows that sat on wrought-iron frames. “The salesman said it was the latest thing.”

He then flung himself into one of the plastic beanie bag “chairs” in the same ugly hue. He bounced around, legs flying upward, to show the fun of them.

She ignored him and continued down the dark hall. Frank dashed after her. The bathroom was small and also dark. She entered the next room and gasped. It was a nursery. Painted in blue. No furniture yet, but toys. Little boy’s toys.

He grinned at her and shrugged. “Just thinking ahead.”

Not here, never in this place, she thought.

He opened the master bedroom door for her with a flourish. She moved straight to the windows. She was chagrined to see they faced directly onto the courtyard. One of the kids on a bicycle rode by and stuck his tongue out at her. She quickly closed the curtains.

Frank continued his spiel. “And here’s our boudoir. And there’s our honeymoon bed, sweetheart.”

* * *

Finally she turned to him, red in the face. “Shut up! Shut up!”

That night, with great trepidation, she met Frank’s family—aunts, uncles, cousins, and siblings—as they introduced themselves en masse at the big dinner held in the newlyweds’ honor across the street in his parents’ side of the two-family building. Too many people pushed in close to meet her. And to offer congratulations to the son who became a doctor. Frank’s brother-in-law, Al, laughed. “Yeah, he’d do anything so he wouldn’t have to work in the restaurant.” Much agreeable laughter at that. She was offered antipasto, which she refused. And she was presented with more names she wouldn’t remember.

“Our spaghetti sauce cooks for four hours, our secret recipe,” Mama Lombardi told her proudly as she doled her out a huge portion. But Linda merely moved her fork around the plate.

“You marry a girl with no appetite?” Papa Lombardi asked, astonished.

Frank laughed. “Hey, she’s gotta get used to you guys. Get your garlic breaths off of her. Let her breathe air.”

After a massive dinner of six courses, which Linda only picked at, they finally reached the spumoni and espresso. The men lit up their huge cigars. And Mama asked the inevitable question.

“Linda, where are your folks?”

She spoke in a low, flat voice. “I have no family. I’m an orphan.”

There was a silence at that. Mama crossed herself.

Frank put his arm around his wife. “Well, honey bun, you sure have one now.”

The tense moment over, Papa grinned and said, “Welcome to la famiglia.”

* * *

Frank turned the key in the lock and made his way back through the foyer into his parents’ living room.

Knowing his brother could hear him, Vincent said, “It’s what I always said about him. Frankie’s such an easygoing guy. Ya have to kick him in the ass three times before he knows you’re mad at him.”

His sister Connie grinned. “Yeah, what a pushover. Girls always take advantage of him.”

Frank addressed his siblings, also grinning. “Thanks for nothing. You’re just jealous.”

They laughed.

The immediate family was sitting around drinking more espresso “She’s all right?” Mama offered him a cup.

“Just tired. Been a long day with a lot of new things to get used to.”

Papa said, “I like her. She’s quiet.”

Mama gave him a gentle hit across his head. “You always were a sucker for the blondes.” She patted her pitch-black hair, with the slight gray feathering at her forehead, and winked at him.

They sat quietly digesting.

Mama couldn’t resist a shot of guilt. “You had to go and elope? And disappoint the whole family?”

“Mama, what else could I do? I told you, Linda had no one to invite. I didn’t want to make her unhappy on her wedding day.” Mama sighed. “I understand. So, all right, she met everyone tonight.”

“And we saved a bundle in wedding costs,” Papa commented with satisfaction.

“And you lost a bundle in wedding gifts you didn’t get, dummy,” Connie laughed.

“I’m such a lucky guy.” Frank sipped his espresso.

“She’s not Catholic.” Mama poured Papa his after-dinner Strega.

“Well, she ain’t Jewish.” Al beckoned his mother-in-law for another refill.

Connie put her two cents in. “Not Irish either.” She pretended mock horror. “You mean we’ve got a Protestant in the family?” She laughed. “She will be so alone in this neighborhood.”

* * *

Linda was alone but not for cultural or religious reasons. Linda belonged only to the darkness within herself. In the numbing blackness of a fog that never lifted. In a mind that shut off unbearable memories. She left the apartment only when she had to. She spent her days reading forgettable books or watching mindless television. She cleaned the house obsessively and cooked simple meals that filled the belly, but not the imagination. She waited for time to pass. She waited for a way to get out of here.

For a month, Frank whizzed about in a whirlwind of happiness, insensitive to his wife’s lack of interest. Getting the office fixed up. Getting flyers out into the neighborhood. Though it seemed word of mouth was enough. Mayer’s gone, come see the new young doctor. They were lining up at his door.

“Sure you don’t want to help out?” he asked Linda on the fly. “I could really use my pretty nurse in the office.” He intended to give her a peck on the lips, but she turned abruptly and he got her cheek.

“Find somebody else.”

* * *

A week later, because it was so hot outside, Linda, carrying groceries, decided to take the shortcut through the outside office door to get to their own quarters. As she entered, a set of chimes rang out “O Sole Mio.” She thought they were annoying, but Frank liked them because they’d been a housewarming gift from Connie.

Linda was surprised to see someone sitting at the appointment desk. She was somewhat older than Linda. The woman’s long, thick black hair was piled haphazardly atop her head. Her blue eyes flashed. She obviously liked bright colors. She wore a dropped-shoulder red drawstring blouse and a multicolored dirndl. And high heels. This exotic-seeming woman smiled widely at Linda and reached out her hand. She had a husky voice. “I’m Anna Marie. I’ve known Frankie all his life. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

Linda didn’t return the gesture, so Anna Marie lifted an eyebrow and placed her hand back on the desk.

Linda looked closely. A wedding band.

“I’m helping out temporarily until he finds time to get someone else.”

Linda glanced at her quickly to see if there was disapproval there. If there was, Anna Marie covered it.

Anna Marie reassured her that she wasn’t a threat to the newly wedded Mrs. Lombardi. “I’m married to Frank’s old friend Johnny. We all went to P.S. 93 together and then on to James Monroe High. Frank was the only one of us who went off to college.”

Linda didn’t comment, so Anna Marie had to fill the silence. “He got a scholarship, but you know all that…”

Luckily, Frank walked in from his examining room. He grinned. “At last the two loves of my life meet. I was mad about Anna until Johnny stole her from me,” he said to Linda with a twinkle. “But all’s well. We’re happy, aren’t we?”

Neither woman spoke. Linda was aware that Anna Marie was attempting to evaluate her.

Let her try, she thought.

The chimes were heard again as an elderly lady walked in the front door.

“Ah,” Frank said, “here’s Mrs. Green. Please get her chart, Anna.” With that he went back to his office.

“Nice talking to you,” Anna Marie said sarcastically.

“Yes,” Linda replied, and walked past her to get to the inside apartment entrance.

* * *

In her fog she learned the streets of the neighborhood. A chubby couple, Betty and Burt, ran the luncheonette, called the candy store by one and all. Everyone gathered there. The men came to schmooze and read the sports pages in the Daily News or the New York Post. The young mothers dropped in for black-and-white sodas or a two-cents plain. The younger kids hung out after school, poking playfully at one another like bear cubs. The teenagers flirted and did their mating dance. At one time or another, just about everyone checked in at the candy store for the local gossip.

Linda knew some of the gossip was about her. She imagined them asking, What do you make of her? But she didn’t care what they thought.

The grocery was next door. Murray used the stub of a pencil to add up Linda’s purchases on the brown paper bag, as other customers sized her up. Were they wondering, That Linda, who does she think she is—she stuck up or something? She imagined so.

The butcher was next, and as she waited her turn the women gaped and looked at her brazenly. “Give the pretty doctor’s wife a nice cut, Herman.” This was from a frumpy-looking housewife trying for sarcasm.

I know what you’re thinking. Linda stared back. She some kinda snob? Right? Well, gossip all you want, you’ll get nothing from me. I’ve got nothing to give.

Up and down Watson Avenue the neighborhood lived and breathed. And Linda moved like a shadow, speaking only when spoken to. She was meticulous in her dress. She wore calf-length pencil-slim skirts and simple blouses with matching cardigans. Her hair was page-boy length, her outfits in muted colors. Looking as lifeless as she felt.

Nobody knew of the cancer that grew inside her. A cancer called the Bronx.

* * *

On an occasional Saturday night, when Frank could make time to go out, they spent it with his best friends. Linda had been introduced to Anna Marie’s husband, Johnny. The three buddies were close, sharing childhood memories and private jokes. Frank worried about Linda feeling left out, but she didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes they had dinner at Johnny and Anna Marie’s apartment in Parkchester, in a fairly new development that was considered very classy for the East Bronx. Linda didn’t like to cook so it was their place or eating out.

Tonight they ate at a deli and took in a movie at the Ward Theater. Afterwards, they went for a walk. Anna Marie and Linda lagged behind the men. Typically the guys sauntered ahead to gab about sports and cars and other male subjects and the girls were expected to talk girl stuff.

The guys passed a store that featured sexy underwear. Johnny stopped and whistled at a red bra and matching garter belt. “Whooey. That’s my Christmas present for Anna Marie this year. What about something like that for Linda?”

Frank shook his head. “She’s not the type.”

Johnny finally had to ask. “What type is she—that wife of yours? What’s with her? Can’t she help out and sit in your office? What else does she have to do?”

“She’s different,” Frank told his buddy. “She’s shy and fragile.”

“Crazy. You have to pay Anna Marie a salary when you’re just starting out?”

“I don’t mind.”

Johnny shrugged “Well, it’s your funeral.”

Linda walked with Anna Marie who chatted about items in the windows. She laughed when she saw the red lingerie.

Linda gagged at the sight and stopped short. She felt faint and grabbed for a wall.

“I bet I know what Johnny was saying.” Anna Marie stopped when she realized Linda was no longer beside her. She turned. “Hey.”

“What?” Linda could barely speak. No…no, not those memories…go away…

“What? What’s with you? I’m trying to be friendly and hold up my end of the conversation and I get nothing back. You don’t talk about clothes. Or the movie we just saw, or even Frankie. What goes through that head of yours?”

Linda’s voice was so low that Anna Marie could barely hear her. “All I think about is how to get out of the Bronx.”

* * *

When Linda, to her shock, realized she was pregnant, she didn’t tell Frank. She prayed it would go away. But after watching her race to the bathroom to throw up enough times, and realizing her breasts were swollen, the doctor quickly figured it out. He was thrilled. He started calling her his Madonna. Even though she told him not to, Frank immediately announced the good news to his entire family. Of course, they all wanted to be part of it. Connie took her out to buy maternity clothes, not that she really needed them. She couldn’t keep much food down and stayed thin. Connie’s husband Al worked in a furniture store, so they got baby furniture at a discount.

It didn’t take long for the neighbors to find out, and they got into the act as well, bringing her casseroles so she wouldn’t have to cook. Frank did the cooking after work or Mama Lombardi had food sent over from the restaurant. Mrs. Schwartz brought down her famous Kosher chicken soup. Mrs. Lee from the Chinese laundry carried over her egg drop soup. Mrs. Flanagan made a huge pot of potato soup. The strength and variety of smells made Linda throw up even more. The entire building was involved in trying to keep the doctor’s skinny wife fed.

And the new baby-to-be, clothed. Bassinets were put together. Little blankets were crocheted. And infant sweaters and caps, as well. People were dropping in all the time with their offerings. What little privacy she had was gone.

* * *

Frank surprised her one day by bringing home an insurance policy on his life.

“Why did you do that?” she asked. “I would never ask you to do that.”

He kissed her gently. “Never say never.” As he was about to head to his office, he informed her, “Now that I’ll have a son, I want him protected if anything happens to me.” Frank was sure it would be a boy.

“Frank.”

He turned. “What, my darling little Madonna?”

“I can’t take pain. I’m so afraid.”

He came back and held her close for a moment. “I’ll be nearby, so don’t you worry.” Then he left.

“I can’t stand anymore pain,” she said to the closed door.

* * *

Linda was aware that all the Lombardis were in the waiting room of Monteflore Hospital the night she gave birth. She knew that Frank was pacing worriedly outside the door, as expectant fathers do. What good did it do her? Let him hear his wife screaming. He knew nothing of her pain. He knew nothing about being torn apart so badly, so many times before, that giving birth was a new pain beyond endurance.

The OR nurses tried to hold her down, but she was too strong for them. Arms flailing, the next scream was blood-curdling. “Damn you, Dyre! Damn you!”

“Push!” urged the doctor.

She pushed, her fingernails digging into the sheet, and shouted, “Prospect!” at the top of her lungs.

And at the final push, the pain more horrific than before, “Damn you to hell, Burnside!”

She fainted. When she came to, her doctor was gone and she listened to the nurses talking about her. The one bending over the bassinet that held her six-pound infant girl said, “Did you ever hear anything like that in your life?”

Her partner agreed. “In all my years they yelled for husbands, for God, or cursing, sobbing, and screaming, but I never heard anyone cry out, Dyre.”

“Or Prospect or Burnside. What do you make of it?”

“Who knows? She’s peculiar, that one.”

You don’t want to know, Linda thought. She had dared not call out their names, the ones who murdered her childhood with their foul misuse of her body. Which had they damaged more—her body or her mind? Those foster folks who promised to care for her, who debased her instead. On streets in the Bronx where she had been forced to live. Where her pain had been excruciating and her blood had spilled. She could still see that trembling nine-year-old being forced into sleazy lingerie, her mouth smeared with lipstick, and a monster bearing down on her. But she could shout out those names—that litany of shame—those Bronx street names. Places she thought she had escaped…but there was no escape, was there?

* * *

Baby Frances (no longer Frank, Jr.) was adored by one and all. Frank was driven to work even harder for his darling little girl. He was taking more and more house calls in addition to his full days at the office.

Frank came home one night, shaken, and told Linda that a doctor on Morris Avenue had been shot by a burglar who climbed in his window to get drugs. He lived on the ground floor too.

He showed her the gun he had bought. Linda was shocked. “I would never want that in our apartment. Not with a child.”

He reassured her they’d probably never need it, but for safety’s sake it was going to stay in his bedside drawer. He was going to teach her how to use it. “Besides,” he said, joking, “the gun probably won’t work, knowing Vince’s shady friends who got it for him.” And he reminded her once again, “Never say never. You never know when you might change your mind about something.”

This was her chance and she grabbed at it. “Frank, dear. Now that we have Frances, isn’t it time to leave the city? It’s getting so dangerous. Can’t we move somewhere quiet in the country where Frances will have a better life?…Please?”

“Let me think about it.”

A few days later he told her he had thought about it. He loved the city. It was a great place to grow up. Didn’t he turn out fine? Think of the good schools and the parks. The museums. And all the friendly people. Besides, he didn’t want to deprive his family of closeness to their new grandchild. So the answer was no.

Linda lost all hope.

* * *

Six unhappy months later, she was awakened from her sleep by a sound. Linda turned to Frank’s side of the bed. He wasn’t there; he’d gone out on a house call. It was hard for her to pull herself awake because of the sleeping pills she took every night. She squinted at the alarm clock. It was nearly 2 a.m. It took her a few moments to focus. There was a shadow at the window facing the courtyard. She had forgotten to close the curtains. She stiffened. Someone was there. A nosy neighbor? No, it looked like he was dressed in black. With a pasty white face pressed against the glass.

Linda felt her skin crawl. Covering her head with the blanket, she groped for the phone. With shaking hands, she dialed the operator. Her breath raspy from fatigue and terror, she whispered, “Call the police. A prowler, someone’s in my courtyard.” She gave the operator her address. Moments later, the operator said the police were on their way.

Linda’s heart hammered against her chest as she peered over the blanket. The prowler was gone. She bolted out to the baby’s room. Thank God, she’s asleep! She stared at little Frances in her crib. Her throat tightened, on the verge of sobbing. I’ll never let anyone hurt you. Never.

Why wasn’t her husband here to protect her when she needed him?

Linda had no idea how long she had been standing at the crib when the police arrived. They searched the courtyard, and all around the building, found nothing. They were blasé—routine stuff for them. They told her not to worry—probably some passing neighbor or a Peeping Tom—they’re harmless. He was probably miles away by now.

Suddenly she remembered the gun, and suddenly she wanted the police to get out. When they left, she hurried to their bedroom and removed it from Frank’s drawer and held it. She thought of the life insurance policy. Never say never, he’d said. She giggled. And Frank was always right. It’s now or never.

Moving as if in a trance, she took a towel and wrapped her iron in it and opened the kitchen window. She reached outside and smashed in the other side of the window, making sure the glass fell inward.

Linda stood in the kitchen for what seemed like hours. When she heard Frank’s key in the lock, she dialed the police again. “Hurry,” she sobbed, “the prowler’s come back!”

Frank was surprised to see her. “What are you doing up so late?” When Frank moved toward her, she raised the gun and fired.

* * *

Frank had been right about Vince’s contacts. The gun was faulty and it exploded, killing Linda as Frank watched in horror.

The family tearfully buried her in a nearby cemetery. All the neighbors came to pay their respects.

Linda had also been right. She knew the Bronx would never let her go. She would be stuck there for all eternity.

PART II

IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT

RUDE AWAKENING

BY LAWRENCE BLOCK

Riverdale

She woke up abruptly—click! Like that, no warmup, no transition, no ascent into consciousness out of a dream. She was just all at once awake, brain in gear, all of her senses operating but sight. Her eyes were closed, and she let them remain that way for a moment while she picked up what information her other senses could provide.

She felt the cotton sheet under her, smooth. A good hand, a high thread count. Her host, then, wasn’t a pauper, and had the good taste to equip himself with decent bed linen. She didn’t feel a top sheet, felt only the air on her bare skin. Cool, dry air, air-conditioned air.

Whisper-quiet too. Probably central air-conditioning, because she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear much, really. A certain amount of city noise, through windows that were no doubt shut to let the central air do its work. But less of it than she’d have heard in her own Manhattan apartment.

And the energy level here was more muted than you would encounter in Manhattan. Hard to say what sense provided this information, and she supposed it was probably some combination of them all, some unconscious synthesis of taste and touch and smell and hearing that let you know you were in one of the outer boroughs.

Memory filled in the rest. She’d taken the 1 train clear to the end of the line, following Broadway up into the Bronx, and she’d gone to a couple of bars in Riverdale, both of them nice preppy places where the bartenders didn’t look puzzled when you ordered a Dog’s Breakfast or a Sunday Best. And then…

Well, that’s where it got a little fuzzy.

She still had taste and smell to consult. Taste, well, the taste in her mouth was the taste of morning, and all it did was make her want to brush her teeth. Smell was more complicated. There would have been more to smell without airconditioning, more to smell if the humidity were higher, but nevertheless there was a good deal of information available. She noted perspiration, male and female, and sex smells.

He was right there, she realized. In the bed beside her. If she reached out a hand she could touch him.

For a moment, though, she let her hand stay where it was, resting on her hip. Eyes still closed, she tried to bring his image into focus, even as she tried to embrace her memory of the later portion of the evening. She didn’t know where she was, not really. She managed to figure out that she was in a relatively new apartment building, and she figured it was probably in Riverdale. But she couldn’t be sure of that. He might have had a car, and he might have brought her almost anywhere. Westchester County, say.

Bits and pieces of memory hovered at the edge of thought. Shreds of small talk, but how could she know what was from last night and what was bubbling up from past evenings? Sense impressions: a male voice, a male touch on her upper arm.

She’d recognize him if she opened her eyes. She couldn’t picture him, not quite, but she’d know him when her eyes had a chance to refresh her memory.

Not yet.

She reached out a hand, touched him.

She had just registered the warmth of his skin when he spoke.

“Sleeping beauty,” he said.

Her eyes snapped open, wide open, and her pulse raced.

“Easy,” he said. “My God, you’re terrified, aren’t you? Don’t be. Everything’s all right.”

He was lying on his side facing her. And yes, she recognized him. Dark hair, arresting blue eyes under arched brows, a full-lipped mouth, a strong jawline. His nose had been broken once and imperfectly reset, and that saved him from being male-model handsome.

Late thirties, maybe eight or ten years her senior. A good body. A little chest hair, but not too much. Broad shoulders. A stomach flat enough to show a six-pack of abs.

No wonder she’d left the bar with him.

And she remembered leaving the bar. They’d walked, so she was probably in Riverdale. Unless they’d walked to his car. Could she remember any more?

“You don’t remember, do you?”

Reading her mind. And how was she supposed to answer that one?

She tried for an ironic smile. “I’m a little fuzzy,” she said.

“I’m not surprised.”

“Oh?”

“You were hitting the Cosmos pretty good. I had the feeling, you know, that you might be in a blackout.”

“Really? What did I do?”

“Nothing they’d throw you in jail for.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“You didn’t stagger or slur your words, and you were able to form complete sentences. Grammatical ones too.”

“The nuns would be proud of me.”

“I’m sure they would. Except…”

“Except they wouldn’t like to see me waking up in a strange bed.”

“I’m not sure how liberal they’re getting these days,” he said. “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Oh.”

“You didn’t know where you were, did you? When you opened your eyes.”

“Not right away.”

“Do you know now?”

“Well, sure,” she said. “I’m here. With you.”

“Do you know where here is? Or who I am?”

Should she make something up? Or would the truth be easier?

“I don’t remember getting in a car,” she said, “and I do remember walking, so my guess is we’re in Riverdale.”

“But it’s a guess.”

“Well, couldn’t we call it an educated guess? Or at least an informed one?”

“Either way,” he said, “it’s right. We walked here, and we’re in Riverdale.”

“So I got that one right. But why wouldn’t the nuns be proud of me?”

“Forget the nuns, okay?”

“They’re forgotten.”

“Look, I don’t want to get preachy. And it’s none of my business. But if you’re drinking enough to leave big gaps in your memory, well, how do you know who you’re going home with?”

Whom, she thought. The nuns wouldn’t be proud of you, buster.

She said, “It worked out all right, didn’t it? I mean, you’re an okay guy. So I guess my judgment was in good enough shape when we hooked up.”

“Or you were lucky.”

“Nothing wrong with getting lucky.” She grinned as she spoke the line, but he remained serious.

“There are a lot of guys out there,” he said, “who aren’t okay. Predators, nut cases, bad guys. If you’d gone home with one of those—”

“But I didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know? Well, here we are, both of us, and…What do you mean, how do I know?”

“Do you remember my name?”

“I’d probably recognize it if I heard it.”

“Suppose I say three names, and you pick the one that’s mine.”

“What do I get if I’m right?”

“What do you want?”

“A shower.”

This time he grinned. “It’s a deal. Three names? Hmmm. Peter. Harley. Joel.”

“Look into my eyes,” she said, “and say them again. Slowly.”

“What are you, a polygraph? Peter. Harley. Joel.”

“You’re Joel.”

“I’m Peter.”

“Hey, I was close.”

“Two more tries,” he said, “and you’d have had it for sure. You told me your name was Jennifer.”

“Well, I got that one right.”

“And you told me to call you Jen.”

“And did you?’

“Did I what?”

“Call me Jen.”

“Of course. I can take direction.”

“Are you an actor?”

“As sure as my name is Joel. Why would you…Oh, because I said I could take direction? Actually, I had ambitions in that direction, but by the time I got out of college I smartened up. I work on Wall Street.”

“All the way downtown. What time is it?”

“A little after 10.”

“Don’t you have to be at your desk by 9?” “Not on Saturday.”

“Oh, right. Uh, Peter…or do I call you Pete?”

“Either one.”

“Awkward question coming up. Did we…”

“We did,” he said, “and it was memorable for one of us.”

“Oh.”

“I felt a little funny about it, because I had the feeling you weren’t entirely present. But your body was really into it, no matter where your mind was, and, well…”

“We had a good time?”

“A very good time. And, just so that you don’t have to worry, we took precautions.”

“That’s good to know.”

“And then you, uh, passed out.”

“I did?”

“It was a little scary. You just went out like a light. For a minute I thought, I don’t know…”

“That I was dead,” she supplied.

“But you were breathing, so I ruled that out.”

“That keen analytical mind must serve you well on Wall Street.”

“I tried to wake you,” he said, “but you were gone. So I let you sleep. And then I fell asleep myself, and, well, here we are.”

“Naked and unashamed.” She yawned, stretched. “Look,” she said, “I’m going to treat myself to a shower, even if I didn’t win the right in the Name That Stud contest. Don’t go away, okay?”

* * *

The bathroom had a window, and one look showed that she was on a high floor, with a river view. She showered, and washed her hair with his shampoo. Then she borrowed his toothbrush and brushed her teeth diligently, and gargled with a little mouthwash.

When she emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in the big yellow towel, the aroma of fresh coffee led her into the kitchen, where he’d just finished filling two cups. He was wearing a white terry robe with a nautical motif, dark blue anchors embroidered on the pockets. His soft leather slippers were wine-colored.

Gifts, she thought. Men didn’t buy those things for themselves, did they?

“I made coffee,” he said.

“So I see.”

“There’s cream and sugar, if you take it.”

“Just black is fine.” She picked up her cup, breathed in the steam that rose from it. “I might live,” she announced. “Do you sail?”

“Sail?”

“The robe. Anchors aweigh and all that.”

“Oh. I suppose I could, because I don’t get seasick or anything. But no, I don’t sail. I have another robe, if you’d be more comfortable.”

“With anchors? Actually, I’m comfortable enough like this.”

“Okay.”

“But if I wanted to be even more comfortable…” She let the towel drop to the floor, noted with satisfaction the way his eyes widened. “How about you? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you got rid of that sailor suit?”

* * *

Afterward she propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “I feel much much better now,” she announced.

“The perfect hangover cure?”

“No, the shower and the coffee took care of the hangover. This let me feel better about myself. I mean, the idea of hooking up and not remembering it…”

“You’ll remember this, you figure?”

“You bet. What about you, Peter? Will you remember?”

“Till my dying day.”

“I’d better get dressed and head on home.”

“And I can probably use a shower,” he said. “Unless you want to…”

“You go ahead. I’ll have another cup of coffee while you’re in there.”

Her clothes were on the chair, and she dressed quickly, then picked up her purse and checked its contents. The little glassine envelope was still in there, and unopened.

God, she’d been drunk.

She went into the kitchen, poured herself more coffee, and considered what was left in the pot. No, leave it, she thought, and turned her attention to the bottle of vodka on the sinkboard.

Had they had drinks when they got to his place? Probably. There were two glasses next to the bottle, and he hadn’t gotten around to washing them.

What a shock he’d given her! The touch, the unexpected warmth of his skin. And then his voice.

She hadn’t expected that.

She uncapped the bottle, opened the glassine envelope, poured its contents in with the vodka. The crystals dissolved immediately. She replaced the cap on the bottle, returned the empty envelope to her purse.

* * *

She made her cup of coffee last until he was out of the shower and dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, which was evidently what a Wall Street guy wore on the weekend. “I’ll get out of your hair now,” she told him. “And I’m sorry about last night. I’m going to make it a point not to get quite that drunk again.”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for, Jen. You were running a risk, that’s all. For your own sake—”

“I know.”

“Hang on and I’ll walk you to the subway.”

She shook her head. “Really, there’s no need. I can find it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“If you say so. Uh, can I have your number?”

“You really want it?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

“Next time I won’t pass out. I promise.”

He handed her a pen and a notepad, and she wrote down her area code, 212, and picked seven digits at random to keep it company. And then they kissed, and he said something sweet, and she said something clever in response, and she was out the door.

The streets were twisty and weird in that part of Riverdale, but she asked directions and somebody pointed her toward the subway. She waited on the elevated platform and thought about how shocked she’d been when she opened her eyes.

Because he was supposed to be dead. That was how it worked—she put something in the guy’s drink and it took effect one or two hours later. After they’d had sex, after he’d dozed off or not. His heart stopped, and that was that.

Usually she’d stay awake herself, and a couple of times she’d been able to watch it happen. Then, when he was gone, she’d go through the apartment at leisure and take what was worth taking.

It worked like a charm. But it only worked if you put the crystals in the guy’s drink, and if you were too drunk to manage that, well, you woke up and there he was.

Bummer.

Sooner or later, she thought, he’d take the cap off the vodka bottle. Today or tomorrow or next week, whenever he got around to it. And he’d take a drink, and one or two hours later he’d be cooling down to room temperature. She wouldn’t be there to scoop up his cash or go through his dresser drawers, but that was all right. The money wasn’t really the point.

Maybe he’d have some other girl with him. Maybe they’d both have a drink before hitting the mattress, and they could die in each other’s arms. Like Romeo and Juliet, sort of.

Or maybe she’d have a drink and he wouldn’t. That would be kind of interesting, when he tried to explain it all to the cops.

A pity she couldn’t be a fly on the wall. But she’d find out what happened. Sooner or later, there’d be something in the papers. All she had to do was wait for it.

BURNOUT

BY SUZANNE CHAZIN

Jerome Avenue

When does something happen for the last time? Do you get a sign that Mike Boyle missed somewheres? For sure, it was that way with Gina. One minute, they were doing the usual dance—fighting and screaming and her throwing the lasagna pan at him and then making up and making out and all the sweet heat in between. And then bam, it’s all different. Like a Yankee’s pitching streak gone south. Instead of throwing the pan, she throws his duffel bag. “Go live with your other family!” she yells. “You like them better anyways.” She means the guys down at the firehouse on Jerome Avenue. That was six weeks ago. Forty-three days. More than a thousand hours and counting. And sex wasn’t the only thing that died for Mike Boyle that night. Something else died too—something even more important, if there was such a thing.

Mike Boyle forgot how to sleep.

Oh, he could lie down on his bunk. He could slip blinders over his eyes to shut out the fluorescents that automatically flick on when there’s a run. He could stuff foam plugs in his ears to mute the peal of sirens and the deep throttle of the diesel engines. But the plugs were about as useful as a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. Who could stop noise that reverberated through every pore of your body? If it wasn’t the static-charged dispatch reports over the department airwaves, then it was the gut-wrenching roar of the roof saws the firefighters started every morning. Or the air horn jackhammering the nerves as the truck or engine (this was a double house) barreled out of quarters. Slamming lockers. Ringing phones. Guys snoring. Guys farting. Rufus, the firehouse dog, barking. All of it twenty-four-seven in the tiled echo chamber of an FDNY firehouse.

“You look like hell,” Captain Russo had told Mike just before he started his shift the other evening. Mike was at the kitchen table, slumped over a chipped mug of coffee, stirring in spoonfuls of Cremora. Whole worlds of thought went into each swirl so that when he finally looked up at the captain, it seemed he was being lip-synced in a foreign film.

“I’m good,” said Mike, already unsure what remarks he was addressing. He noticed he had difficulty following conversations these days. Time seemed to compress and expand randomly, like pulled taffy. Espresso—that’s what he’d ask the guys to buy next time they shopped on Arthur Avenue. Maybe a dark roast that he could drink with a little lemon peel the way some of the old Italians who still live over in Belmont do. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his pants pocket and lit one, watching the smoke curl upwards, a gray plume to go with the white one in his coffee. Smoking was banned in city firehouses. It said so right on the bulletin board behind him—the one with all the burn marks in it. There are city laws. And then there are firehouse laws.

“Don’t you have some place besides the firehouse to stay?” the captain pressed. “I mean, look at you. This is no life.”

Even in the best of times, Mike Boyle never looked robust. He was Irish pale—with skin like gauze that showed every blotch, from the flush of a single beer to the shadows of a little missed sleep. His fine hair—maybe blond, maybe brown, depending on the light—tended to take the shape of any pillow or fire helmet that laid claim to it. He’d taken to wearing his navy-blue uniform pants and T-shirts around the clock, even sleeping in them.

“I’d rather stay here,” said Mike. Moving someplace—in with his brother Patrick’s family in Yonkers, or his sister Mary and her tight-ass lawyer of a husband over in Riverdale—that would mean this thing with Gina was real. If he stayed in the firehouse, time would stand still. A watch just waiting for a new battery. All he had to do was stick it out a little longer.

Captain Russo started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He was a dinosaur in the department—one of the last around to recall the Bronx of the 1970s and early ’80s, when whole blocks blazed like Roman candles, and firefighters sucked down equal parts black smoke and Budweiser on every tour. Whether it was smoking or leaving your wife, he wasn’t inclined to argue the particulars of how any man lived his life.

And besides, on shifts at least, Mike was still pulling his weight. He pumped himself full of nicotine and caffeine and kept busy—making beds, fixing meals, washing the rig. When the alarm sounded, the adrenaline kicked in. Break a window, cut a hole in a roof, climb a ladder, take a door. As anyone who’s seen combat will tell you, you can pretty much keep going when the shit hits the fan. It was the empty, off-duty hours that were killing him. Even the simplest tasks seemed monumental. He started to toast a bagel one day, then watched with no particular interest as black ribbons of smoke emanated from the toaster. It was Tig—firefighter Jimmy Francesco—who unplugged the toaster and fished the cremated bagel out. All the while Mike just watched, not even sure if he’d really been hungry in the first place. When a firefighter in the engine company mentioned that he was going in the hospital for stomach surgery, Mike found himself daydreaming about the man’s anesthesia. Right now, he’d gladly trade a gut full of staples for a few hours of blankness.

When the insomnia first hit, Mike fought it by driving his car up to his former house—a semi-attached stucco in Woodlawn across from the cemetery. He parked across the street and imagined Gina inside sleeping, wrapped up in one of his old FDNY T-shirts. Except she wasn’t—not one night anyway. She never came home. Then his car got stolen—he’d parked it too far from the firehouse doors. (The guys on duty got first dibs on the “safe” spots.) That ended his evening excursions.

“If my wife kicked me out, I’d go home and beat the crap out of her.” Marital advice from Chuck of all people, the senior man in Ladder 123. Twenty-two years in the same firehouse and he still insisted on driving the rig all the way over to Arthur Avenue to buy groceries from the Italians. “I don’t buy from these,” he’d say, bringing the flat of his hand in front of his face: firehouse code for blacks. Chuck’s real name wasn’t Charles. It was Harry. Harry McGreevy. Chuck was short for “chuckles,” firehouse black humor. No one ever accused Harry McGreevy of being lighthearted. To Chuck, women were whores or lesbians, kids were parasites (he should know, he had five, all grown with two still living at home in Throgs Neck), and the city was personally out to screw him. His hobby was writing up parking tickets (a power no other firefighter in Mike’s memory had ever invoked). And he spent much of every tour talking about his theory that intelligence was inversely related to how close your ancestors lived to the equator. Mike wondered whether that meant people in the Bronx had a leg up over the other boroughs, but he wasn’t taking bets on it.

“My church runs a prayer group for couples.” More advice. This time from Frankie Bones—a.k.a., Frank Bonaventura—the biggest guy in the firehouse. Six-foot-four, three hundred and fifty pounds, he looked like a Mafia enforcer out of central casting and used to have a reputation to match. But about ten years ago, Bones and his wife found Jesus and it had transformed him entirely. Of course, the joke around the firehouse was that if Frankie Bones went looking for you, you’d better damn well be found.

“I’m not religious,” Mike reminded him.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“None more mysterious than you,” Chuck told Bones. Being senior, Chuck could say anything he wanted, even to Bones.

“Hey, man,” Jimmy Francesco piped up, “you can stay at my place.”

It figured that Tig, of all the firefighters, would make the offer. Francesco was everyone’s favorite firefighter, nicknamed after the Disney character Tigger because he was always bouncing around, ready for action. Too much action, as Mike saw it now. If his hands weren’t slapping his thighs, then he was doing a drumroll on the table. Or stroking the ever-needy Rufus. Tig had been a cop briefly before joining the FDNY, but no one could picture him arresting people. If he ever managed to collar some gangbanger, he’d have probably let him off with some cheery Disney advice like, Don’t do that again, buddy boy, okaly-dokely?

“We’ve got the spare bedroom,” said Tig. “At least until the baby comes.”

Mike watched Tig doing a drumroll on the table and wondered what twenty-four hours of that would feel like. Wondered how his wife stood it. A baby thumping at her insides, a husband doing the same from without.

“Naw. Thanks anyway. I’m good.”

Well, maybe not good. But insomnia did have its up side, even if it seemed to take longer and longer for Mike to tie his shoes or fit together two lengths of hose. The less sleep he got, the more he noticed he could manage without it. Had he really been spending a third of his life in willing oblivion? Death before death, as he saw it now. He watched firefighters napping in their bunks, people dozing on the subways, and he studied them with almost scientific detachment. They were dying every day and they didn’t even know it, slipping into their own private heaven and hell. Maybe that’s all heaven and hell was anyway, a longer bit of sleep.

“I’m flling for separation,” Gina told him over the pay phone at the firehouse one day. “I think we should call your folks.”

The morning crew was testing the saws and two other guys were arguing the Yankees batting lineup, so it took him a minute to process the news.

“Was it the uniform?” he asked finally.

“What?”

“The uniform. My coat. My helmet. The big red truck that went ding ding through your neighborhood?”

“You’re not making any sense, Mike.”

“You get turned on by a little Nomex cloth and plastic?”

She said something after that, but Mike couldn’t hear. The guys on duty had a run. Curses. Shouts. Feet slapping the rubber mat as they slid down the pole. The diesel throttling. The gears in the apparatus door cranking away as they rolled up to reveal the hot, steamy August morning heat and the vague smell of urine on the pavement.

“You even know who I am?” He wasn’t sure if he’d said those words or just thought them before hanging up. It was hard to tell over the noise.

For a blessed moment after the truck pulled away, it seemed to suck all the noise with it. He didn’t feel the rumble of the Jerome Avenue elevated overhead or the honk and grind of buses and gypsy cabs on the blistering street. Then the great doors closed again and he felt for one panicked moment like he was drowning.

He needed a cup of coffee. (Gotta get that espresso with the lemon peel.) And a couple of smokes too. And then what? The rush would last twenty minutes tops, then he’d forget how to connect a hose, or which way the walkie-talkie batteries went in. He’d write the wrong month in the housewatch book. He’d dial the wrong combination to his locker.

What he needed was to get out. But without wheels, his options were limited. This was Tremont, after all. What wasn’t paved over in housing projects and six-story crackerbox apartments was covered with storefront strips of check cashing joints, bodegas, liquor stores, and Pentecostal churches. The heat made the days untenable. And at night, what pale-faced Irishman was likely to feel at home here?

It was Rufus who finally drove him out. Rufus, that rangy, bowlegged mutt who suffered the animal equivalent of a panic attack every time the firefighters left on a run. Mike couldn’t sleep when the firefighters were in quarters and Rufus couldn’t sleep when they were out. A walk would do them both good.

So he tied a length of rope around Rufus’s collar late that night and off they went, the dog—part retriever, part Sherman tank—gleeful at their escape. Rufus plowed along the boulevard with the determined gusto of an evangelist. He liked everyone—toddlers in soggy underwear dancing under the sprays of uncapped fire hydrants; fat old women in housedresses drinking beer on tenement stoops; drunks slugging it out for the right to bed down under an overpass. None of it tired him out. Or Mike, for that matter. But it did give him an odd feeling of liberation to be crisscrossing housing projects at 2 a.m., sidestepping the hulking young men with looks as sharp as razor wire.

He called Gina when he got back. Woke her up. At least she was there. He felt giddy and a little breathless from his walk.

“You had no idea who I was, did you?”

“Who else would call me at this hour?”

“I mean when I first asked you out.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You’d met me twice. Through your cousin Maria. And you still didn’t know who I was when I asked you out.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Four and a half years is not a long time ago.” He found himself gulping for air. He hadn’t walked that hard. Maybe it was panic. He had the same sensation when he crawled down a smoke-charged hallway. He was heading into something he couldn’t see that would only do him harm. “You know when you remembered me? When I told you I was Mike the firefighter.”

“So?”

“Like I said, it was about the coat. It was always about the coat.”

“Mike?” Her voice was hoarse and tentative. “I’ve met someone.”

He hung up. He’d bailed out of enough windows to know something about outrunning flames. No point in standing there, letting yourself get burned. Maybe she would call back and tell him it was all a mistake. Maybe she would be tearful and apologetic. For the first time in nearly seven weeks he longed for noise, and that damn phone never made a sound. He was shadow-boxing with himself.

* * *

“Hey, Mikey,” Chuck growled the next morning, “you want to be target practice for the natives, go ahead. But Rufus doesn’t need any shell-casings as souvenirs.”

“I thought a walk would help me sleep.”

“They put a bullet through you, brother, you’ll sleep. Trust me.”

Tig got him alone in the locker room the next day—they were on the same shift—and handed him a gym bag. “If you’re gonna walk around this neighborhood all hours, least you should do is take this.” Inside was Tig’s old NYPD windbreaker and an authentic-looking replica of his badge. All the guys had replicas made so they could keep the real ones at home. That way, if you lost it, you wouldn’t face departmental charges.

“Thanks,” said Mike, stuffing the bag in his locker. He felt guilty he wasn’t more appreciative of Tig’s generosity, then angry that Tig never seemed to notice. The man was awash in admiration, the sun in all its glory. What difference was the light of one more star?

“I figured most people will think twice before messing with a cop,” said Tig. “Just don’t let it get out that I did this, okay? I shouldn’t have a copy of my badge when I don’t have the real one anymore. The PD might get sore at me.”

“I’m good,” said Mike. Whatever that meant. It was all he could manage of conversation these days. Lately, he’d begun to confuse words, calling Bones’s decision to become a Jesus groupie his “salivation,” and Chuck’s worldviews, somewhere to the right of the Michigan Militia, his “egotistical theory.” Not that those interpretations were entirely incorrect. Still, it irked him the way his thoughts seemed to fly around like mosquitoes these days, tormenting and annoying him, without the sweet reprieve of sleep.

Mike continued his walks alone at night. Of course, in Tremont alone was a relative term. Even at 3 a.m., salsa and rap blared from open windows along with the smell of fried porkchops, rice and beans. Beer bottles shattered on concrete. Dirty diapers dropped off the edges of fire escapes. Car alarms whooped. Trains rumbled overhead. Babies wailed. Fights spilled out of doorways like liquid mercury, carried along on whatever current picked them up.

No one bothered Mike. The NYPD jacket and badge probably helped. But he suspected he inhabited the jacket the same way he inhabited his turnout coat. He wasn’t a cop any more than he was a firefighter. Not in his marrow—not like some of the guys. Not like Tig. He knew this when he saw Tig lower himself unflinchingly into a fire-charged room or push forward when his alarm told him he had just minutes of air left in his tank. Never a minute of self-doubt or hesitation. Three fucking years in the FDNY and the guy was more of a firefighter than Mike, with his ten, would ever be. And the goddamn prick slept well too.

Was there a connection here? Mike wondered. Lose the fear of death and you lose the fear of sleep? For what was death, really, but a longer, richer cousin?

He needed a place to test his hypothesis. He didn’t have to look far: Jerome Avenue, a test of nerves if ever there was one. One wide lane of traffic in each direction. Double-parked cars that made pedestrians nearly impossible to notice. Badly timed lights. Third World gypsy cab drivers who thought stopping on red was merely a suggestion. Four people had died in the past six months crossing near his firehouse. The guys had taken to tying Rufus up on nice nights so he wouldn’t decide to follow the rigs and end up as roadkill.

* * *

Two nights later, at dusk, when traffic was at its peak, Mike crossed against the light. His heart thumped, his bowels turned to jelly, but it did not help him sleep. The next night he was off, he hopped onto the Jerome Avenue elevated tracks, just to see how long he could stand there before he lost his nerve. Again, his limbs quivered when he heard the approaching train and felt the vibrations along the tracks. Again, he shivered and sweated, felt his bowels go weak and a giddiness overtake him as he scrambled up the filthy concrete wall that separated the tracks from the platform. But sleep did not overtake him. Both the engine and truck went out all night for small fires, false alarms, and medical emergencies. Short of being in a coma, there was no way to sleep through an air horn.

Still, Mike felt convinced there was something to his hypothesis. If only he could find the right test of nerves. The third night he was off, he set a fire in a trash can at the back of a five-story tenement under demolition. The lot was rimmed in razor wire, but a set of bolt cutters, borrowed from the firehouse, cut through the chain-link cleanly.

The tenement, still imposing from the street, was a shell at the back. No windows or doors. Just a warren of crumbling plaster rooms held up, it seemed, by iron scaffolding and plank walkways. A brace on a withering limb.

The plan had been to set the fire, see how long he could take the heat, then extinguish the flames. But it didn’t work out that way. The flames burned hotter and higher than Mike had intended. They latched onto one of the overhead planks on the scaffolding, then curled around it like an old woman’s fingers. Gray-black smoke snuffed out the reflected glow of streetlamps, leaving Mike confused and disoriented as he stumbled backwards over mattress springs and old tires. When he regained his bearings, he became aware of a new light. It was pale and flickering at first, but it was growing inside one of the second-story windows.

He had become so used to the sirens, it took him a full minute to understand that the rigs he was used to seeing from the back were now barreling toward him, lights ricocheting like gunfire off the surrounding low-level buildings. Smoke was churning out of the second-story window now. There was nothing Mike could do but run. He tossed the bolt cutters in some weeds and scrambled over to the hole in the fence. His foot caught the remains of a shopping cart and he stumbled, bruising an elbow and knee in the fall. He didn’t even feel the pain as he climbed through the fence, then ran down a narrow gap between a bodega and a liquor store. He felt certain that at any moment he’d feel the thud of a fist on his back—Chuck’s probably. Somebody from the firehouse had to have seen him. What could he say? What had he done?

It took less than five minutes to reach the firehouse, but it seemed like an eternity. Both rigs were out. A firefighter on housewatch had recorded a 10–75, FDNY code for a working fire. Mike could hear the dispatch reports across the department radio. Box 4311—he’d remember that number for the rest of his life. It was a second alarm now. Fifteen companies. A hundred and twenty men and a deputy chief to boot. Jeez, he was up to his eyeballs in this one.

He couldn’t just be here waiting when the guys returned. Should he call a lawyer? The union rep? He walked into the locker room and stared into his hands. Did they smell of smoke? He couldn’t be sure given the pervasive odor of mildew and chlorine disinfectant. Were there telltale burns? He looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot. He needed a shave. His left elbow and knee had begun to swell slightly but the discomfort was nothing compared to the dizziness and nausea that had overtaken his body. He stumbled to the bunk room and collapsed on his bunk. No rigs. No firefighters. Even Rufus, for once, stayed away.

* * *

It was five hours before he awoke—the longest sleep he’d had since he left Gina. He couldn’t recall where he was. A shaft of morning sunlight shot across the bunk room, illuminating dust motes in the air. Tig was drinking a cup of coffee and checking his work calendar in his locker.

“Hey, Mikey, ten minutes more and I was gonna check you for a pulse. We’re on duty at oh-nine-hundred, you know.”

Mike tried to speak, but his throat felt as scratchy as the city-issued wool blanket across his bed. His elbow and knee were tender to the touch.

“I hear we both missed a good fire last night. At that vacant on Tremont Avenue. It went to three alarms.”

“Shit.” Mike closed his eyes. He’d been hoping he’d dreamed that. “Anyone hurt?”

“I think a couple of the usuals tapped out. Back injuries. But you know a lot of that stuff is bullshit.”

“Ummm.” Mike studied Tig tapping a pencil on his work calendar. Tig wasn’t the subtle type. If he suspected anything, he could never have hidden it this well. Then again, he wasn’t on duty last night. They were both working the exact same schedule.

“Are the fire marshals investigating it?”

“Probably. We just put the suckers out. The rest is somebody else’s problem, right?” Tig frowned at him. Mike’s hands were shaking. “You gotta get out of this firehouse, my friend.”

“I get out.”

“I mean for real. They ever find your car?”

Mike shook his head no.

“I got a friend at the police impound lot. Sometimes stolen cars end up there and it takes awhile before anyone gets around to letting the owner know. I’ll give him a call, see if he can find out anything.”

Downstairs, Mike’s presence was regarded with the usual mix of blank stares and indifference. No fire marshals came to the firehouse. No one asked where Mike had been last night or what he’d been doing. No one seemed to miss the bolt cutters. Only Mike felt strange. Clenched and claustrophobic—like he was breathing through a straw. But as the day wore on, as he went into his next tour and the next night with no sleep, only the dull ache of his elbow and knee for company, he began to look back longingly on those few hours when he made the trucks and firefighters and noise go away. He—Mike Boyle, a ghost in his own firehouse—he controlled the shots. Not Tig or Chuck or Captain Russo or some staff chief downtown. They only reacted.

Oh that sweet, sweet sleep. Why couldn’t he get it back? There were other runs that kept the men out, but some of them were during the day when it was too hot to sleep, even with the ancient air conditioners running full blast. Others came during maintenance checks or bouts of Rufus’s barking or times when the guys left food on the stove and told Mike to keep an eye on it. What he needed was a working fire he could count on. A good three-alarmer after midnight. No casualties. Just fire and plenty of it.

So he set one. At E-Z Discount Furniture on Fordham Road. Ten years of fighting fires had given Mike Boyle a pretty good idea how to start them. Ventilation systems were good. Just pry off a cover, stick a road flare and a little kerosene down a shaft, and let it simmer for ten minutes. E-Z was just that. It yielded six hours of uninterrupted sleep. Belmont Air-Conditioning and Appliances was good for another four. They’d ripped Tig off on a busted air conditioner he’d bought a few weeks ago, so Mike felt especially good about gutting their store. A track fire in the subway netted another three and a half.

* * *

“Hey Mikey, my friend found your car.” Tig waved a piece of paper in his face. Typical Tig, he couldn’t just write down the information, he had to doodle all over the page and get his smudge prints on everything. “It’s down at the impound lot like I figured. It got stripped for parts, but it wasn’t totaled, at least. Your insurance will probably pay for the damage. Just tell them your friend Jimmy Francesco sent you and there won’t be any hassles.” Tig handed Mike the slip of paper with a phone number and his friend’s name down at the impound lot. “Now that you’ll have your wheels back, you’ll be able to find a place to settle down.”

“I don’t want the car.”

“You’re buying a new car?”

“I’m not buying any car. Gina holds the insurance. Let her get it towed to Woodlawn. I don’t need it.”

“You can’t live here forever.”

“So now you’re going to tell me where I can live?”

Tig’s face tightened, like he’d just taken a punch. “Take it easy, Mikey. Everybody’s just worried about you.”

“Maybe you’re the one they should be worried about.”

* * *

Captain Russo tried talking to Mike later. So did Chuck. And Frankie Bones. But no one wanted to be the one to force a brother out of the firehouse.

Except Rufus. He was the one thing—the one hairy, smelly thing—that still stood between Mike Boyle and a perfect night’s sleep. Mike tried tying Rufus up, but that made him whine. He tried locking him in the basement weight room, but that made him bark. The stupid dog ruined a perfectly good 10–75 Mike had set at a laundromat. The fire would’ve given him a good five or six hours if Rufus hadn’t loused it up.

It was the dog or him.

So one hot night in late August when the guys were on a run, Mike took Rufus on one last walk. Along Jerome Avenue. Without a leash.

* * *

“How did this happen?” Chuck’s voice actually cracked when he asked the question. Mike had to admit he was a little surprised to see the inventor of the equatorial theory, a man who considered Hitler one of the world’s greatest leaders, broken up about a stray mutt.

The guys avoided Mike after that. Even Tig kept his distance. Mike didn’t care. He wasn’t leaving, and that was all there was to it. He wasn’t scared of anything anymore. Not Gina leaving him. Not fighting fires. Not charges from Captain Russo or pressure from Bones. He wasn’t even scared the day two fire marshals came around the firehouse asking to speak to him.

“You know why we’re here, don’t you?”

“I believe I do,” said Mike evenly. They had called him up to Captain Russo’s office, a boxy little room with one grimy window overlooking the street. They had asked the captain to leave.

“We found an NYPD jacket and badge and a scrap of paper with the number of a police impound lot. It was all there, stuffed into a trash can near the ruins of Belmont Air-Conditioning and Appliances.”

“Really?”

“You know who it might belong to?”

“Should I?”

The two marshals looked at each other. “We’d like to talk to you—privately—at headquarters, if you don’t mind.”

Mike walked over to the window. A black sedan was parked below with the motor running. “Is it air-conditioned?”

“Headquarters?”

“Your car?”

“Of course. The trip to Metrotech in Brooklyn is likely to take at least an hour and a half in this traffic.”

“And dark?”

“The car? We have tinted windows, if that’s what you mean.”

“And quiet?”

“See for yourself,” suggested one of the marshals.

Mike Boyle followed the men downstairs to the backseat of the car and stepped inside. The vinyl was deliciously cold. A gentle purring of frosty air hummed out of the vents. The department radio had been thoughtfully turned down. One of the marshals stepped in beside him and closed the door. A tiny puff of air escaped, giving Mike the impression that the whole compartment was hermetically sealed. The outside noise—the subway, the car alarms, the sirens—all ceased.

“Do you know any reason why James Francesco would want to set all those fires?” asked the marshal who’d stepped in beside him.

“Tig? Oh, I have my theories,” said Mike, settling into the seat. He tilted his head back so his neck rested on the icy vinyl. His sweat condensed instantly and a chill rolled down his spine. “People who sleep well don’t fear death, you know. They’re always the ones to watch.” Then he closed his eyes and gave into the sensation of falling from a great height and landing onto something so soft, he could stay like this forever.

THE CHEERS LIKE WAVES

BY KEVIN BAKER

Yankee Stadium

When he got off the train he could already hear the stadium, the noise of the big crowd breaking like the waves out on Jones Beach, from when he was a kid. First there was the low preliminary hiss of anticipation, then letting out with a long, full-throated rush. The wave breaking over him, knocking him off his feet in the water. He put the cheap suitcase down on the platform and stood there with his eyes closed, remembering. Remembering how they had waited for that second rush, down in the basement of Mercedes’s husband—waiting to kill a man.

He opened his eyes and wiped a sleeve across his forehead, the seams of the ancient suit he wore nearly tearing out at the shoulder. The jacket was too small for him now, stretched nearly to the breaking point where his torso bulged from so many years of prison iron and prison food. He worried about the suit. The last thing he wanted was to look ridiculous in front of her, but he couldn’t wait. He had come up as soon as he got off the prison bus, after the endless jolting ride from upstate; making only a quick stop to pick up something he needed, in the back of a bodega that his last cellmate had told him about. Taking the 4 train from there, until it poured up out of the tunnel to the 161st Street stop, past the vast blue-and-white monolith that was the stadium.

Now he was finally here, after so many years of thinking about it, and everything was…off-balance, as if he were a little dizzy. All the same, but different. From the train platform, he could look into the open half-shell of the stadium’s upper deck and see the big crowd there, the people laughing and enjoying themselves, drinking their beers. That was us. That whole loco summer, when everything had seemed unreal then too. Thirty years ago. The two of them sitting night after night up in the last rows of the upper deck, sipping slowly at the stale stadium beer, trying to make it last—trying to make the whole night last. Hoping for one more rally by the Yankees, anybody, so he could stay a little while longer with Mercedes, touching her smooth brown knee beside him, kissing her mouth.

He had heard the games all his life, growing up in one of the pale-brick apartment buildings along Gerard Avenue. He could follow them by the ebb and swell of the crowd noise alone; the collective, disappointed sighs; the cheers, the boos—the vast, hissing intake of breath when something good was in the offing. The wave roaring in after that, a feral, vicious noise, fifty thousand voices sensing the kill. Everyone in the building would lean out their windows on a sweltering summer’s night and listen to it. The old folks smoking and chatting quietly with each other in Spanish; the younger people bored and silent, staring down into the concrete courtyard.

That was where Luis had first seen her, walking her path through the courtyard to the basement. Making her way like a nun across all the trash that he didn’t bother to clean up even for his woman. Head down, arms crossed over her chest, moving quickly through the smashed brown beer bottles, and the cans, and all the other junk in her open shoes. That was where he had seen her, and decided he had to talk to her, even though she kept her head down all the time, never looking up at the men who laughed and called to her from their windows.

Now he was finally back, and about to see her again. He headed on down through the cage of iron bars that encased the 161st Street station. Latecomers scurried down the steps in front of him, kids skipping and prancing about in shirts bearing the names of players he had never heard of. He kept his distance from them, still walking in the careful prison shuffle that was second nature to him now, carrying the cheap suitcase easily in one hand. All it held were his remaining clothes from the old days, a few mottled snapshots, the Bible he had been given on his confirmation, and a deportment medal from grammar school. Everything that his mama had left for him near the end, when she knew that she was dying. They were all that remained of his previous life, the only possessions he had in the world—save for the item he had just acquired in the back of that bodega down on East 124th Street, wrapped carefully in a paper bag and secured in his inside jacket pocket. Any con would see it coming a mile away, he knew, but he didn’t expect that to matter.

He made his way down to the street, and it all came back to him in a rush. He missed his step and staggered off the curb, stunned momentarily by the sheer, overwhelming familiarity of it all. His eyes blinking rapidly, trying to accustom themselves to the dappled, pigeon-streaked world beneath the elevated that he had run through so many times as a boy. There was the same newsstand on the corner; the same seedy row of souvenir booths; a bowling alley. The smell of pretzels and hot dogs cooking over charcoal in the vendors’ carts. All the same, somehow. Back when he was still her Luis, her amado, and his hair was still thick and black, his stomach flat and hard as an ironing board from packing meat on the trucks all day.

She had loved him then. He knew it. Why else would she have been there, up on his floor that day? Why would she be there now?

* * *

Despite his vow to meet her, to talk to her, he hadn’t had any idea how to do it. She belonged to Roberto, the super, walking every evening like a novitiate to his fiery kingdom in the basement.

Roberto was not a man to go up against—everybody in the building said that. He was short but built like a bull, with a mat of hair on his chest. Stripped to the waist, summer and winter, always strutting about, flinging open the furnace door and digging vigorously at the grate ash with a fire iron. People in the neighborhood whispered that it was there he burned the bodies of all the men he had killed. He kept a .38 jammed into the front of his jeans, where everyone could see the handle. He wore a pair of wraparound aviator glasses, so that with his pointed beard and his perpetual leer, Luis thought he looked like some kind of demonic insect down in the fiery half-light of the basement.

When Luis came down to pay the rent for Mama, Roberto would bully him. Forcing Luis to wait while he told him his stories about all the things he had done, the women he had taken, the men he had killed. He bullied everyone who came down to plead in vain for him to fix something, or to give them a couple extra days on the rent. Sure that he could keep them all in line.

“I don’ even need the gun. I give them a taste of this, and that’s all!” he would laugh, waving the iron poker just underneath Luis’s chin, and Luis would have to stand there, not daring to leave; trying desperately not to flinch, though the iron was so close he could smell the heat coming off it. Keeping that beautiful, beautiful girl, with those beautiful, large brown eyes, all to himself. But Luis had seen a dozen other beautiful girls who belonged to men cruising down the Grand Concourse in big cars. Laughing loudly, showing off the gold around their necks and on their fingers, always ready to reach for the piece under their shirts and show that off too. Men like Luis looked at her beautiful eyes and looked away, going about their business.

* * *

Then one day she was there, in his hallway. Appearing like a vision amidst all the trash there, like the faces of the saints people were always seeing in a pizza somewhere out in New Jersey. Where they lived used to be a nice building, for nice people, with marble floors and mosaics, and art deco metalwork on the doors. Now the people were not so nice, they left their garbage out in the hall, where the paint peeled off the walls in long strips, and the roaches and the waterbugs swarmed around rotting paper bags full of old fish, rotted fruit, and discarded coffee grounds. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, suddenly appearing there before him, just as he got home from work in the early summer evening, with his muscles aching from loading the trucks all day, and the climb past five flights of busted elevator.

Yet he hadn’t even thought about what she was doing there—at least not until much, much later, after it was too late to do any good. He hadn’t thought about anything much at all, he had simply reached out and touched her hip—the boldest thing he had ever done in his life—as she tried to move past him in the hall.

And to his surprise she didn’t try to pull away but stayed there, stopped by his hand, those great brown eyes looking right back at him. The first thought that occurred to him was how tall she was with those long legs, her gaze nearly level to his. The second was how bad he knew he must smell, his shirt and jeans soaked through with sweat, and smeared with blood, the way they always were after another day filling the bellies of the trucks.

Yet he could not let go of her, could not stop looking at her there. He moved his other hand to her hip and pulled her slowly to him. Then he touched her all over, petting her long, pitch-black hair; caressing her smooth brown flesh through the open back of her blouse. Still resting his other hand on her hip, as if she might try to move away. But she didn’t.

* * *

The hard part was finding a place to be together. They would have gone to the movies, but there were no more movie houses in the neighborhood, they had all closed up years ago. Sometimes they went up to the roof and made love under the water tower, where they could hear the nighttime rustle of the pigeons in their nests. But you never knew who might be up on the roof—kids fooling around or firing guns; junkies shooting up. They couldn’t even go up at the same time, there was too much of a chance they might be seen.

Instead they went to the games. It was cheap enough to get in, only two-fifty to sit up high in the upper deck. They would climb up to the last row, where they were cloaked in the shadows and the eaves of the big park. From the leftfield line, Luis could just make out where they lived—staring out now from inside the gleaming white, electrified stadium that looked like a fallen moon from the roof of their building. From where they sat too, they could see the fires out beyond the stadium walls, more and more of them every night, until it looked as if the whole Bronx was burning down that summer.

“It’s all goin’,” Mercedes said one night, while he watched in amazement as apartment buildings he had passed his whole life—buildings that had seemed as large and eternal as mountain ranges—went up in flames. “We should go with it.”

“What about Roberto?” he had asked, but she just made a disdainful shrug, and turned back to her beer.

Roberto didn’t care where she went in the early evening. That was when he did his other business—dealing horse, coke, bennies, guns; whatever he could get his hands on, out of his basement kingdom. Even so, they always made sure to sit up in the last row, and they would touch each other only when something big was going on and the rest of the stadium had turned its full attention to the field. He would lose track of the game, but he was always attuned to the rise and fall of the cheers, breaking like the waves on Jones Beach.

“He’s a pig,” she told him. “He hurts me, you know. When I say somethin’ he don’ like, or just when he’s drunk.” She had leaned her back toward him, lifting her soft pink shirt to show him the bruises Roberto put on that exquisite skin. Luis felt as if he were on fire when he saw those marks on her, he wanted to go out of the stadium right then and there and find Roberto in his basement.

“Every night, I wanna die before I go back to that bruto,” she told him.

But she did go back. They both did. Nights when the Yankees were out of town were the worst. Then all he could do was stand by the kitchen window, looking to catch some glimpse of her going by on her walk through the courtyard, while his mama cooked dinner and asked him what was so fascinating down there. He would watch her moving through the trash to Roberto, the same as always—arms folded over her breasts, head down. Only now she would look up at Luis where he stood in the window, even though anyone might see her.

* * *

He walked slowly up the hill of 158th Street with his cheap suit and his cheap suitcase and his little package in the brown paper bag. He turned onto Gerard Avenue and then he was there, in front of the old building. Like everything else, it was disconcerting in its familiarity. It seemed so much the same, only cleaner, the bricks scrubbed, most of the graffiti gone. Even the high red, locked iron gate that had surrounded the front entrance was gone, completely vanished. Easier and easier.

He lowered the suitcase to the ground and stood there for a moment. Feeling the package in his inside suit pocket. Looking up at the floor he knew she was on—his old floor. Mercedes—this close now. He picked up the suitcase and went up the front walk, grabbing the door as a pair of laughing kids came dashing out. He stepped in, marveling at how clean and new everything looked here too. The walls were painted a bright new color, the layers of grime scrubbed off the floor so that he could make out the original mosaic work in the marble again; the outlines of a big fish about to eat a little fish, who was about to eat a fish that was littler still.

He almost walked past the elevator, from the force of a habit suspended thirty years ago. But then he noticed how the door gleamed, all the original silver-and-gold art deco work shining brightly. He pulled tentatively on the door, got inside, and pushed a button. To his astonishment, the elevator started to rise.

* * *

He couldn’t stand to see her walking through the trash in the courtyard, a woman like that. Not that the stadium was much better. They had just spent two years rebuilding it, but it was an ugly place; the grime already ingrained in the rough concrete floors, old hot dog wrappers and mustard packets and peanut shells blowing up around their ankles, and spilled coke sticking to their sneakers. He wished he could take her someplace better, someplace worthy of her.

“It’s no better anyplace aroun’ here,” she told him. “No wonder they want to burn it down.”

As the season went on, he was more and more preoccupied with thinking about what she wanted, what they could do. He didn’t follow the games much, though the Yankees were supposed to have a great team. Instead, they behaved like a bunch of soap opera queens. The players fought with the manager, the manager fought with the owner. Everybody fought with everybody, it was in all the papers. A crazy season.

Then, as if they had finally decided to get serious, the team came back to the stadium in August and began to win game after game. The crowds grew bigger, the games quicker and more intense. Suddenly, it seemed as if everything had become much more urgent. Mercedes had started to talk about going away somewhere. She told him that she thought she could become an actress on television down in Mexico, even if she was Puerto Rican; maybe even go to Los Angeles and get on American TV.

She had never talked like this before, and Luis had the uneasy feeling that there might be layers of her that he had never previously suspected—that she might be much smarter than he would ever be, able to effortlessly conceal certain desires from him. But he didn’t really care. Sitting next to her there in the upper deck, just looking at her beautiful face, the gentle slope of her breasts, her bare legs. Touching her, absorbing her scent, sitting next to him game after game, he felt as if he were falling again, enveloped by the wave. There was nothing about her that didn’t surprise him, didn’t excite him down the whole length of his body.

“But how do we do that?” He had bit. “How do we go away?”

“We need money.”

“Sí.”

“He has money. We could take it.”

“He’d come after us for sure then.”

“Yes, he would,” she said, then looked him in the eye, her gaze as level and meaningful as that first evening he had touched her in the hall. “If he could.”

All that August, he pretended he didn’t get her meaning. The Yankees kept winning and the fires kept burning, more and more of them. But he knew she was right, that it was all going. Every week, he walked past another store closed on the Grand Concourse, even the bodegas boarded up. The streets were filling with broken glass and old tire treads that nobody bothered to clean up; the fire engines screaming past him, night and day. In the evening, after his job, he would climb the five flights of stairs past the same broken elevator. Making his way down the hallway with its same bags of garbage and its roaches; the dingy hospital-green paint peeling off the walls, a single bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. There was nothing more for them there.

But to kill him—

“You really wanna leave him alive, be lookin’ over our shoulders for him the rest of our life?” she asked him, straight out, in the last week of August, during a game where the Yankees were battering Minnesota.

“No.”

“All right then.”

“All right,” he said slowly, and when he said it he had that marvelous falling sensation again.

Yet he still agonized over how to do it. Sometimes late at night he could hear Roberto working down there, even up on the fifth floor. When he wasn’t dealing, he was always doing something vaguely sinister with his saws in a corner of the basement—cutting up something, making something; the shrill sound of metal cutting into metal echoing all the way up to Luis’s sweltering bedroom when he was trying to sleep. It kept the whole building up, but nobody dared to complain.

He knew it wasn’t just talk what they said about Roberto. Luis had seen him chase some junkie who had cheated him clear across the courtyard, tackling him and pummeling his face with his .38 until it was a bloody mess. The junkie had laid down there for half a day, before he was finally able to drag himself away, with nobody so much as daring to call the police.

“Mercedes, I don’ know if this is such a good idea—”

“You said you would do it,” she replied before he could back out any further, a mocking, angry look across her face. Then she held his hand. “Let me take care of everything. All you have to do is be a man.”

He agreed to let her make the plan, thinking just maybe she was smarter than he was. She told him it would have to be done before the end of the season. He didn’t understand why, but she assured him they needed the big crowds.

“We need the noise,” she explained. “To get away. Leave the rest to me. I know where his guns are. I know where his money is.”

She set it for the last weekday afternoon game of the season—so they would do it before his compañeros came around, before all the junkies were up and looking for their next fix. The weather had finally broken, and there was the first taste of fall in the air. The day was cool and overcast and he remembered that she looked more beautiful than ever, wearing a short baby-blue rain slicker over her shirt and shorts. It was also the first time that he could remember seeing her nervous—looking up repeatedly at the gray, swirling skies, wondering if the game was going to be called.

They had gone to the upper deck as always, and there, to his amazement, she handed him one of Roberto’s .38s, wrapped in a brown paper bag—the weight of the gun surprisingly, thrillingly heavy in his hand.

“You got this from him?”

“Tha’s right. You know how to use it?” she asked him, her face more serious than he had ever seen it.

“Course I know how to use it!” But he was still worried. “Don’ he got more?”

“Not anymore,” she told him, pulling back the edge of the baby-blue rain slicker, showing him the handle of another pistol shoved into the belt of her shorts there. His stomach nearly convulsed, but the sight of it there both excited and comforted him, knowing that they would be doing this together.

She waited until the Yankees began a rally, got a couple men on. Then she stood up abruptly, motioning for him to hurry.

“C’mon. We don’ know how much time we got.”

He saw that she had already plotted the best, quickest route out of the stadium, past the perpetually broken escalators. They were back on the street within seconds, legging their way rapidly up the hill on 158th. Luis had felt his knees shaking under him, hoping it wasn’t visible to her—consumed by that falling sensation again.

They reached the building and ducked down the metal steps at the side, walking under a brick archway to the courtyard. She had gone first along the littered path, telling him to wait in case Roberto was watching. But they could already hear the whine of his saw, knew that he was preoccupied with his mysterious work. They could hear another sound as well. The noise of the crowd from the stadium beginning to rise—a short, tense, staccato cry, signaling something good; a hit, a walk, a rally in the offing. She looked back at him and bit her lip, touching the handle of the gun at her side.

“Hurry,” she ordered.

They went in the basement door, Mercedes first, Luis following. The whine of the saws stopped, and now Luis could only hear the noise from the stadium, gathering, growing. He could see Roberto in the far corner of the basement working on something over a pair of sawhorses. He slowly unbent and turned to face them as they came in, scratching at his hairy stomach. He looked as if he had just gotten up, Luis thought, his eyes squinting dully at them through his hideous insect glasses.

“Wait for it,” Mercedes told Luis.

“What? Wait for what? What he want?” Roberto asked, looking back and forth, from one to the other.

Mercedes didn’t answer him, only wandered casually off to one side, pretending to look at something, so that they formed a triangle with Roberto at the top. She put her hand on her hip—and then Luis could hear it. The cheers like waves, louder even than the blood pounding in his head. That low prolonged hiss, like the first lap of the waves coming in—

He thrust his hand inside the paper bag, felt the handle of his .38.

“Wha’s that? Money?” Roberto’s eyes gleamed with a sudden interest.

Luis said nothing, using the growing noise to slip the safety off. Feeling her eyes on him from the shadows across the room.

“What you doin’ here anyway?” Roberto turned his gaze on her, his brow creasing with suspicion. “You supposed to be at the game.”

Luis let the paper bag float to the floor, raised his arm. Roberto waved a hand at him dismissively, his eyes still on her.

“You go away, come back later. I don’ do business in the day,” he said.

That’s when the wave crashed over them all, the noise from the stadium suddenly one long, atavistic roar. He aimed the .38 at Roberto’s chest and fired, then he walked forward, firing again as fast as he could, making sure to steady the gun with both hands. The first shot tore through Roberto’s hairy bull chest and spun him around. The second one ripped into his back just under the shoulder blade, the third going through his neck and spraying a geyser of blood against the wall as Roberto fell forward over the sawhorses and Luis realized that he was almost on top of him, where his body was jackknifed like the butchered hogs that Luis loaded onto the trucks all day.

That was when he felt the blow in his side, just below the rib cage. The next thing he knew he was on the basement floor. Surprised by it at first, the gun skidding away from his hand and his head bouncing off the concrete. He was certain Roberto hadn’t had time to reach for a weapon, he hadn’t even had time to put his hands up, and Luis laughed to himself, thinking that he must have slipped on something. He struggled to raise his head from the floor, and he wanted to make a joke to Mercedes, but he realized he had been almost deafened from the sound of so many gunshots in so a close space, the cheers from the stadium still sweeping over him, even through the ringing in his ears.

He saw that Mercedes had her gun out too, and that she was approaching Roberto, her wonderful legs moving across the room in long strides. She took one look at him splayed over the sawhorses, then thrust the gun into the dying man’s hand; wrapping his fingers around it and making them fire another shot into the dark recesses of the basement. After that she went over to the wall, removed three bricks, and took a couple of packages out, pushing them up under her windbreaker before she replaced the bricks. Only then did she come over to Luis where he lay on the concrete, staring down at him, her big brown eyes thoughtful and almost sad.

“What?” Luis shouted into his deafness, still unable to understand that she had shot him. “Was this part of the plan?”

“Oh, yes it was, cara mia.”

She knelt on the floor beside him. Her cheek against his cheek, the exquisite smell of her flesh still redolent even through the metallic odor of the guns and the blood.

“You did just fine, amado!” she shouted into his ear, and smiled down at him more affectionately than she ever had before.

Then she ran out the basement door, screaming bloody murder.

* * *

Luis got off the elevator at his old floor—her floor now. He shuffled down the hallway, one hand still carrying his suitcase, the other one clutching the paper bag inside his jacket. He was not really surprised to see that the hall too was now immaculately clean and bright, and freshly painted; all the bags of garbage and the roaches were gone.

He walked down to the end of the hall, to his door—her door. There he stopped, frowning, surprised to see that it was slightly ajar. Suspicious, he gave it a soft push with one hand, just enough to let the door swing open another couple of feet, and dodged back to one side as he did so. But nothing happened. There was no noise, no reaction. Only a wave of heat emanating from within, something else he remembered well enough. That, and something else. There was a terrible smell of decay, something putrid, coming from deep within the apartment. He sniffed at it curiously for a moment, and silently lowered the suitcase to the hallway floor. Then he pulled the gun he had picked up at 124th Street out of its paper bag and went inside.

* * *

At the trial she was all tears and rages. Refusing to be consoled, pushing away the aunts who came to court with her, then folding into their arms. Proclaiming how much she loved Roberto from the stand, to the news crews outside. Dressed all in black, but with her hair uncovered and freshly cut, her picture on one tabloid or another for almost a week. Through it all, Luis had to admit that she was a fine actress, even if it was his life at stake.

And he had done fine, just as she had predicted. When the trial began, he was still weak from his long stay in the hospital, groggy from the painkillers. Learning to live with one kidney, with the knowledge that she could have done such a thing to him. All he had been able to do was make weak protests against the questions when it was his turn on the stand—admitting to the assistant district attorney that he loved her, claiming that he had never had anything against Roberto, claiming it was all in self-defense. Afraid to confess that they had planned anything together, knowing that it wouldn’t help him—knowing that they wouldn’t believe him anyway.

She had been all fire and ice on the stand, talking about how she had spurned his come-ons in the courtyard. A dozen other men from the building confirmed it, their pride unable to let them admit that anyone had succeeded where they had failed. She told the jury that she had never believed he would do such a thing, not a man like that—and they had believed her.

It hadn’t surprised him in the least when the thirty-year sentence came down, and he was transported on the prison bus for the long ride upstate. He had worried only about explaining it all to Mama, though he had no words for that, no words even to explain it to himself. What he regretted most of all was that he would never see Mercedes again.

* * *

Now he was moving steadily through the rooms of her apartment—his old apartment—everything both stranger and more familiar than ever. To his surprise, it all looked much as he remembered it, as if this were the only part of the building that hadn’t been refurbished. There was still the chipped, dingy, inch-thick paint on the doors, and the woodwork. The windows more streaked and dirty than ever, as if they had barely been cleaned at all in the whole time he had been away.

But stranger than any of that was how the rooms had been stripped bare. No clothes, no furniture, no TV in the living room, no curtains on the windows. Almost nothing at all, as if the apartment were still empty and no one lived here. He began to feel more and more apprehensive as he walked through the rooms of his former life—almost as shaky as he had been that day, going into the basement. He held the gun out in front of him, wondering when he was going to touch off the trap. Wondering—much worse—if she could have just moved. Then he turned into the kitchen, where the smell of corruption was worst, and there she was.

“Luis. You’re back.”

“Mercedes.”

She was sitting at the table where he and Mama used to eat their meals, a shriveled, white-haired woman behind a sea of pill bottles. Wrapped up tightly in an ugly pink robe that was much too large for her. Propping herself up at the table by her elbows, her head balanced on both hands.

“Mercedes.”

He said her name again, more as a question than anything else. At first he could not believe it was her, this husk of a woman. Her cheeks sallow and caved in on themselves, the rest of her a pile of bones and papery flesh. But her eyes, her eyes were just the same as ever, large and dark and fierce.

“Yes, Luis, it’s me,” she said calmly, her voice hoarse but threaded with sarcasm. “How ever did you find me?”

He brought up the gun in his hand and moved across the kitchen toward her, shouting, “Never you mind!”

* * *

She had left the neighborhood right after the trial. Nobody from the building, nobody at all knew where she had gone, or what had happened to her. Prison had been just as bad as he thought it would be. Years had gone by in a fog, while he just tried to survive.

Then the computers had come in. He had signed up to learn them, volunteered for a job in online marketing. He had used his access to search for her everywhere, even in Mexico, but there was still nothing—less than nothing—as if she had never existed in the first place.

It was only a couple years before, long after he knew he should have stopped looking, that he had come up with his first trace of her. A credit card number in her real name. He could scarcely believe that it had been there all along and he had missed it. Soon after that, her whole history had opened up to him—everywhere she had been, the different names she had used; all the jobs she’d had over the past thirty years. He had read it like a paperback novel from the prison library. Following the jobs she had taken—waitressing, running a cash register, answering phones—but never once anything that he could find that included acting. Tracing the places she had lived, weaving across the country to Los Angeles, then down to Mexico City, Miami, the Island—then back home. To the very same address, the very same building where they had lived. Beyond that, even. To his own apartment.

He had thought that over for days, after he discovered it. Lying in his cell at night, thinking about her living there, wondering what it meant. He sat up and stared at the picture of her from her driver’s license, the one he had printed out surreptitiously when the supervisor had gone to take a leak. The color was blurry, but from what he could see she looked remarkably similar, as if she had barely aged at all. Her hair the same pitch-black color, her face grave and beautiful and nearly unlined, staring back out at the camera. So much as it was—

Yet when he got to look at the mirror in the Port Authority bathroom, he saw an old man before him. His hair not even gray but white, an old man’s mustache doing nothing to rejuvenate his face, his slouching jowls, and his unmistakable prison pallor. He had seen it on old men before, back in the neighborhood, wondering how long they had been away. Now he was one of them, his life gone. But he could at least do this.

He had picked up the .38 in the back of the bodega his cellmate had told him about. Strangely pleased when the man handed it to him wrapped in a paper bag, just as she had given him Roberto’s gun thirty years ago. He had rolled out the bullets, checked the firing mechanism in the back lot behind the store, then, satisfied, had paid the man and taken the 4 train on up to 161st Street. Where he had stood again on the platform, listening to the crowd in the stadium.

* * *

“Don’ be angry,” she said, unfazed by his charge across the room. Her voice a long wheeze that broke down into a cough.

“You’re sick,” he said, lowering the gun again and staring at the array of pills.

“Ah, amado, you always were obvious,” she sighed, and he straightened.

“You know what I came back for,” he said coldly, though even now he had to fight back the urge to help her somehow.

“I imagined you would,” she said, and he thought he heard a hint of triumph within that dim voice, something that infuriated him all over again.

“So that’s why you moved in here. Hoping to surprise me.”

She said nothing, but made a small, neutral gesture with one hand.

“Why did you do it?” he asked despite himself, hating the pleading sound in his voice. “Why did you do it? I thought you loved me.”

“I needed the money,” she wheezed. “And I didn’t need you.”

“What about all your big plans?” The anger growing in him again, baffled and enraged that she had so little to say for herself. When he had first glimpsed her, in her decrepit state, he had expected her to do the pleading. Now he was conscious that he could hear the sound of the ballgame through the windows, much louder than he remembered it—the rising beat of the organ, the noise of the crowd building in that steady, dangerous way.

“What about being an actress?” he tried to taunt her.

“Mierda. Well, I wasn’t an actress after all,” she told him, and gave a little cackle that trailed off into a cough. “I couldn’t do anything. But I tried. I left this place.”

“So—maybe you needed me after all,” he said, lowering the gun and trying to smirk at her. Desperately wanting to hear her say it, to hear her admit it, even this sick, dying remnant of the woman he had loved. “Maybe you wish you had stayed with me now.”

She fixed him with another look, a glint in her eye.

“Why would I ever need you? A man who is too afraid to take what he wants? A man who lets a woman plan for him—who is too afraid to stand up to another man on his own?” She gave a short, scornful laugh, and drew herself up as straight as she could at the table. “Why would I ever want such a man? What could he ever do for me?”

Luis walked forward again, knowing then that he was going to do what he came to do. Through the windows he could hear the sharp intake of the crowd’s breath, like that hiss of the waves out at Jones Beach. He took another step toward her, but at that moment she held up a hand, her tired, painfilled eyes staring into his, stopping him for a moment.

“Luis!” she said. “Don’t you remember? Wait for it…That’s it. Ah, cara mia, I knew you would do fine!”

The crowd noise came up then, the full-throated roar, just like the wave enveloping him along the beach, and he took one more step and pulled the trigger, just as he had done it—done it so well—that afternoon thirty years before. But only as he fired, in that very instant, with the noise rising within and around him, and the feeling that he was falling, falling into the wave, only then did he finally put it all together—how she looked, and all the pills on the table; how easy it had been to find her after so many years without a trace, the way his cellmate had suddenly remembered someone who could sell him a gun, the triumphant, knowing way she looked at him even as he took that last step and pulled the trigger; how she had made him wait until the crowd noise rose up from the stadium, and what she really meant when she said those words, now and thirty years before, down in the super’s basement kingdom, I knew you would do fine!—and confirm, once and for all, that she always had been too smart for him.

JAGUAR

BY ABRAHAM RODRIGUEZ, JR.

South Bronx

To Scott, with love

Iris operated right from the stoop. She lived upstairs with her mother. It was the kind of building where she didn’t have to be too obvious about it, because of the crack traffic. Sometimes fishnets on her long curvies, but for her it was enough to just sit there in jeans and tank top and that smile, the eyes dizzy like she’s seen it all and just had another hit. She might wave to passing cars, plant the lingering stare on the shy ones. Her brown eyes were deep murkies and made people look away. There was just something about her, as if something was about to happen. Her olive skin tanned easy dark. If her hair was up, so much curvy smooth neck, if not, it fell in curly clumps onto her shoulders. A different girl everytime. Some days makeup, some days no. Some days she was a loud brash sound. Other times quiet meek and she could only sit there on the stoop like a lost girl staring back.

Her pimp was Pacheco. He was very nice and didn’t beat her. He was like family because he used to be her mother’s pimp. He sometimes watched out for her on the street but usually just went up to be with her mother, something Iris resented because he was supposed to protect her. There was this guy running around right now, gutting hookers like fish. Three already on the slab and the cops didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. The papers hardly cared. On South Bronx streets life is worth maybe a subway token. Cops don’t take subways. If the hookers were white maybe it would be more of a story, more tragic TV reports. But South Bronx killing zone is an everyday thing, and so one more hooker body appearing near Hunts Point market is not really a crime, just seen like waste disposal. Like a man dumping his trash.

Her mother had the same brown eyes planted deep in a wider face, hair longer but crunchier and usually up out of the way. Body sagging some now, which was why she didn’t do tricks anymore. “My time came and went,” she said, always laughing, lying in bed where she always could be found, mumbling vague words about finding some kind of real work. (She would have to get out of the apartment for that, though.) Iris, junior high dropout, did everything in that steamy three-room. She cooked, she cleaned, payed the bills, did the shopping. Her mother went out sometimes, disappearing up Westchester Avenue to come back late, empty bottle in her hand. Eyes swimming like she was trying to knock the feeling out of them. Iris would put her to bed.

“I feel bad,” her mother would say a lot, especially on Sundays when the big church on Wales Avenue would toll its bell. “I’m nada, you hear? A waste. I shitted up my life. Shitted up your life. Gaw, I wanna die.”

“Shh.” Iris would massage her head softly until her eyes closed.

“Iris. Do you love me?”

Her mother seemed to be talking through a dream.

“Yeah. I love you, Ma.”

“Don’t call me Ma. Call me Angie. We partners, okay?”

* * *

Iris called her Angie all the time. The two of them would dress up in spandex, high heels, and big shirts. Pacheco would drive them around. Angie would always remember the days when she was a hooker, and men would stare breathlessly.

“Ahh, don’t cry, baby,” Pacheco would say, his wide sturdy face creased up as he drove. “Iris. Stop her from cryin’.”

Iris would pull her close.

“You don’t understand, Pacheco. You don’t, ’cause she’s not your daughter. I just wasn’t a good sample for her.”

Pacheco lost his cool pretty fast, times like that.

“Look, you took care of her. Everything you did in life was for her. She know that. We talked about it, right, muñeca? All she wants now is to pay you back an’ help you. Right?”

“Right.” Iris nodding to reassure. “Don’t worry about it, Angie. I’ll be fine. You an’ Pacheco take good care of me.”

And she would kiss and hug her like she was at an airport, then go off to meet her date for the night, Angie slithering up into the front seat as Iris went into the hotel. Iris was used to Angie coming all apart when she drank. It was a good thing she didn’t drink anymore. Now all she did was crack. She smoked in the morning and in the afternoon and at night. Pacheco would bring the stuff and Iris would help her prepare the pipe. Angie would light up and then her eyes would glass up.

“You really love me, muñequita?” Always asking in the whirl of crack steam.

* * *

“Yeah, I really love you,” Iris always replied with an involuntary flinch.

Iris had seen her mother fucking for money for as long as she could remember. Used to operate from a tiny apartment on Avenue St. John. Would bring the men in there while Iris sat on the living room watching Pooh videos and playing with blocks or Holly Hobbies. “It’s the way I make my money, honey,” Angie would singsong with so much color and life and maybe a little too much lipstick. To Iris it was just normal life. If she opened the bedroom door and caught her mother in action it didn’t mean anything because there was food on the table, money for clothes and toys, plus enough time to go shopping and jump all over the sofa and love seat chasing each other. There was time between assignments for Angie to do Iris’s nails and Iris’s hair, to buy her skirts and pantyhose and to play with her face in front of the bedroom mirror where there was always a liquor smell like medicine. “My baby is beautiful,” Angie would say after applying all the makeup to miniature carbon-copy Angie. Iris remembered being in the stroller, crowded Third Avenue, outside Alexander’s in the rush of Christmas shoppers, and Angie blocking traffic there by the entrance so she could stoop down on one knee and reapply the mascara to Iris’s little face. Iris soaked it up. It was attention, it was love. They were girlfriends. They fought over lipstick and pantyhose, and once when Iris swiped her red minidress to wear to school Angie beat the fuck out of her.

It was in school that things turned sour. The kids there knew about her mother. They made jokes. Sometimes guys would come over and say, Hey, yesterday night I had your mother. Made her get all butch—lots of fistfights. Cut her hair short, perfected the crotch-kick, three fights a week and lots of notes home until Angie put a stop to it. In junior high she was a girl again, long hair, but the talk went on. The South Bronx was still a small town, no matter how many tenements went how deep. The only kids she could hang out with were crackheads and other street creeps who couldn’t figure out why she even came to school. She started to cut classes and smoke reefer.

One day she was made to stay after school by a teacher. His name was Mr. Berlin, so white he pink, spit when he talked and had curly blond hair. She sat at her desk and he sat at his.

“I’ve heard talk about your mother,” he said slowly. “Is it true, Iris? Is it true what the other students are saying?”

Iris nodded, her face bloodless burning.

Mr. Berlin got up from his desk and walked over to hers.

“And you. What they say about you. Is that true?”

Iris nodded again, her face a mask. She felt like she knew what was coming. She had seen that face on men who honked their horns at her mother as they walked home some nights from tricks. He took his wallet out and laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Is that enough?” he asked. Iris shook her head. He peeled off another twenty. “How about now?” His face looked moist. When there were sixty dollars on there, then she nodded, though she had been a little curious as to how much she would be worth. That girl who sat in the third desk first row now stood up, lowering shades, pulling down drawstrings. Her voice was now gravel, her eyes like she had won. Mr. Berlin watched the professional take over.

“Okay,” she said like she was in charge now. “What do you want? Blowjob? Handjob? Sixty-nine? Doggie-style? Ride ’um cowgirl? Missionary?” A grin so twisted menace.

“I don’t know if I can,” Mr. Berlin said, looking a little pale like he had lost control.

“Take the pants down,” she said.

* * *

After she went down on Mr. Berlin she could have her way with him, could walk in and out during class, he wouldn’t even raise a mumble. She never abused it—she liked his regular sixty dollars, and Mr. Berlin was her first regular. He was a married-with-three-kids kind of guy. Pulling money off him was easy. It was so easy, it made her want to get into the business. There was a sense of power that went with it that left her feeling almost high.

One night she was sitting with Pacheco and Angie on the bed. A trick had just left and they had changed the sheets, then lay there with their legs intertwined, eating chicken from a bucket. Pacheco had just started with a tale from his army days when Iris came right out with the story about Mr. Berlin.

“Are you serious?” Angie jumped off the bed, giving Pacheco a punch. “Did’ju hear that shit? I’ll kill that bastid!” She paced, arms windmilling. “I’ll take the bastids to court, the whole fucken school! That dirty fuck!! Pacheco!! Why the fuck you just sittin’ there? She’s only fourteen!”

Pacheco and Iris exchanged glances. Iris went into her room and came back with a cigar box. She emptied it on the bed. Three hundred and ten dollars.

“I’ll sue the city!! Just look at that!! All that talk about morality!! Like I’m garbage, right? And lookit what they do!! All of them fulla shit, alla them!”

“You don’t have a case,” Pacheco said, riffling through the bills. “The daughter of a local hooker? Gimme a break. They’d laugh you outta court. All the nice decent hard-working white guy has to say is that she propositioned him. Who ain’t gonna believe him?”

Angie glared, eyes teeming wet. “But we gotta do something!”

Iris said, “Fuck school. I wanna go to work.”

Angie stood there staring at the two of them. Trembling a little, looking as if they had just presented her with the terms of surrender.

“I don’t know,” she said. Her lips quivered. She passed a hand through her hair, sat on the bed, reached for her crack pipe. She took it into the bathroom and shut the door.

“Did he sex you?” Pacheco asked while lighting a cigarette.

“Yeah.”

“You want I should set you up?”

Iris didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah,” she said.

* * *

She turned tricks every day, every night, even on weekends. She still managed to cook for her mother, who wasn’t doing much of anything, and paid for her crack habit. The career started like a party, and turned into chain gang.

She used to feel in control. She’d get into a car with some guy and feel like she was holding the cards. She had what she wanted, and when it was over she still had it, while the guy was fifty bucks poorer. (Or forty or thirty or whatever it was that night that moment.) She liked seeing some guys over and over, a stable of “steadies” like her mom had, young dudes who cruised with booming hip-hop cars. They had flashy gold rings, gold chains, big gold watches with diamonds glittery, big belt buckles, and she so sparkling pantyhose girl, so high-heels clingy skirts, she looked so young, she looked so edible, and the business did not show on her. They’d take her to parties in the early days before gangs became posses. She would give them group rates so they wouldn’t have to fight over her. She liked them. In their arms she imagined being with a lover, and sometimes she might cum.

A few months later, and things started to change. Posses became strict; she couldn’t go from this boy to that without some other boy getting mad. You can’t go from posse to posse and do business; a girl that fucked someone in TTG would not be touched by someone in FNB. Iris found she couldn’t stay with a posse either, as all of a sudden posse boys weren’t so interested in hookers. There was plenty of fresh girl meat out there eager to get “tagged” by a posse, to be owned and belong, and they refused to have Iris anywhere near them. Iris couldn’t be tagged; not only was it bad for business to confine herself to a select group, but no one would tag a puta anyway, so she had to hit the streets again and kiss the pretty boys with the fine rides goodbye.

After six months she was tired. Sleepless eyes. The young guys who would fuck her were abusive, pounding into her like hammer-thrust speed is of the essence, the great twitching shudder coming so fast. She’d sit on the stoop and not even look at their cars anymore. There were fat old greasy types waving bills, men who stank of cologne and cigarettes. She’d give them hand jobs while they talked about their wives, slipping their palms up her thighs in the cuchifriteria where she went to get lunch. She’d overcharge them in hopes of discouraging them.

“I have this weird dream,” she told Pacheco one night on the stoop. “I’m with this older trick, and we fuck an’ all. I’m sleepin’ with him in Ma’s bed, when she comes in an’ starts screamin’. ‘My Gaw, whachu doin’ in bed wit’cha father?’”

Pacheco started sending her out on cushy assignments, dates where she’d end up at some hotel like The Penta, all spruced up like an office lady, to meet some flaky spick borough president or some shit like that. Those kind of people pay a lot for a fifteen-year-old. It meant not working so many tricks but the bastids did wear her out, all those pretzel shapes and that stripping shit they love. After one of those, she’d take the day off, sit around and watch TV. Row after row of soap operas, her mother lying on the bed behind her. Pizza delivery, and Pacheco’s visit to bring the crack. The hurried breath of Angie’s torch, the suck of cold white flame. A curl of freeze and then the glassy fishtank haze.

The soap operas put a lot of stupid ideas into Iris. She thought about the rest of her life, and how much she didn’t want to end up like her mother. It was starting to hit her, those nights when Angie sat there blind-eyed in float-daze, drool hanging drip—she was the only support her mother had. She was trapped. It was going to be tricks and tricks and tricks. The wear-and-tear was starting to show, those circles under her eyes, for starters, that rough feel to her skin that face creams and makeup would not hide.

“And in my old age,” she whispered to Pacheco while her mother slept, “I’ll have to have a daughter just to take care of me.” Tears tracked mascara down her cheeks. Pacheco could only add that he had no more cushy jobs for her. Those “jaitones” only want girls who look like virgins.

* * *

The week she went back to street duty, the first hooker body appeared strewn over empty fish crates behind the Hunts Point market.

“I want a boyfriend,” she told a Jose, a young trick she shared a joint with, after she heard about the second body, found seven blocks from her stoop. “Someone to take care of me.” She looked at Jose, but he wasn’t buying, just renting. There seemed nothing to hold her in her world, no handles no grips and no brakes to slow the speed.

“I’m saying I want all of you to keep your eyes peeled,” Pacheco told all the girls one Friday night, after the third hooker turned up barely three blocks away. “The guy is close. You stick together, an’ if you see anybody actin’ weird, you get me. Okay?”

The first time Iris saw the Jaguar, she told Pacheco, but he didn’t seem too interested. She noticed the Jaguar coming by at least two or three times a week. It would usually crawl over quietly, not far from her stoop. The windshield was tinted slightly. Iris could make out a young face behind the wheel, maybe a mustache. Not too sure if it was real or just soap opera. He would puff on a cigarette sitting like a sphinx behind the smoke. She could imagine those eyes, deep-set and pinned to her. The Jag was red slick and so heavy with mystical that she never dared go over to it.

“Maybe he’s that nut runnin’ around,” Pacheco told her when she spotted it again one night.

The Jaguar hummed just down the block, headlights off. Iris was glad he saw it too now, so maybe he wouldn’t think she was imagining it.

Pacheco grinned. “He’s lookin at’chu an’ thinkin how good you’ll look as pork chops!”

“Thass not funny,” Iris said, miffed at thinking of her mystery man as a murderer. Pacheco wasn’t the least bit entranced.

“He’s a cop or a nut,” he said on his way upstairs to dose her mother. “Stay away from him.”

Iris did. She was content to leave the dream alone. She loved the sensation of being watched. Many times she was the only thing on the stoop, only her, nobody else. One night she was hanging there with Yolanda, who had just dyed her hair red. Yolanda had no imagination, no sense of mystery. When Iris told her about the car as it sat up the block breathing soft, Yolanda walked right over to it, swinging her hips like a dare. Iris froze to the spot. She watched Yolanda lean down to the window, her yellowed birdlike face steaming as she turned and walked back to the stoop. The Jaguar growled and roared past.

“What did you do?” Iris asked, pissed off and worried that maybe the car would never return.

“I axed him if he wanted some company,” Yolanda said, shaking crunchy red from her face. “An’ you know what he say? He say, ‘Get away from my car.’ The bastid.”

For the next couple of days all Iris could do was worry about the Jaguar not coming back. If she heard a certain car roar she would run to check, sometimes doing rush jobs for fear of missing the car while she was with some trick. It was a relief when she spotted the Jaguar again, resting behind a group of parked cars. There was that mysterious dark shadow, the swirl of cigarette, or maybe she was imagining him behind dark glass. She would become aware of her every pore, every movement of her body like she was an actress on a stage working to always present her best side. There might be a radio playing—she would dance voluptuous teasing like a stripper in a cage. Whenever she heard that Jaguar growl its goodbye, something inside her would sink, as if her ride was leaving without her.

She could see his sharply featured face, the deep-set eyes, sweet long lips pursed around the cigarette. A trace of mustache, but baby face, never shaved. He was young, an ex—drug dealer tired of the daily kill. He had his money now. He didn’t need all this. He wanted to take just one thing with him on his ride out.

“I tell you, he’s a nut. Don’t think about it,” Pacheco scolded when he heard her wonder why the Jaguar hadn’t turned up for three days. “He gonna carve you up.”

Yolanda, sitting beside Iris, made an ugly grimace. “You such a fuckhead, Pacheco, man. You a pimp or what? Do ya job! Go out there an’ scare the fuck off.”

“Yeah, right,” Pacheco laughed. Iris puffed on her cigarette so shaky. “Like I’m gonna walk up to a Jaguar and scare the guy off. Like, that bastid could own this block an’ shit.”

“Drug dealer?” Iris pulled the pinky out of her mouth.

* * *

“Damn straight drug dealer. Or a psycho cop. An’ they both carry guns, right?” He laughed as he went upstairs.

“Jaguar” by Iris Robles

He made like he was a trick, when finally she went over to him. She liked his smell, something all spice and tree bark. She didn’t kiss tricks but she tasted his long smooth lips to kiss forever. Stayed in the motel for three days. “I don’t have to be anyplace,” he said, biting the crotch off her pantyhose. After that, she moved into his duplex on Long Island, where her mother would join them after she got through the detox program.

“Ma, you think tricks fall in love sometimes?”

They were watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Angie was in bed, pipe slipping from her hand. A misty white vapor floated.

“Uhhh,” she said, her eyes round as saucers.

“I mean, say a john you did was really rich and you did him so good. You think he might fall in love and keep you?”

Angie’s round blank eyes flowed into the distance.

Iris closed her own eyes. Iris by candlelight, by midnight, in the mirror staring so. Waiting for the ugliness to come to her too. Bruises, welts, lines, sallow hollow-eyed streetsucked. Like so many of her friends. Like her mother. Like the street with its cracks and tears and chunks of gravel where the trucks hit. She couldn’t just sit and wait anymore.

She suited up. The minidress with the glittery pantyhose and high heels was just too putona. She wanted classier, something subtle gray, ladylike. She let her hair tumble loose. Not too much makeup, a more professional corporate look torn from a magazine ad. The buzz on the street all of a sudden was that Iris Robles was making her move. Mr. Romero at the meat market brought her the side of ham personally and walked her to the door, purely taken by how she looked this day.

“Now this,” he said, “is what I call a change for the better. You look so responsible, reliable, efficient, with just the right touch of feminine to keep you looking sexy but not slutty. A real fine lady is what I see. Yessir, a fine young lady. You tell your mother I threw in a little more ham for her. Will you be gone long into the real world?”

“I’ll be gone for a lifetime,” she said.

Her mother just thought she had a special date. Pacheco thought she was applying for a job, and gnawed a toothpick nervously. He was relieved when she sat on the stoop and thought he could maybe make a few calls, now that she was somehow looking so good. The way she pulled out a long thin cigarette and lit it reminded him of some ’40s movie, some Rita Hayworth, some Lauren Bacall. And he ran to get to his phone.

She had finished two cigarettes and just lit the third when she felt that vibrating rumble in the pit of her tummy. She could sense him already by instinct. The Jaguar crouched at the end of the block, headlights off. Iris stood up, walked to the curb. She stepped out onto the cobblestone street, face-to-face and staring back. The two of them not moving, the two of them still.

The first step was the deepest, with a crack of shard resounding forever slow-motion hip-move whirls of smoke on the outer edges of the frame and all that blue lighting. Every step closer took too long. At any moment she thought the roar would come, those headlights snapping on, all pounce. She spotted the flash of a match, the orange tip of his cigarette glow. The outline of those young, stern features. Closer, now closer, she standing golden in the glare of a parked UPS truck’s lights.

His eyes were not on her. They stared ahead, squinting through cigarette smoke, thin lips moving as if he were memorizing some poem. She put her hands on the door as if needing a handrail, felt the Jaguar throb tremor her insides. She leaned in to look. His cigarette hand was trembling something fierce. Her voice failed right then. She cleared her throat of cigarette, of car freshener, of some stale rubber smell.

“Hey, honey,” she said, troubled. “You need some company?” Her head tilted to one side, hair cascading down, her smile a little scared like a plea. He turned to look at her slow, machine-like, the muzzle mounted on a swiveling turret. Now she could finally see the eyes, how blank dark nothing they were.

“Get away from my car,” he snarled. The next instant his hand hit the stick shift. The car thundered and buckled. Iris had barely gotten her hands off the door before it lurched with tire shriek, racing off down the street without her.

PART III

ANOTHER SATURDAY NIGHT

EARLY FALL

BY STEVEN TORRES

Hunts Point

Yolanda Morales was on her knees on Farragut Street. There was the distant sound of strays. There was a cricket. There was no life on the street. Whoever worked in the area was long gone. The ladies of the night never worked so far from the main flow of traffic on Bruckner or Hunts Point Avenue. To her left was the fencing that kept people out of the transfer station where the borough of the Bronx separated out household garbage from recyclables. To her right was a warehouse loading area. In front of her stood a man with a gun. The muzzle was pressed to her forehead.

She smiled. It was a bloody-tooth-missing smile. One of her eyes had a cut running deep through the eyebrow above it. If she lived, it would swell shut.

If.

She raised her right hand—not to grab the gun, just to add emphasis to what she had to say if she could say it. The hand was ugly, but she didn’t feel the pain of it anymore—could not have told anyone without looking which fingers were broken, or that a splinter of bone from her ring finger had erupted through the skin. Those weren’t her only broken bones and that wasn’t her only broken skin.

“Listen, Mister Man. You do what you gotta do. I done my duty, and I’m ready to meet the Lord.”

The man she spoke to pressed the barrel of the gun harder against her forehead. She pressed back. If this were a battle of wills only, it would be a dead draw.

* * *

Tucked between a Spanish food joint and what is sometimes a Spanish Pentecostal storefront church and sometimes just a storefront, boarded over, just off the Bruckner Expressway, there’s a nudie bar. Girls dance topless, bottomless too if you ask right, and all kinds of deals get made in back rooms or even in the front rooms. Once in a great while they’re raided. More often they’re ticketed, but the place is never shut down. Possibly some of the police in the area are on the take. Possibly no one cares enough to do anything permanent—arresting a couple dozen people just to hear “No hablo Ingles” all night is never high on any agenda. Besides, no one cares if the Puerto Ricans or the Dominicans or the Guatemalans or whatever the flavor this month, no one cares if they all open each others’ throats with razor blades. Half of them are here illegally. For the other half, their citizenship is the only legal thing about them.

For a set of the regulars, one the favorite dancers in the summer of ’91 was a small girl named Jasmine. She had cinnamon skin and dark brown eyes, and a crooked smile that people thought she must have practiced to make her more seductive. Her breasts were tiny compared to all of the other girls, her hips and ass unpronounced, and when she was asked to show it all, she was hairless like a girl who hadn’t fully entered puberty yet. She hadn’t. There was no fake ID involved until the guy who owned the placed made one up for her. In real life, she was just thirteen. The look in her eyes, the drugs in her veins, the dying ember of her heart made her soul far older. She was paid in smack, a place to stay, and all she could eat and drink. Small as she was, drugged as she was, the food bill was negligible. The drugs were cheap; the managers even shot her up. The place to stay was a mattress, and when she was high, high as a kite or higher, men paid well to have her any way they wanted as long as there were no marks.

That was July. By August she was wasted, fresh girls came in, even a blond one, and Jasmine was out on the street.

The streets in the Hunts Point area were tough. The strip club was like a high school where they prepare you for the rigors of real life. The streets were the real life. Jasmine wandered over toward Spofford. Toward the juvie correctional facility, toward the water of the East River, and toward the transfer station. Hunts Point was famous for its meat market—truckloads of beef and pork were sold wholesale in the early morning hours to supermarkets and grocery stores and delis. The neighborhood was also famous for its other meat market, where girls showed themselves and sold themselves, little by little, until nothing was left and they died. A baseball jacket and G-string was the normal uniform here, with a pair of stilettos and a Yankees cap as accessories.

Jasmine wore sneakers, same ones she had left home in a half-dozen weeks earlier. She had on a Mets jacket and cutoff shorts, cut off so high there was really hardly any point to them at all. Her hair was in a ponytail, held by a rubberband. In one pocket she had a cigarette lighter for whatever she could get that needed lighting up, melting down, or smoking. In the other pocket she had a butterfly knife. Young but not entirely stupid.

One night, so late it was almost morning, Jasmine was negotiating with a gypsy cab driver. He was Indian or Pakistani or Arab or…well, she didn’t care what. He mentioned having drugs, and Jasmine was listening. Then the smile on his face dropped off like a rock sinks in water and he grabbed for her. He tried to pull her into the cab through the driver’s side window. He had her by the head and she had both hands on the door frame to keep from being pulled in. If she could reach for her knife, she’d stab him, she thought fleetingly. But if she let go for a second, he’d win. She’d be in the car with him, and she knew as a fact heartless and cold as a stone that she would never get out of that car alive. Suddenly, the man let go. He was shouting something. There was a funny sound and someone else was shouting too as Jasmine fell sitting onto the asphalt. It took her a minute to focus.

“You all right?”

There was a woman standing over her. Jasmine nodded. She couldn’t speak.

“Here. Have some.” The woman offered Jasmine a bottle and she grabbed it greedily. It was three gulps before Jasmine figured out the bottle had only water in it. She handed it back. They were silent together for a moment.

“What was that sound?” Jasmine asked. She was holding her head with both hands as though making sure it was still on.

“What sound?” Yolanda Morales asked back.

Jasmine shrugged.

“Oh, maybe it was the glass. I popped that dude’s back window with a rock.” More silence.

“Thank you,” Jasmine said. She said this quietly and it hurt her. If it hurt her any more, she’d shed a tear. The last thing she’d told her parents was that she was thirteen and didn’t need anyone’s help. This went through her mind, she wasn’t sure why.

“Maybe you should call it a night,” Yolanda said.

Jasmine looked up at the woman. The adrenaline had cleared her vision, but it was wearing off and she was returning to her normal stupor.

“I gotta work.”

“Come home with me. Get some food, some sleep…”

“I don’t do women,” Jasmine said as she got back on her feet and started to walk away.

Yolanda snorted out a laugh.

The girl turned back to her. “What you laughing at?”

“Baby girl, I was out on these streets way before you was born. Believe me, if you ain’t done a woman yet, you will. They’ll come a time when you’ll do anything that walks. That’s when you hit rock bottom. Call me then.”

Yolanda moved off and so did Jasmine, in a different direction, but then she stopped.

“How am I supposed to call you?”

Yolanda gave the girl a business card. She worked in one of the offices of St. Athanaisus over by Tiffany Avenue. “We give out food to the hungry.”

“I ain’t hungry.”

“Not yet, baby girl. Give it time. It’ll come. In the daytime, you got my office address. Anytime you want, you call that number. That’s my home number.”

“I don’t do women,” Jasmine said again, this time a little louder. Maybe this old lady didn’t hear too well.

“Quit it,” Yolanda said. “I ain’t axed you to do me. I don’t do women either. Hell, it’s been a long while since I done a man. I’m just offering you a hand up—a place to stay a few days, get a little food in you, a little rest.”

Jasmine thought this over a moment. She sized up Yolanda and took a chance. “How about a little money now? A little something so I can get what I need and get off the streets.”

Yolanda smiled. “Nice try, baby girl, but I ain’t got no money.”

“I got a knife,” Jasmine said. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket and tried to open it, but she didn’t quite have the hang of it. The move was clumsy.

Yolanda laughed. “Maybe so, but I see that taxi man drove away with all his blood still inside of him. Put that thing away fo’ you hurt yourself. Even if you kill me, I still ain’t carrying no money.”

Jasmine did what she was told and felt a little foolish, but only a little.

Yolanda walked away calculating how long it would take before she got a phone call in the middle of the night asking for a place to stay. She gave Jasmine a week.

The next night, 3 a.m., the phone in Yolanda’s one-bedroom apartment rang. Jasmine was sobbing and couldn’t get the words out.

“Baby girl, I can’t understand you. I’ll come pick you up. Where you at?” She really didn’t even have to ask. The spot Jasmine had worked the night before was the worst territory—secluded, dangerous, and low in traffic. Most johns wouldn’t drive that far from civilization and the ones who did probably wanted to get away with something they couldn’t do where screams might be heard. That was the only spot a small girl like Jasmine could work, especially if she couldn’t flick a butterfly knife open. The older, bigger prostitutes wouldn’t let her near their territory.

Hard to imagine what rape is to a prostitute. The two young men Jasmine told Yolanda about had done all they wanted with her and some of it involved pain—deliberate, not incidental. It wasn’t until the men were zippering up that it became a rape.

“Which one of y’all got my money?” Jasmine had said. Her voice was quiet. Shaky. Maybe that’s what gave them the confidence they needed to just laugh at her.

“What money, bitch?” one asked. He was tall, blond, muscular. Maybe he played football. He smelled good. His hair was short. That was the description Jasmine gave Yolanda.

The other one, a bit shorter, heavier, sweaty, dark-haired, glasses. He didn’t laugh. He had been the more painful, the more degrading one—this man reached into the car, found an empty forty-ounce beer bottle, and walked up to her. He smashed her in the face twice. She fell to her knees and he slammed the back of her head twice more. She was on hands and knees and would have fallen flat on her chest if she had thought of it, but she wasn’t good at playing the whipped dog yet. She wanted to stay as close to on her feet as she could get. This dark-haired one kicked down on her back several times until she collapsed. He continued to kick until his friend dragged him away, pulled him off her. Then he launched the beer bottle into the night, over a fence.

“Shit!” The dark-haired guy yelled at her. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” His last kick was aimed at her ear, but he missed her altogether and stumbled back to the car. The car, she remembered in full detail. Porsche, black, New York license plate—YODADY.

All of this took until sunrise for Jasmine to explain. The story went through her mind so often, starting and stopping at different humiliations. By the time she got to the details of the descriptions, she was broken again, crying herself dry.

“There, there,” Yolanda said, patting her back. “Let it all out. It’ll make you feel better.”

“I’ll feel better when we put these guys in jail.”

For what? were the words Yolanda wanted to say. She wanted to explain that no one was going to care if two white boys beat up a Puerto Rican prostitute. Hell, they wouldn’t care if the prostitute was killed. You could see from the news that you had to murder a whole string of prostitutes before anyone started searching. Instead, she said nothing.

Jasmine fell asleep on the sofa. Yolanda brought a chair over from the dining room and sat watching her.

The next day she asked for leave from her job. It was a mission from God she was on, and the priest she ultimately reported to was a man who respected missions from God.

* * *

At the start of September, three weeks of vomit and chills later, Jasmine was mostly clear-eyed. Yolanda’s eyes, however, were bleared from lack of sleep. It was hard work making sure a young drug addict didn’t just escape and get what she wanted by trading herself.

Yolanda had asked over the last weeks where Jasmine ran off from, who her parents were, what her real name was, but she hadn’t gotten anything more than, “My name is Flor,” which sounded like a lie. She preached at the girl about the value of one’s own name.

“My father was a very proud man. No money, no education, no fancy nothing, but he had his name and no one could take that away from him. He could give it, but it couldn’t be taken away. You understand?”

“My father is an asshole,” Jasmine said.

Yolanda didn’t have an answer for that and gave up on the subject.

“School’s started already, baby girl,” she announced a few days later.

“I can’t go to school,” Jasmine answered. Of course, she was right. What were her experiences compared to those of her potential classmates? How could she make a friend? How could she answer, What did you do last summer?

Yolanda dropped the subject. She wouldn’t know how to enroll the child in a school without being the legal guardian anyway, though she figured that couldn’t be too hard.

The next day, Yolanda went out for groceries. When she came back, there was no Jasmine.

“Shit,” she said. It was afternoon. She wouldn’t know where to find the girl until night had fallen.

Yolanda sat for a moment. She was tired. She tried to calculate the chances that Jasmine had already scored and was shooting up or snorting or smoking something. Chances were good.

It was near midnight before Yolanda found Jasmine coming out of a parked car right where Farragut Street met Hunts Point Avenue. She was high and giggling, and she didn’t know how many men she’d been with.

Back in Yolanda’s place, Jasmine fell asleep, and Yolanda made a phone call. When Jasmine woke the next morning, Yolanda was out, and Ray Morales was sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigarette, and reading the Daily News comics. She was frightened and it took a few moments for her to figure out where she was.

“Who you?” she asked without getting up from the sofa.

“Ray,” the man said. He flicked his cigarette into an ashtray and turned the page on the comics. Ray was a small man—five-foot-two and maybe 110 pounds. Wiry. He wore shades though there wasn’t much sunlight coming in through any of the windows. His hair was dark and wavy, slicked back. He might have been forty years old like Yolanda, but if he was they had been forty hard years.

“You know Yolanda?”

The man looked up and smiled. “No, I just broke in for a cigarette and the comics” He laughed at his own joke. Jasmine wasn’t sure she got it, but she laughed too.

Ray just sat and read while Jasmine went about her morning business. She took a piece of toast for her breakfast—her hunger was for other things—then headed for the door.

“Nope,” Ray said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean no. You’re not going out. Yolanda wants you here when she gets back.”

“I’m just going to the store to get something.”

“No.”

“I really need to go.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No infinity. Sit your ass down.”

Ray looked mad when he said this. He hadn’t taken off the shades and he held his cigarette between index and middle fingers jabbing at Jasmine as he said his nos.

Jasmine did as she was told, but thought of some ways around this man. Her best option, she thought as she chewed her nails, was to make a dash past him to the door. If he caught up with her, she’d start kicking and screaming rape. With all her bruises, it didn’t seem like it would be that hard to get people to believe her. She was making up her mind to try this, trying to avoid Ray’s shaded eyes, when Yolanda returned.

“Who’s that?” Jasmine jumped to shout, a finger pointed at Ray.

“That’s Ray,” Yolanda said. “He’s my husband.”

Ray smiled again and went back to his comics.

Ray and Yolanda had married when they were teenagers and divorced a couple of years later when Ray was sentenced to eighteen years in a federal penitentiary for his part in a liquor store robbery that went really, really bad. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, but that didn’t matter as much as he thought it should have. He did every bit of his time and collected bottles and cans and did odd jobs for his living now. He lived in an SRO on Bruckner, paying his room rent weekly. Yolanda explained all of this while making sandwiches for the three of them. Jasmine listened, wiping sweat from her brow and scratching at her arms and face.

“Where’s he going to sleep?” she asked.

“In my bed,” Yolanda said.

“I don’t like this. I don’t want him here. No offense,” Jasmine said, turning to Ray. He shrugged and moved on to the sports pages.

Jasmine’s reaction to coming down off whatever she had taken the night before was mild, but she was twitchy and everyone including her knew that if she had the chance, she’d go out and get high again.

That night in bed, Ray and Yolanda talked in voices low enough to hear the creaking of the floorboards if Jasmine got any bright ideas.

“She’s not Rosita,” Ray said.

“I know that.”

“And she never will be.”

“I know that too.”

“And no matter what you do for this girl, you’ll never get Rosita back.”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Yolanda said. When he had done as she told him, she got out of bed, put on a robe, and went out to the living room to watch Jasmine sleep.

Twice more that same week, Jasmine slipped out of the apartment. Both times Ray and Yolanda found her before she could do herself any harm.

“You can’t do that, baby girl,” Yolanda said both times. “These streets are bad. This is New York. They’ll eat you up and they won’t even spit out the bones.”

Each time, Jasmine cried and complained, cursed and argued, but she said she understood and promised never to hit the streets again.

The third time, Ray and Yolanda were too late. They walked along Tiffany all the way down to the docks near Viele Avenue. Homeless people sometimes hung out there since you could fish, but there were none that night. Just a vehicle with its lights on.

“What kind of car is that?” Yolanda asked. She had stopped in her tracks a hundred feet away and grabbed Ray’s elbow.

“That? That’s a Porsche.”

“Oh no.” Yolanda went off at a sprint toward the car. The driver noticed her and pulled out fast.

“License plate, license plate!” Yolanda yelled out.

Ray ran into the street and squatted to get a better look at the rear of the car as it pulled away. When it had turned a corner and disappeared, he jogged over to Yolanda’s side.

Yolanda sat amongst the weeds on the crumbled concrete of what had once been a sidewalk and cradled Jasmine’s head on her lap and soothed her brow. She wept. The small girl’s body was naked and broken. The beating had been more vicious than before, and by the time Ray and Yolanda had arrived, the life had been shaken and battered out of her.

Ray didn’t know what to say. He told her he had gotten the first three letters of the plate: YOD. Yolanda began to wail, and the sound grew.

“Yoli. Yoli, that’s not Rosita, Yoli,” Ray tried. He thought this might at least be some tiny consolation. He should have kept his silence.

“I know that!” Yolanda roared at him. “I know who she is…Just call 911.” She used a hand with blood on it to point out a pay phone across the street.

Ray jogged across and did as he was told, then jogged back.

“Yoli, let’s get out of here. I called the police, they’re coming.”

“Go,” she told him.

“Yoli, I can’t get mixed up in something like this. You know I can’t. Let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll stay by myself.”

“Yoli…” He wanted to remind her that her past wasn’t spotless either and that she couldn’t afford a dead girl’s blood on her hands when the police came by, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any of it. “Yoli,” he said again, but she wasn’t listening anymore, just looking into the face of the girl she had known as Jasmine, and when he heard the sirens in the distance, he jogged away. “Yoli!” he called out over his shoulder, but she didn’t move.

The officers who arrived first on the scene put Yolanda in handcuffs. They asked a few questions, and when she told them she’d prefer to talk to the detectives, they shrugged. Yolanda had put her light jacket on the girl, covering most of her body. She knew that the first officers on the scene probably wouldn’t move it, and if they got a look of the girl’s nudity, there might be jokes and talk that she wouldn’t be able to stand to hear.

The officers called in a second time for the detectives and crime scene people and quieted down for the wait. After what seemed like an hour, Yolanda heard more sirens approaching. Crime scene technicians set up lights and took pictures and searched halfheartedly through the underbrush.

Later still, two detectives arrived on the scene. Both men were white and middle-aged. Both wore light trench coats and dark ties. One, “DiRaimo,” he identified himself, was heavy and the other detective called him “Fats.” The other, “Hamilton,” was thin by comparison, but his face was lined with deeper grooves and wrinkles and his teeth hadn’t recovered from smoking days.

“So what happened here?” Hamilton started. He seemed impatient, like he just wanted to take Yolanda in as a suspect.

Yolanda told the whole story, starting with the first time she met Jasmine, and Hamilton wrote some of it down. DiRaimo interjected a couple of times to ask for clarification—for instance, how did Yolanda know the girl’s name? After a short conference between themselves and a consultation with some of the crime scene technicians and a talk over the radio, the detectives came back with one last question.

“The dispatcher says this was called in by a man. Any idea who?” Hamilton asked.

Yolanda shook her head. “But if a man called it in, then he’s a hero. Now go and get those rich white boys I told you about.”

The detectives kept her a while longer and got all her information before letting her go. DiRaimo walked her a few yards away from the scene.

“You’ll be around?” he asked, even though she had already been told it would be better for her if she stayed easy to find.

“I’ll be around. You gonna catch those guys?”

DiRaimo wanted to say yes. With a license plate, it should be easy to find the owner of the car, but there was a long distance between finding the owner and finding whoever was in it the moment Jasmine died. And even if they found that out, the young men could just as easily say that they saw Yolanda at the scene. There were clear footprints on the body and they didn’t match Yolanda, but that wasn’t the greatest evidence. Since the dead girl had been a pro, even the blood and semen on her was going to be useless. He believed everything Yolanda had said, but the most he was hoping for was to scare the young men. A stern talking-to from an assistant district attorney. Who knew? Maybe they could be tricked into saying something stupid. Of course, with wealth came lawyers, so this was unlikely, but anything was possible.

“We’re going to try,” he told Yolanda. She rolled her eyes, and he didn’t blame her. She went her way home and DiRaimo headed back to his partner.

“The McElhones of Westchester,” Hamilton said. “Tim McElhone, Jr. He’s the registered driver. Dispatch just got back with the info.”

“Are we going to talk to the McElhones?” DiRaimo aked.

“What the hell for? Look at the address.” Hamilton passed his partner a scrap of paper. “One of the swankiest addresses in the state. I’ve been up there. You need to get through security gates. That’s going to take a warrant right there. Can’t even ring the doorbell without getting a judge out of bed.”

“So let’s get one out of bed. It’s a murder case.” DiRaimo didn’t like dragging feet.

“Oh, and I forgot the best bit of news. Here, take a look at this.” Hamilton passed another slip of paper.

DiRaimo read it and felt a headache creeping up his spine.

“Yep, you read that right. Our good Samaritan here did seven for accidentally killing her own daughter, two-year-old Rosaura Morales, way back when. Accidentally with a knife, you see. Drug-induced blah blah blah. Got off light, I’d say. Oh, and here’s the best bit.” He passed DiRaimo another slip of paper. “Yep. Known associates include Raymondo Morales, a.k.a, Ray, a.k.a, Rosaura’s father and this Yolanda’s ex, a.k.a, guy who did eighteen long in a federal pen for his part in a murder. Probably our mystery caller. So tell me, you feel like waking up a judge for this? Say the word, I’ll let you make the call yourself.”

The headache took a firm grip on DiRaimo. He looked at the pieces of paper in his hand and then at the body of Jasmine Doe. Hamilton cut into his thoughts.

“Look, I’m thinking this Yolanda lady and her ex are back together and they were probably pimping this poor girl out. Maybe little Timmy McElhone got a bit carried away, but there isn’t going to be any way to prove that unless we can find witnesses…witnesses that haven’t done time for serious crimes. Hell, I’d take a homeless guy. And this isn’t exactly Grand Central here.”

“So you’re saying just forget about it?” DiRaimo asked.

“I’m saying we probably have a much better chance of getting a conviction against the people who called it in than getting to even talk with McElhone. Look, it’s a shame what happened to this girl, but there are better ways of spending our time. We could be tracking people who kill real citizens.”

“Well, we got a job to do here anyways.”

“Sure, sure, but we’re not going to get anywhere with this. Guaranteed.”

“Well, let’s make sure that if the case doesn’t go forward, it’s not because of anything we failed to do.”

“Whatever you say, chief.”

The two men drove back to their precinct to start the reporting on the case. Before dawn, both had made phone calls. DiRaimo called for the warrant to speak to the McElhones and search the car, the garage, and anywhere else Tim McElhone might have disposed of the clothes and shoes he had worn that night. Hamilton had gone out of the precinct for some fresh air and during his walk had used a pay phone to make calls too private for the precinct.

A few hours later, the detectives rolled up in their unmarked car behind Ray as he was walking down the street. He had been on his way to see Yolanda, but then thought it would be better to just walk past her building. Couldn’t think of a good reason to be on that block, but then he tried to remind himself that he didn’t need a reason to be anywhere in the entire world. He was a free man.

“Raymundo,” Detective Hamilton called out, “what brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Woods?” Ray asked. Playing dumb was a strategy that often worked with detectives.

“Here to see your wife?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We’re talking about a murder charge, you idiot. You should know all about that kind of stuff. Had plenty of time to think about it.”

“That’s right, and I did my time. All of it.”

“That’s right, you did. But I’m thinking you might have a fresh murder charge. Yolanda told us everything,” Hamilton said.

Ray looked at both detectives up and down, then pursed his lips. “You guys ain’t said nothing to her.”

“Well, if you’re so sure of that, why don’t you come down and tell us everything you know?”

“About what?”

“About this little girl your wife says was called Jasmine.”

“Don’t know anything about it.”

“So you’re cutting your wife off? Not very heroic of you. How are you ever going to win her back?”

Ray didn’t have an answer for that.

“Uh-huh. I thought so,” Hamilton said. “We’ll be talking to you again. Don’t disappear.”

After letting Ray go on his way, the detectives went to Yolanda’s place, but she wasn’t in. They decided to execute the McElhone warrant.

Everything Detective Hamilton had imagined about the McElhone home was true. There was a gate where they had to be buzzed in, and a long drive up to the front door. The house was huge and could have been featured in an architecture magazine. Tim McElhone, his parents, and his lawyers were waiting for the officers in the formal garden in the back. A servant offered them tea off a silver tray. As Hamilton had predicted, nothing came from the search of the house and garage. The car, the detectives were told, was on loan to a friend for the day. The interview with Tim was almost as fruitless. DiRaimo asked about the person who was supposed to have been with Tim when he allegedly encountered Jasmine the first time.

“Detective,” one of the lawyers jumped in, “as we’ve said before, Tim has never driven into that part of the Bronx and we certainly don’t admit that he even met this…this girl. Your witness is mistaken or lying. There is no reason for Tim to supply you with the names of random friends just in case one might fit the vague description you have. ‘Husky, sweaty, short dark hair.’ Talk about fishing. You found nothing in your search and you’ve had ample time to interview my client. This farce is over. If you have any other questions, please direct them to me or one of my colleagues.”

The detectives were escorted out by the same servant who had shown them in.

“Did you see Timmy sweat?” DiRaimo asked.

“So what?” Hamilton answered. “You’re sweating too.”

“Yeah, but I’m twenty-five years older and a hundred pounds heavier.”

The banter was interrupted by the servant. “Sirs, I hope I am not out of place in saying this, but I think I know the man you were describing.” He went on to give them a name and address just a quarter of a mile down the road. The detectives decided to knock on that door.

This house was smaller and had seen better days. There were no servants answering the door, but the lady of the house was so meek that she could have easily been mistaken for one. The father of Tim’s friend was a lawyer and let the detectives know it. The friend, David Franklin, was also a lawyer, newly minted.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about…Never been in that part of the Bronx…Never been in Tim’s car…Yes, we’re friends…Don’t know any Jasmine or any other prostitutes,” were the highlights of this conversation.

Back in their car and headed for the house of the friend who had borrowed Tim’s vehicle, DiRaimo made another observation.

“Did you see that boy’s hands shaking?”

“Yeah, that was a little strange,” Hamilton agreed.

“You like him for this?”

“I’d like anyone if we could find the smallest piece of evidence,” Hamilton answered.

Tim’s car proved elusive. The girl it had been loaned to had gathered a couple of friends and taken it to an upstate lake for the day. It was nearing night when the detectives and the local police were able to find the car and lift fingerprints from both the outside and inside.

“But you see how useless this is,” Hamilton pointed out. “Even if we find the girl’s prints on this car, all that tells us is that she touched it. Hell, we’d basically have to find her body in here for anything to stick on anybody, and then this car’s been through a lot of hands.”

Nearly a hundred prints were lifted from the car, but Jasmine’s hands were very small and many of the prints could be discounted without even a close examination. The rest would be left for technicians to sort out.

“Progress?” the squad captain asked when the detectives finally returned.

“Started out cold and is getting colder by the minute,” Hamilton answered. “Right now we’re thinking it was either the lady who says she found the body and who happens to have spent time in the pokey for killing her own daughter and who was married to a guy who did serious time for a robbery that wound up with three bodies in the ground. Or maybe we’re looking at a squeaky clean millionaire’s son and his lawyer friend who also has no record. Who, by the way, are placed at the scene only by the aforementioned daughter-killer.”

“Physical evidence?”

“Sure,” DiRaimo said. “We have a body with a bunch of indistinct stomp and fist marks all over. Other than that, we’re waiting for forensics or the prints. Maybe some miracle…” He left it at that.

There was no miracle. No prints from Jasmine showed up on the car, forensics found nothing at the scene that might tie Tim or David or anybody else to the murder. What did show up, after announcements in the news, were distraught parents of Antonia Flores. She had run away from a loving home, they said. Just two miles from where she died.

They were saddened by the death of their daughter, but then it was explained to them that she had been drug-addicted and a prostitute.

“Can the city bury her?” the father asked. “It’s such a waste of money…she had become such a terrible person.”

“But she was only thirteen,” they were told.

“Yeah, but imagine if she had lived longer,” her father said. “She could have been a murderer.”

Almost a week later, Detective DiRaimo took a couple of hours of leave to place a bouquet of flowers on the newly carved grave in St. Raymond’s Cemetery. There was a potted Jasmine plant sitting there already. He had a good idea who it was from. He called on Yolanda.

“You put the flowers?” he asked from the doorway of her apartment.

“Wait,” Yolanda said. “Let me see. You find the killers?”

“For all I know, I could be looking at the killer right now.”

“Then you don’t know jack. But I know you playing me, because if you thought I could be a killer, I don’t think you’d be standing outside my doorway without backup. Listen, I like you…Can’t stand your partner, but I like you. Let me tell you something: I’m getting witnesses, I’m getting information. I know about your two Westchester County boys, Tim and Dave. I know where they live, I know what they do. I know how they like their sex, and I know where and when they get their action.”

“And why are you collecting all this information?” DiRaimo asked. He didn’t like the sound of an amateur sleuth working his case. Good way for people to get hurt.

“Don’t you worry. I’m not going to kill anyone or do anything like that. But y’all will know the next time these boys take their pants down. I’ll get you pictures, I’ll get you tape recordings, I’ll get the ho’s who work them. You want proof they lying? I’ll get you all the proof you want. These boys been to the Bronx, they been in that neighborhood, they been with the working girls there, and they like it rough. I already got a couple of girls who’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that these guys been beating on them.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to these women?” DiRaimo asked.

“Nah-ah. Wait. In fact, tomorrow morning I will bring you all the evidence. If they stick to their routine, I know exactly where they gonna be tonight, and I’ll be waiting.”

“But if they’re killers—”

“Don’t you worry about me, Mister Man. I been taking care of myself for plenty long time. And you know what? I don’t even care. I’m on a mission from God. I been waiting almost twenty years to pay Him back for what I done to my baby girl. Now I finally get to square that up…Do me some good in this world.”

Back at the precinct, DiRaimo sat quietly at his desk. He was weighing up what Yolanda had told him about getting tapes and photos and testimony from a flock of prostitutes. He wondered if all of it stacked high could amount to a murder charge. He didn’t see how it could.

“What you thinking about, partner?” Hamilton asked him.

“Oh, I just talked with that Yolanda Morales lady. You know, from the Antonia Flores case.”

“And what? Did she confess?”

“Nope. She says she’s going out tonight to get some evidence on Tim McElhone and David Franklin. Pictures, recordings, testimony…”

“You told her about them?”

“Of course not. She’s been snooping on her own.”

“That’s dangerous,” Hamilton said.

“Yeah.”

Hours later that night—too late—Yolanda Morales found out that while she had been hunting the two young men, they, in turn, had been stalking her. And they had a guide. As she opened her apartment door, a badge was put before her eyes. She took a stutter-step back to get the badge in focus—the badge and the gun that was aimed at her. She went quietly out to the unmarked car. Behind them was a Porsche, black.

When they got to deserted Farragut Street, Yolanda was praying for strength for the test to come. Detective Hamilton ordered her out of the car.

“You see these two nice gentlemen here?” he asked. He pointed to Tim and David getting out of the Porsche.

“You’ve been very naughty. You’ve been harassing these men, and it is time for you to learn a lesson. These men are going to teach it to you.”

Hamilton stepped back and let the two do their worst. There were parts that Detective Hamilton did not have the stomach to watch. He sat in his car until the men got tired of their frenzy. Then he got out with a throwaway handgun. He raised it and aimed at Yolanda.

“Let me,” David Franklin said. He reached out for the weapon.

“But you paid me to—”

“I want to.”

Hamilton handed over the gun, and Franklin pressed the barrel up to Yolanda’s forehead.

“What you got to say now, bitch?” There was blood dripping from his chin. Her blood.

“My name,” she rasped out. “My name is Yolanda Rivera Morales.” She almost laughed at what she had thought of to say after all this time, as her life was ebbing out, pooling inside of her.

“I’m going to kill you,” Franklin said. He tried to put some special emphasis into the words, but there is no emphasis to be put on those words. He pressed the gun to her head with more force.

“Listen, Mister Man. You do what you gotta do. I done my duty, and I’m ready to meet the Lord.”

She pressed back against the gun.

Franklin pulled the trigger and put a hole in her head. She flopped onto the sidewalk, and he put another two bullets into her chest as though she needed them. Then he stepped back and turned to Hamilton. He was breathing hard.

“If we pay the same amount next week,” he asked, “can we get this same service?”

Hamilton widened his eyes, then shook his head. “You guys want to do this again, you find another way. I’m a cop. I can’t do this every week.”

“Every month?”

Hamilton shrugged. He took the gun back from the young lawyer.

“Maybe,” he said.

HOTHOUSE

BY S.J. ROZAN

Botanical Garden

A week on the lam.

The beginning, not so bad. In the first day’s chilly dusk, a mark handed up his wallet at the flash of cold steel. Blubbering, “Please don’t hurt me,” he tried to pull off his wedding ring too; for that Kelly punched him, broke his nose. But didn’t knife him. Kelly didn’t need it, a body. He’d jumped the prisoner transport at the courthouse. A perforated citizen a mile away might announce he hadn’t left the Bronx.

Which he’d have done, heading south, heading home, risking the Wanted flyers passed to every cop, taped to every cop house in every borough, if he hadn’t found the woods.

Blubber’s overcoat hid his upstate greens until Blubber’s cash bought him coveralls and a puffy jacket at a shabby Goodwill. Coffee and a Big Mac were on Blubber too, as Kelly kept moving, just another zombie shuffling through the winter twilight. Don’t look at me, I won’t look at you. His random shamble brought him up short at a wrought-iron fence. Behind him, on Webster, a wall of brick buildings massed, keeping an eye on the trees jailed inside, in case one tried to bolt. You and me, guys. Winter’s early dark screened Kelly’s vault over. traffic’s roar veiled the scrunch of his steps through leaves, the crack of broken branches.

Five nights he slept bivouacked into the roots of a monster oak, blanketed with leaves, mummied in a sleeping bag and tarp from that sorry Goodwill. Five mornings he buried the bag and tarp, left each day through a different gate after the park opened. One guard gave him a squint, peered after with narrowed eyes; he kept away from that gate after that. None of the others even looked up at him, just some fellow who liked a winter morning stroll through the Botanical Garden.

The grubby Bronx streets and the dirty January days hid him in plain sight, his plan until the heat was off. He thought of it that way on purpose, trying to use the cliché to keep warm. Because it was cold here. Damn cold, bone-cold, eye-watering cold. Colder than in years, the papers said. Front-page cold. Popeye’s, KFC, a cuchifritos place, they sold him chicken and café con leche, kept his blood barely moving. Under the pitiless fluorescents and the stares of people with nothing else to do, he didn’t stay. The tips of his ears felt scalded; he got used to his toes being numb.

The first day, late afternoon, he came to a library, was desperate enough to enter. A scruffy old branch, but he wasn’t the only human tumbleweed in it; the librarians, warm-hearted dreamers, didn’t read Wanted posters and were accustomed to men like him. They let him thaw turning the pages of a Florida guidebook. The pictures made him ache. Last thing he needed, a guidebook: pelicans, palmettos, Spanish moss, longleaf pines, oh he could rattle it off. But he couldn’t risk the trip until he wasn’t news anymore, until they were sure he was already long gone.

Then, last night, a new scent in the air, a crisp cold, a rising wind. Bundled in his bag, his tarp, and leaves, Kelly heard a hush, everything waiting, a little afraid. He slept uneasily, knowing. When he woke, he felt new weight, heard a roar like far-off surf. He climbed from his root den to see more shades of white than he’d ever known. Ivory hillocks, eggshell swells, chalky mounds burdening branches. And huge silver flakes still cascading from a low-bottomed sky. The surf-roaring wind whirlpooled it all around. Ice stinging his face, Kelly was in trouble.

Snow as insulation can work, you in the bag in the leaves in the tarp in the snow. But you can’t climb back in; you’ll bring it with you, and melt it, and lie in a freezing sodden puddle. Once out, in trouble.

A sudden howl of wind, a crash of snow off the crown of a tree. He tugged his hat low, wrapped his arms around his chest. The wind pulled the breath from him. He wasn’t dressed for this, coveralls over his greens, puffy jacket, boots—but he wasn’t dressed. Who ever was? Why had anyone ever come to live here, where casualties piled up every year? All the green leaves, the red, yellow, purple, solid or striped, small or gigantic, lacy or fat flowers all dead, the birds gone, the ones who stayed, starving. Every year you had to wait and pray, even if you weren’t a praying man, every year, that life would come back.

At home the air was soft, the struggle not to make things grow but to clear yourself a corner in the extravagance, then keep it from getting overrun by the tangle that sprang up the minute you turned your back.

Up here everything ended and you shivered, as he did now. From cold, from anger, from fear. Eight years he’d shivered, the last four in lockup. It had been a month like this, cold like this—but heavy and totally still—when he’d killed her. Would he have, back home?

No. Why? In the warmth and openness, her taunts and her cheating would have been jokes. Back home, he’d have laughed and walked out, leaving her steaming that she hadn’t gotten to him. She’d have screamed and thrown things. He’d have found another beach, another jungle, lushness of another kind.

Here, there’d been nothing in the cold, nowhere in the gray, only her.

He shut his eyes, buried the memory. His face was stiff, his fingers burning. He had to move.

Astounding stuff, snow this dense, this heavy. Your feet stuck and slipped at the same time. It was day but you wouldn’t know it, trapped in this thick, swirling twilight. Fighting through drifts already to his knees, it took him forever to get near the gate. And the gate was locked. Beyond it, no traffic moved, no train on the tracks. A blizzard so bad the Botanical Garden was closed. It wasn’t clear to Kelly he could climb the fence in this icy wind, not with gloves and not without, and not clear there was any reason. No one was making Big Macs or cuchifritos out there, no sweet-faced spinsters in the reading room.

Two choices, then. Lie down and die here, and honestly, a fair idea. They said it was comfortable, in the end warm, freezing to death. Maybe keep it as an option. Meanwhile, try for a shelter at one of the buildings. He’d stayed away from them, not to be seen, not to be recognized, but who’d see him now?

One foot planting, the other pushing off, leaning on the wind as though it were solid, he made for the rounded mounds of the big conservatory. A city block long, two wings, central dome half-lost in the twisting white. Iron and glass, locked for sure, but buildings like that had garages, garbage pens, repair shops, storage sheds. Some place with a roof, maybe even some heat, there might be that.

The conservatory was uphill from here, and for a whil it seemed to not get any closer. He almost gave up, but then he got angry. It had been her idea to come north. That she’d wanted to was why he was here, and that he’d killed her was why he was here, struggling up this icy hillside, muscles burning, feet freezing. Maybe he’d kill himself when he got back home. Then he’d never have to be afraid he’d end up here again. But damn her, damn her to hell, not before.

Snow boiled off the arched glass roof. One foot, the other. He fell; he got up. One foot. The other. A glow stabbed through the blinding white, made his watering eyes look up. Lights. A vehicle. He was insane, the cold and wind had driven him mad. A vehicle? It came closer without vanishing. No mirage, then. Some caterpillar-tread ATV whining across the tundra. Didn’t see him or didn’t care. Lumbered to the conservatory, growled to a stop at the end of the wing. A figure, dark parka, dark boots, blond hair swirling like the snow itself, jumped down, pushed through the storm. To the door? She was going to open the door?

She did. He followed. When he got to the ATV it was there and real, so he eased around it, inching to where the storm-haired woman had disappeared. He stopped, startled, when through its thick quilt of snow the glass suddenly glowed, first close, then along the wing, then the high dome. She was turning the lights on. And moving toward the conservatory’s center, away from the door.

He wrapped numb fingers around the handle. He pulled, and the door came toward him. Slipping inside, he closed it after, shutting the violence out.

First was the silence: no howling storm, no ripping-cloth sound of pelting snow. Then the calm: no wind ramming him, the ground motionless. Slowly, with nothing to fight against, his muscles relaxed. He pulled off his soaked gloves, his crusted hat, felt pain as his ears and fingers came back to life. His eyes watered; he scrambled in his pocket for an aged napkin and blew his nose. Looking down, he watched a puddle spread as melting snow dripped from his clothes.

The smell hit him out of nowhere. Oh God, the smell. Sweet and spicy, damp and rich and full of life. Warm, wet earth. Complicated fragrance thrown into the air by sunsetcolored blossoms hoping to attract help to make more like them. I swear, I’d help if I could. There should be more, Kelly thought. They should be everywhere, covering everything, they should race north and smother this dead frigid pallor with color, with scent, with lavishness.

Amazed, gulping moist vanilla air, he stood amid long rows of orchids, gardenias, who knew what else. He was no gardener. Back home you didn’t need to be. Back home these plants didn’t need you. Here, they had to have pots, drips, lights, towering glass walls to save them from vindictive cold, from early dark, from wind that would turn their liquid hearts to solid, choking crystals. Here, soft generosity had to be guarded.

He started to walk, farther in. He wanted to walk to the tropical core of the place. He wanted to walk home.

Each step was warmer, lovelier, more dreamlike. But when he got to the giant central room, something was wrong.

Plants with man-sized, fan-shaped leaves roosted on swelling hillsides at the feet of colossal palms. They were colored infinite greens, as they should be, and moving gently, as they would be, under the humid breezes of home. But this was not that breeze. A waterfall of icy air rolled into the glasshouse, vagrant snow flying with it but melting, spotting the high fronds the same way rain would have, but not the same. Outraged, Kelly bent his neck, leaned back, trying to find the offense, the breach. Near the top of the dome, he saw greenery bowing under the cold blast. Trying to shrink away.

And some other kind of movement. The woman with the wild hair. High up, near the gaping hole, pacing a catwalk. He watched her stretch, then jump back as jagged glass she’d loosened tumbled past, crashed and shattered on the stone floor not far from him. The echo took time to die.

She hurried along the catwalk, climbed over something. Machinery whined and a mechanical hoist lowered. A squarecornered spaceship, it drifted straight down past curves, bends, wavering leaves. Kelly flattened into the shadows of a palm’s rough trunk.

The woman jumped from the basket. She swept her wild hair from her face, whipped off her gloves, pulled out a cell phone. She spoke into it like a two-way radio. “Leo?”

“I’m here,” it crackled. “How bad?”

“Two panes gone. Some others cracked, four at least. A branch from the oak.”

“All the way there? Jesus, that’s some wind.”

“This weren’t a blizzard, it’d be a hurricane.” She had a breathless way of speaking, as though caught in the storm herself.

“If it were a hurricane,” the distant voice came, “we wouldn’t have a problem.”

“Agreed. Leo, the cracked panes could go. Weight of the snow.”

“It’s not melting?”

“Too cold, falling too fast.”

“Shit. You have to get something up there. You called security?”

On icy air, snow tumbled in, unreasonable, antagonistic. The temperature had dropped already, Kelly felt it.

“Only one guy made it in,” the woman was saying. “Wilson.”

“Oh, mother of God, that Nazi?”

“On his way. But he won’t climb. He already said. Union contract, I can’t make him.”

An unintelligble, crackling curse.

“I called Susan,” the woman said. “She’s phoning around, in case any of the volunteers live close.”

“And you can’t do it alone?”

“No.” She didn’t justify, explain, excuse. She was gazing up as she spoke, so Kelly looked that way too, watched the palms huddle away from the cold. Stuck here, up north where they didn’t belong, rooted and unable to flee. They should never have come. If that hole stayed open they’d die.

“I’m going to make more calls, Leo. See if I can find someone. I’ll keep you updated.”

“Do. Jesus, good luck. If they clear the roads—”

“Right, talk soon,” she cut him off, started punching buttons. A massive wind-shift shook the walls, shoveled snow through the hole. She looked up at the palms. Kelly read fear in her eyes. Fear and love.

He stepped forward. “John Kelly.”

She whirled around.

“Volunteer,” he said. “Got a call.”

Suspicion furrowed her face. “How did you get here so fast?”

“I live on Webster.”

“How—”

“Door was unlocked.” His thumb jerked over his shoulder, toward the wing. Silent, she eyed his inadequate jacket, his bad boots. His five-day growth. “You’ve got trouble,” he said, pointing up. “We’d better seal that.” And added, “That’s what Susan told me. On the phone.”

It was the best he could do. She’d believe him or not. Or decide she didn’t care, needing his help.

She looked him up and down, then: “You good with heights?”

From a supply room they gathered tarps, ropes, the one-by-fours they used here for crowd-control barriers. They dumped them into the hoist, climbed in.

“We’ll have to improvise.” She flicked a switch and the lift rose, quivering. “The crossbars have bolts and hooks. For emergency repairs. A hundred years, never anything like this.” Snow whipped and pounded on the roof, cascaded through the approaching void. “We’ll string the tarps where we can. Brace them with boards. I turned the heat up. If this doesn’t go on too long, we’ll be okay.” She turned worried eyes to the trees they were rising through, then swung to him, suddenly smiling. “Jan Morse. Horticulturalist.” She offered her hand.

“John Kelly,” he said, because what the hell, he’d said it already. Should have lied, he supposed, but he’d been disarmed by the heat. The softness. Her eyes. “You must live close too.”

“The opposite. Too far to go home, once the storm started. Stayed in my office.”

“And you were worried,” he said, knowing it.

“And I was worried. And I was right.”

“You couldn’t have heard it. The break.” He had to raise his voice now, close as they were to the hole, the storm.

“No. Temperature alarm. Rings in my office.” She turned her face to the intruding snow, blinking flakes off her lashes. Hands on the controls, she edged the hoist higher. It shuddered, crept up, stopped. “Wait,” she told him. She climbed from the basket, prowled the catwalk, inspecting the hole, the glass, the steel. The wind, rushing in, lashed her hair. She shouted back to him, “If we start here…”

He’d never worked harder. She was strong as he was, his muscles prison-cut, hers maybe from weights, or determination. Snow melted down his neck, ice stung his eyes. Wind gusted, shifting speed and bearing, trembling the dome. The catwalk slicked up with melted snow. With her pocketknife they slashed expedient holes in the tarps, ran rope through them, raised them like sails in a nor’easter. He wrenched, she tied, he tugged, she held. He wrestled boards between tarp and rope. Like seamen in a gale they communicated with shouts, pointed fingers. Straining to hold a board for her, his feet lost purchase. He skidded, slammed the rail, felt her clutch his jacket and refuse to let go. He’d have gone over, but for that. “Thanks,” he said. The wind stole his voice away, but she understood. They worked on, lunging for rope ends, taming flapping tarps, tying knots with bruised fingers. She bled from a forehead cut, seemed not to notice.

Sweat-soaked and aching, it dawned on him that the chaos had slowed. A few more tugs, another pull, and suddenly, quiet on their side of the improvised dam. They stood side by side on the glistening catwalk, breathing hard. Overhead, the overlapped, battened tarps quivered, shivered, but didn’t give, not where the hole was or where they’d covered and buttressed the panes in danger. They stood and watched for a long time. Kelly felt the temperature rise.

A pretty sound: He looked up. She was pointing at their handiwork and laughing. “That’s really ugly.” She shook her wild head.

“You mean we were going for art?” He folded his arms. “Damn!”

She smiled, right at him, right into his eyes. “Really,” she said, “thank you.”

“Hey. It was fun.”

“Fun?”

“Okay, it was terrible. But,” he shrugged, looked around, “I’m from the South.”

Her gaze followed his. “I’ve been looking after them for eight years. Some are rare, very valuable.”

“But that’s not the point, is it?”

Again, a direct look. Her eyes were an impossible blue, a lazy afternoon on a windless sea. “No.”

He smiled too, lifted a hand, stopped just before he touched her. “We’d better take care of that.”

“What?”

“You’re hurt.”

“Me?” In true surprise she put fingertips to her brow. She found blood. That made her laugh too. “Okay,” she said, taking a last survey, “I guess we can go down.”

They climbed into the basket, leaving the catwalk littered with fabric, with rope.

As the hoist inched down, she asked, “What do you do here?”

“I…”

She waited, still smiling. A volunteer, he’d said he was a volunteer. He’d gotten a phone call. How could he answer her? What do volunteers do at a place like this?

“Lots of things,” he settled on. “Variety, you know.” The start of doubt shaded her eyes. He didn’t want that, so he said, “I build things. Temporary barriers, that kind of thing.” Every place needed those. No matter how carefully you planned, there were always changes in what was allowed, where you could go, how close.

She nodded. Maybe she was going to speak, but a shout blasted up from below. “Doctor Morse! Is that you in that thing?”

They both peered over the basket rail, found a uniformed man craning his neck below, obscured by foliage. “Of course it’s me!” she shouted back, her voice full of disgust. “Wilson,” she said quietly to Kelly. “An asshole.”

Takes care of Wilson. And when they reached the glasshouse floor, it got worse.

“Who’s that with you? Dr. Morse, you know you can’t take people up without a signed waiver! You—”

“Shut up, Wilson. This is John Kelly.” Don’t tell him my name! “A volunteer. He almost got killed helping me plug the break. Which you weren’t about to do, so shut up.” She jumped from the hoist’s basket, gave the guard a hard stare. He flushed. Once that happened she turned her back, clambered onto a bark-mulched mound to inspect a broken frond, a casualty.

The red-faced guard regrouped. His glare bounced off her back, her riotous hair, so he turned to Kelly. “John Kelly?” He said it slowly and squinted, and shit, it was that guard.

Kelly climbed from the basket too, spoke to the horticulturalist worrying over her plants. “Listen, I better go, see if—”

“Kelly! I thought so!” Wilson’s bark was full of nasty triumph. “They gave us your photo. They want you back, boy. Big reward. Saw you the other day, didn’t I? At the gate.” He came closer, still talking. “This guy’s dangerous, doctor.” He said doctor like an insult.

“No,” Kelly said, backing. “Keep away.”

“You’re busted.”

“No.”

“What’s going on?” She jumped down, between them.

“He’s a killer. Escaped con.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re wrong,” Wilson sneered. “Cops passed out his picture. He sliced his wife up.”

She turned to Kelly.

“That was someone else,” he said, and he also said, “I’m leaving.”

“No!” the guard yelled, and drew a gun.

“Wilson, are you crazy?” Her shout was furious.

“Doctor, how about you shut up? Kelly! Down on the floor!”

“No.” Walk past him, right out the door. He won’t shoot.

“On the floor!” Wilson unclipped his radio, spoke into it, gun still trained on Kelly. “Emergency,” he said. “Dispatch, I need cops. In the conservatory—”

That couldn’t happen. Kelly lunged, not for the gun, for the radio. Pulled it from Wilson’s grip, punched his face, ran.

And almost made the door.

Two shots, hot steel slicing through soft, spiced air. The first caught Kelly between the shoulder blades. To the right, so it missed his heart, but all it meant was that he was still alive and awake when the second bullet, flying wild after a ricochet, shattered a pane in the arching dome. Glass glittered as it burst, showered down like snow, with snow, on waves of icy air Kelly could see. The wind, sensing its chance, shifted, pulled, and tugged, poured in, changed positive pressure to negative and ripped through an edge of the tarp patch. Collected snow slid off the tarp onto a broad-leafed palm. Kelly saw all this, heard a repeated wail: “No! No! No!” He tried to rise but couldn’t draw breath.

Looking around he saw blood, his blood, pooling. She knelt beside him, wild blond hair sweeping around her face, and he heard her knotted voice, choked with sorrow not for him. “All right, it’s all right. An ambulance is coming.”

In this storm? And he didn’t want an ambulance, he just wanted to go home. The trees, he tried to say to her, watching the palms cringe away from the cataract of frigid air. But he couldn’t speak, and what could she do for them? I’m sorry, he told the trees. I’m sorry none of us ever got home. Sprinkled with glass shards and snow, losing blood fast, Kelly started to shiver. As darkness took the edges of his sight, he stared up into the recoiling leaves. At least it wouldn’t be as bad for them as for him. Freezing, they say, is a warm death.

LOST AND FOUND

BY THOMAS BENTIL

Rikers Island

I’ve been running for six months now. What from? you ask. The answer isn’t that simple. To find the right answer, you have to ask the right question. So let’s try that again. The question is, What am I chasing and who’s chasing me?

In certain circles, they call me Ice T, but my name, date of birth, and Social Security number change more often than songs on Hot 97. I’m a fugitive. I’m a tweaker. Today I’m lost, just holding on for dear life. My minutes are running low. Any day now the heat will come knocking with an all-expensepaid ticket to the not so far off Island—the carcarel hell that will soon be my home. Face it; there are only so many places the Bronx will let you hide. Nothing changes, the streets are still watching.

Here I am, spun out on crystal meth once more. I stink and I’m weak. I’m penniless and friendless. No more credit cards to squeeze dry, no more checks to wash. The spreads are all used up. What’s a spread? you ask. It’s basically everything you need to know about a person to rob them of everything they have. Cough up 250 bucks and I’ll get you everything you need to be John Smith today and Michael Phillips tomorrow.

I might look and feel like shit right now, but after taking a shower and putting on an Armani suit, I could talk a pretty bank teller into doing just about anything. Granted, of course, the vic’s got decent credit and hasn’t notified the bank. I sometimes wonder why they call my racket “victimless” crime. I’ve left hundreds of victims in my wake. But let me tell you, it takes balls to walk into a bank and cash a check that’s hotter than the surface of the sun. You gotta have heart, but you also need brains, wit, and charm. You have to know how to talk to people. Those stick-up kids I met the last time I was on Rikers Island would put a cap in your ass in a heartbeat, but they wouldn’t touch my racket if their lives depended on it.

It takes a good measure of intestinal fortitude to hustle banks, but I’m a bona fide addict. From the high-end hookers to the high-priced hotels, from the grams of ice to the pure ounces of MDMA, somehow I had to support this lifestyle. Ice, my drug of choice, is driving this bus. Hence the street moniker Ice T, bestowed upon me by my dealer.

Those days have lost their luster. Every bank and plush hotel in and around the five boroughs is on alert for this “multi-state offender” known to defraud innkeepers and bankers alike.

Life has taken that proverbial turn for the worse. I need a place to stay and a chance to stave off the creepy meth paranoia that’s quickly approaching. That’s what six straight sleepless nights will do to you.

The streets of the Bronx at 3, from Gun Hill Road to 161st Street, have morphed into a bizarre netherworld of voracious fiends, dealers, hookers, and the hungry. Tonight, I’m one of them.

Broke and scared, I call Heidi’s pad looking for Billy. He’s my “business partner.” Heidi is his girl and she’s a sweetheart. She spends her days smoking shards and her nights turning tricks. Sometimes I wonder if Billy is her man or her pimp. He’s my partner in crime, but hardly a friend. I’m always welcome in their home, but that comes with a cost. Any devious heist Billy has planned will now include me. Nothing in this life is free. They’re never without crystal meth, which they always share, without question. Once I hit that pipe, I will agree to whatever scam he has in mind, usually cashing some dirty check. At times like this I’ll pounce on any opportunity to line my pockets. Billy’s generous with his drugs and the loot we make. I usually get half. He’s also smart, never taking the chance of cashing checks himself.

I failed to mention that Billy is also my dealer. Whatever money I make with the check and credit card cons ends up going right into his pocket for a few grams of ice, and again I find myself at square one.

“I’m spun out and the warrant squad is on my ass,” I say with a shaky tone. Billy senses the desperation in my voice when I call him from Jerome Avenue. Visions of dollar signs dance in his head. The last thing I want is to be part of another heist. I soon would have no choice. He’s a viper with a clean face and he’s turning me into a monster like him. There’s some devil in me—he didn’t craft it, but he promised life to it if I would just ride with him.

Heidi’s apartment is in Hunts Point, smack dab in the middle of a thriving crack scene. Billy is the only apparent source of crystal meth in the neighborhood. As I ramble on from block to block, on my way to their building, I can’t help noticing how much this part of the Boogie Down feels like a ghost town. Warehouses and abandoned tenements line these dark avenues. On every shadowy street, thugs wearing black hoodies loiter, whistling at cars as they cruise past, running up to the few vehicles which pull up, and making sales. In murky corners, pressed against walls like statues, ebony figures appraise foot traffic. Some young bloods use laser pointers in what seems to be a code to warn of approaching cops, while shabbily dressed baseheads try to hawk everything from boom boxes to jewelry in exchange for a taste of poison. These same apparitions I will soon rendezvous with in the sullen halls of C-76, Rikers Island.

I’m looking at these streets through the eyes of a fugitive and a tweaker. The Bronx has become a carnival of flesh and bone. I step over an older white guy who’s obviously been jacked for money, drugs, or both. He’s lying facedown on the street, the back of his head smashed open and raw. It’s the best Hunts Point has to offer, a street dealing scene that would make any hustler proud. Offers of every kind fill my ears as I make my way to Heidi’s apartment. To some, these streets are neon dreams come true, but to me, a speed freak at the end of his rope, it’s a ghost town.

Billy and Heidi live the typical tweaker life in the ever-so-typical tweaker pad. Billy is a complete and brilliant idiot. When I step inside their small, musty studio apartment, Billy is scrunched over his computer like something kept in the closet. The front room is damp. Torn wallpaper covers large holes through which the scuttle of crablike creatures can be heard. Postmodern artwork embellishes the back walls.

Heidi steps from the dimly lit recesses of her closet completely naked except for a pair of electric-blue lace panties. She’s a beautiful blond nymphomaniac whose appetite for spiking speed is insatiable. At times her eyes reveal a glimpse of the lost innocent nineteen-year-old from Petaluma, California.

It’s late, almost 3 a.m., and she’s getting ready for work. Ice, she always tells me, is essential for turning tricks—all the girls she works with do it. I can’t help feeling sorry for her, but at the same time, all I want her to do is shut up and offer me a hit. She approaches me wearing a dirty-blond wig and I assume this is a request from one of her regulars. As she gets closer, I notice she’s holding something against her small chest. Curling it outward with the needle-tracked arm of a nightmarish ghoul, she reveals a glass pipe packed with crystal meth. Heidi hands me the instrument of my demise. Before she disappears into the bathroom and just as I’m about to get a taste of the sweet poison, she flashes in front of me a New York State Driver License bearing the picture of one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

“I need to look like her by tomorrow, think I can pull it off?” she asks.

Never, I think to myself, but appease her by agreeing. At that moment I know Billy is working on something big, something with many zeros attached to it, the ultimate grift. I will be getting my assignment soon.

The first hit I take fills my lungs and makes the synapses in my brain fire off like the Fourth of July. Dopamine overflows. At the edge of my hazy percept, I can barely make out something Billy’s saying about how “hot” their apartment has become. He’s convinced a guy we work with is a snitch. This is the last thing I want to hear.

The sky in my mind suddenly grows darker. Visions of decay and violence fill me with a sense of doom. Is my paranoia rooting deeper or is it a premonition of events yet to come?

A month on Rikers Island, then I was bailed out. Like a fool, I ran. I became totally aware of my situation, of the utter hopelessness of where I was and where I would end up. All of my demons came to the surface. I got two grams of speed, then what? I pull off another one with Billy, make $2,000, then what? Now I’m back where I started.

A black chasm of despair opens inside of me. Here I am, six months later, strung out worse than ever, out of money, trying to rest my beaten body in some sketchy tweaker pad. I am miserable and want this to end. I don’t just want a break from the drugs and crime, I want to go back to before I snorted that first line of crystal, before I knew how fuckin’ amazing that feeling was, before I experienced the rush from a successful heist and tasted the pleasures of other people’s money.

Five days of being awake begin to take their toll. I feel myself getting drowsy, slipping into darkness. It’s that halfdrugged sleep that comes at the end of every run, coupled with the handful of Valiums Heidi gave me earlier. Everything fades to black.

* * *

It’s late in the morning when I’m violently awoken by a cacophony of sound: deep guttural voices, the distinct clinking of metal cuffs, and an orchestra of bleeps, blips, and chirps from a police radio.

“Wake up, ya piece a shit, and let me see your hands,” orders a red-haired freckle-faced detective with an uncanny resemblance to Richie Cunningham from Happy Days.

I get up slowly in a half-asleep, half-dazed stupor, wearing only jeans and a T-shirt. I’m still having trouble making sense of this scene when from the corner of my eye I see Billy being dragged out of the apartment by two uniformed officers. Here I am, smack in the middle of a raid. The bench warrant I have is hanging over my head like some dark and dreary cloud ready to release torrents of rain.

“Get on some shoes, pal. Had a nice run, but it’s over now,” another cop says. He reminds me of this thugged-out Puerto Rican brother I knew the last time I was on Rikers, covered with jailhouse tats. I have an eerie premonition of where I’m going and the company I will soon keep. I feel a dampness permeating my palms and can hear my heart palpitating loud enough, I think, for everyone else to hear too. Anxiety is rearing its ugly head. Rikers Island will be my new home.

Central Booking is the first stop. “Inside” again. I’m thrust into the wheels of justice and the long, drawn-out grind of due process. All of it leads up to the Day of Judgment when I will hear the inevitable: One year on Rikers.

Though I’ve taken this trip several times before, I’d usually be out within a week. But a year? A year without ice? A year without women, decent food, privacy, freedom? Despair overwhelms me. Something about this bus ride out to the Island seems different, darker. The level of hopelessness I have reached, somewhere between wanting an eternal slumber and desperately needing to see the faces of my family, is at a depth I never knew existed. An image of my mother bidding me farewell leaves a smoky crater in my mind.

I glance across the aisle and notice a heavyset Latino brother with a tear drop appropriately tattooed on his face. With a look of utter anguish, he gazes out the caged bus window.

From the shores of Queens, a mile-long bridge rises over the East River toward an island officially located in the Bronx. This sprawling city of jails waits with open arms to welcome the pariahs of the five boroughs.

As we approach C-73, the reception jail, the mood is a blend of somberness and tension so thick you could cut it with some crudely fashioned prison dagger. It takes four hours to get through the intake process; forms to fill in: name, age, height, eye color, identifying scars, religion. By the time it’s over, the Department of Corrections knows more about me than my mother does.

I strip down to my boxers. Each item of clothing examined, then packed away in a yellow canvas bag. I’m assured everything will be returned upon release. Yeah, right, I think. I’m handed a “full set-up”—towel, soap, bedding, and the green jumpsuit that will mark me a bona fide criminal for the next twelve months. Finally, I’m escorted to a housing area. Through several sets of doors, each one unlocked, opened, closed, and locked again, before going on to the next, down dimly lit, cold hallways rich with that institutional stench.

The weight of a six-day speed binge, a day in court, and another day of “bullpen therapy,” as cons call the endless hours in holding cells, have taken a toll. All I want is to pass out. Through my exhaustion I gladly accept the metal cot, thin and tattered mattress, and the wool blanket that looks and smells like it hasn’t been washed in months.

I’m assigned to housing area: 9 Main. It’s a barrack dorm with beds lined up next to each other, separated by three-foot lockers. This is how I will spend the next 365 days—stripped of everything but a locker and a cot.

It’s close to 12 a.m. when I enter the dorm. Most of the residents are wide awake, even with the facility lights out. This is the typical after-hours scene in most housing units on Rikers. It’s called “breakin’ night,” staying up after the lights are out to hustle tobacco, do push-ups, or simply pass the time by reminiscing about the street life. It’s a picture alarmingly similar to the scene on the blocks so many come from. These ghetto celebrities and ’hood movie stars are energized by the cover of darkness.

Despite the ruckus, I settle into my space and drift into a catatonic state. For a moment, I linger in that zombie-like state between wakefulness and deep sleep and think the last forty-eight hours were a surreal dream. That first morning in Main is the darkest dawn I’ve ever known.

The entire dorm is roused for chow at 4:45 a.m. It feels like the coldest winter ever as I lurch toward the mess hall. The echoes of large steel prison doors slamming wake up each and every prisoner confined within this penal colony’s unforgiving walls.

Just a harmless speed addict, I think to myself, I never intended to hurt a soul. Especially not the retired couple whose pension checks I pilfered or the single mom whose life savings account I drained. What a time to be thinking about my vics. How will I stay afloat with the weight of my conscience suddenly acting like a ball and chain? I will surely drown in the insanity of this institution, and I realize how urgently I need a life preserver.

Down the concrete and steel hallways of the jail, I walk alongside misfits of the morning. Entering the large steel dining area, still half-asleep, I’m assaulted by the echo of clanging, banging, and hammering steel. The noise, the noise! Steel walls, steel doors, steel pots, steel pans, steel benches, steel tables—all of which underscore the hell society has banished me to.

As I drag my tray down the stainless steel line, kitchen workers throw and splatter food on my plate. I don’t make eye contact, just try to put one foot in front of the other.

I sit next to an older, bespectacled junky who obviously doesn’t know the meaning of water or soap. I eat cold cereal. With my face down, I think about how I can’t wait to get out, get out and…then suddenly it hits me—I have nothing to get out for. I have no life on the outside worth returning to. The girl I loved, an addict like me, was lost to the streets last I heard. I’m a college drop-out with only lies to put on a resume. When I get out, the only choice I have is to return to the mix, the only thing I know, which will land me right back in this hellhole. For the first time, I consider hanging up, ending it all. Believe it or not, it’s hard to pull off in a place like this. I go back to my cot and sleep another eight hours.

* * *

“On the chow!” the CO barks, alerting inmates it’s feeding time again. I drag myself out of bed and kick on some slippers. I have no idea what day or time it is. I try not to think. My thoughts lead only to one place.

On the way to the mess hall I notice a door with the words, New Beginnings…Create a new life and a new future today. Why does the name resonate so much? I repeat it to myself over and over—New Beginnings, New Beginnings. Then, like some prizefighter’s left hook, it hits me. It is one in a long line of stories Billy’s told me. Last time he was locked down on the Island he managed to weasel his way into being a trustee. He was assigned to sweep and mop some program office. Bits and pieces of his tale are coming back to me. All he kept telling me is that he was so smooth he could find a vic anywhere, even on the inside. “Simple, old-fashioned justice,” he called it. It was his way, he thought, of sticking to the system that stuck it to him so many times. The last thing I want to think about is that world.

God works in mysterious ways, I think, but did he really expect me to join a stupid jailhouse program? Been there, done that. I shuffle along to the mess hall.

I get my food, some kind of slop meant to be meatloaf, and walk to a gray steel table that’s probably been painted for the twentieth time. I sit down and bury my face in my hands. I consider throwing the tray against the wall. I’m filled with rage and desperately need a hit. I haven’t felt my emotions in years and the pain is unbearable.

“Hey.” The guy sitting next to me tries to start a conversation, but I wave him away.

“Don’t wanna talk, man,” I tell him.

“Listen, I know where you’re at,” he says. “I’ve been there. I can see it. New Beginnings is what you need, brotha.” As he goes on about the program, how cool the counselors are, how they help you find a job and get clean once you’re released, I just want him to shut up. I don’t have the energy for hope.

To get him off my back, I grab an application for the program from a table and fill it out. He tells me he’ll give it to the director. The next chapter of my life suddenly has promise, however slight.

I pick up my spoon and take a portion of the meatloaf and place it in my mouth. I chew once or twice, then slowly open my mouth, letting the disgusting fodder fall back onto the tray. This isn’t the first jailhouse meal that has repulsed me, but it’s the first time the pain has run so deep. I push the tray aside and sit there staring at the New Beginnings mural and wondering what that phrase means to me.

I return to my housing unit and wait for the count to be cleared. The jangle of keys attached to the belt on the spreading waist of a CO signifies the change in shifts.

* * *

Clank! The crash of metal against metal, bouncing apart, then meeting again with another steely thump tells me that the day is beginning. Soon it will be business as usual in the facility.

By 7:30 a.m., the facility count of inmates will be complete. As I lie on my bunk, I look toward the east and catch a glimpse of the rising sun. I think to myself that no matter what, the sun will always rise and the world is given a chance at a new beginning. What we do with it is up to us.

“Laundry crew!” a CO blares as inmates move toward the front gate. I’m yet to be assigned a work detail, but maybe I’ll get into that program, I think, and I won’t have to do some grimy jail job.

As soon as the dorm CO appears to have nothing to do, I’ll approach him and ask for a pass to the New Beginnings office. Getting the officer on duty to assist you in any way requires a skill all its own. Timing is everything. Miss that opportunity and you’ll be forced to sit in the house all day, wasting away. I’m not one to let that happen. Like I made things happen on the street, I’ll make things happen here.

I’m given an “OK” and a pass to the New Beginnings office, where I hope to be screened for admittance into the program. This is my chance to make good. Redemption, they say, only comes once in a lifetime.

I enter the office and the first thing I notice is how down-to-earth the counselors seem. They’re like everyday people, hardworking and dedicated to what they do, probably like my victims, I think. That’s one thing about jail, your conscience works overtime. The guilt and shame you’ve suppressed for so long come bubbling to the surface. As I wait for the screening process to begin, I’m overcome with these thoughts. What does this all mean?

Unlike the rest of the jail, with its dreary gray walls, the director’s office is painted a calming beige. Fresh flowers sit in a vase on her desk. The sign on the door tells me her name is Ms. Frey.

“Nice to meet you, Tron,” she says, extending her hand. The office is snowed under with books. Books on the wall, books on the floor, books to the right, and books to the left. Framed photos and artwork line the walls. A picture of a smiling little girl on a swing with Ms. Frey catches my attention. The warmth of the photo has a disarming affect on me, and anyone else who enters here, I think. The picture defines the bond between mother and child. No matter how “hard” you think you are, the image softens you.

She gestures for me to have a seat and instantly I’m attracted to her. If for no other reason, please let me be accepted into this program because the director is fuckin’ fine. I pray to whoever’s listening.

She looks at me with emerald-green eyes that make me think how easily I could fall for this woman. As she tells me about the program, I fixate on her face. Oddly, a fleeting thought tells me I’ve met her before.

The interview goes well and I’m told I’m accepted into the program. I never share my deep thoughts with anyone, but somehow she got me open. I’ve seen the inside of jails and rehabs from here to Los Angeles, and bullshit-talking counselors are a dime a dozen, but I may have found the one therapist who truly cares. My life is a mess and I desperately need the help of this program.

* * *

Days go by in this jungle, and as in any jungle made of concrete and steel or gnarled green vegetation, only the strong survive. By no means am I the super thug type; my IQ earns me respect and is regarded in much the same way as a seventeen-inch bicep. Behind these walls that’s all you’ve got, and both will earn you props.

I find solace in the New Beginnings office, exchanging feedback with others in the program and building on ideas with positive people. One-on-one sessions with Ms. Frey keep me afloat and I have found an oasis. She will rescue me from the sea of toxicity I’m floating in.

I tell her about the dark places my drug addiction brought me, about the hookers and the drugs, but I don’t tell her about the scams, spreads, and the dirty checks—I’m too embarrassed and don’t want to scare her off. Her office is where I dump my guilt and shame, and she willingly carts it away.

“You don’t have to live that way anymore,” she tells me.

* * *

What other way is there to live? I wonder. This is all I know.

About a month into the program, I’m sitting in her office talking about the future. She’s telling me about a job she thinks I’d be good at—working with a team of researchers studying patterns of drug use in the city.

“They’re looking for people who have firsthand knowledge of crystal meth,” she says. “You’d be doing ethnography—studying a subculture…” She pauses to take a phone call. “It might be my daughter’s school,” she says.

I sit there thinking about the job. From what it sounds like, I’ll be great at it. I laugh to myself and think, I study patterns of drug use every day anyway—who’s got what, where, and for how much.

Suddenly I notice her usually unflappable demeanor shift. She looks like she’s been slapped and says only a few words during the ten-minute phone call. “Never, not at all, what should I do?” she finally exclaims.

She hangs up, looking stunned, and apologizes for the disruption. She tries hard to regain her composure.

“Is everything all right?” I ask.

She doesn’t answer at first, she just picks up the picture of her daughter. She stares into it as if trying to draw strength from its aura.

“I apologize, but I just received some devastating news,” she finally says. What she tells me next tears through me like a bullet. It was a credit bureau calling her, investigating “an unusual number of revolving credit accounts being opened and now in arrears.” Her savings account has nearly been drained—the account she built for her daughter’s education. Only pennies are left. Now the arduous process of repairing her credit and proving to the banks that it wasn’t her will begin. Sadness envelops me.

Images of Heidi’s apartment suddenly play like a slideshow in my mind. She had flashed that picture in my face that twisted night I found myself in her apartment. It was the ID with the pretty face Heidi was determined to duplicate. Billy’s tentacle prints are all over this scheme. Was this the “justice” he was talking about? The woman who now sits before me was our prey: chewed up and spit out like countless others. I was a part of a wicked machine that ruined lives and now I’m face-to-face with my evil. The problem is, without the drugs I have a conscience, and I’m devastated.

I sit there listening to her tell me the story I played an integral part in. I can actually feel her confusion, disenchantment, and anger, coupled with the urge to exact some sort of revenge or instant justice. If she only knew. Now here’s the question. Would she be more at ease if I were to disclose my connection to this wicked scheme? If anyone would understand, it would be Ms. Frey. She makes a living out of caring and being sympathetic, right?

Well, I never come clean with Ms. Frey. I quit the program after that day. I had a chance to make good and it disappeared as quickly as it revealed itself to me. I can’t bear to be around Ms. Frey at all. It’s true what they say: Secrets keep us sick. I’m still as sick and twisted as ever.

* * *

Months pass and I’ve got two days before I’m released. Soon I’ll be back in the abyss, and I’m sure this time it’ll be deeper and darker than ever. The game is funny that way—just when you think you’re on your way out, it pulls you back in. Rikers Island can’t change years of what life in the Bronx has bred. Who the fuck was I kidding?

LOOK WHAT LOVE IS DOING TO ME

BY MARLON JAMES

Williamsbridge

This is the year of the monkey. A Chinese john told me this after coming back from downtown to celebrate Chinese New Year. I was just shocked to see somebody Oriental cruising ass anywhere past Grand Concourse. I think he was rich too. But then they’re all rich, these johns who have wives and kids back home but then whisper to me that after feeling how tight an asshole is, could never truly love pussy. They tell me all sorts of stuff. Mostly they tell me to act like a girl, so I call them honeychile and flick my wrist like a faggot and that makes it easier, I guess.

Hey, white boy, watchu doin uptown? Lou Reed, the original signifying monkey. I’m older than I seem and younger than I look. Clever. Brains couldn’t save me last year when my dad kicked me out because I didn’t dig girls. I was like, Yo, Pops, I don’t eat pussy but I suck a mean dick. Not really. Not at all. After he got through with me, after my mom was more sick at the beating than what I was getting beat up for, she screamed and he stopped. Now I walk like Ratso and one day I’ll fuck him back up.

Right now it’s 11 in the night and I’m by Hammersley and Ely, right outside Haffen Park, watching cars go by. Cruising of a different flavor. Yeah, boyee, clever. I’m at Hammersley and Ely and I’m waiting for Gary to come shuff me off this mortal coil. Gary likes a good old mess so he’ll probably use that sawed-off of his. Or maybe his bowie knife. It’s weird waiting for somebody to kill you. Knowing that you’re going to die, knowing the end of the movie before the middle makes you do all kinds of shit. Wicked fly shit. It’s like knowing you have cancer so you can do that live-every-minute thing. So I went to McDonald’s and bought two fries. I shoplifted some Garnier Fructis from Rite Aid on Eastchester because I should at least smell good when they find me off Gun Hill Road somewhere.

A snapshot. We’re in the living room of my parents’ house on Gunther. We’re Jews, baby, the last of a dying breed in the Bronx. Gary is sprawled on the love seat, legs spread wide with boots on the chair arm. His vest is dirty as fuck and he’s wearing no shirt underneath. Baggy jeans, the brown ones I don’t like with speckles that look like dried blood. He really looks like shit, but it works. As I said, we’re in my parents’ house.

My mother is dead now. So too is my father. Both died this year. My sister Diane died several years before but just a few years after Dad stopped fucking her. Andre, he’s in jail with nothing but a conviction and no remorse. Ten months before they found him at the gate, trembling like they had dunked him in ice. Dude was still clutching the bloody hatchet and shaking like he got fits or something. The Post said they charged him for double murder and resisting arrest. My father had three hatchet wounds in his forehead, fingers chopped off, probably from trying to block the blows. My mom had to be buried with a closed casket. But enough about them. Gary is going to kill me.

Like just about everybody in the Bronx now, Gary is from Jamaica. I don’t know if he was doing guys given how Jamaicans, like, kill homos and shit, but I know he used to kill back there. Back in the ghetto and shit. See, I know, I represent. I miss him. I hate that. I sound like somebody old, and I have to be tough like him. I want to say I miss him, but I can’t. Maybe I’m just relieved. I don’t know. Some things you can’t unsay and some things you can’t undo. I’m at Hammersley and Ely and a car just slowed down. They used to kill people in this park almost every night before Rudy cleaned things up.

Another snapshot. When I met Gary I was already turning tricks, like four months after Daddy kicked me out of the house and I went downtown just to see the river. Nothing but boys in the street. I was so fucking hungry, yo. One of the boys was eating fried chicken. He handed me a piece and I ate the bone. Mad hungry. Chill, bitch, he said. I asked where he got the chicken, and he said I should let an uncle pay for it. One of them will be driving up in his Chrysler minivan soon enough. I’d only have to do two things. One was wait. He didn’t tell me what the other one was.

A car pulled up. He got in and waved at me. Darkness was hiding everything. I turned to go back to, I don’t know, uptown, I guess, even though that would take forever. Then this car pulled up and stopped beside me. “You’re new,” the man said. I didn’t know what he meant. I asked if he could get me some KFC and he said, “Get in.” I’m not stupid. I was sixteen and I knew a lot of shit and it’s not like I was going to vomit. Part of me wanted to be in the car. He got me some chicken and when I started to eat he unzipped his pants and took it out. I thought jacking off a dude was the same as jacking myself off and I was hungry. I grabbed his cock and he said, “No, baby,” and pointed at my mouth.

Gary’s coming for me. So stupid, all the shit that lead to this.

Third snapshot. So one day, or night, rather, I’m walking down Baychester, looking for a better highway to sleep under, I guess. First mistake, nobody looks for cock on Baychester. One person in the car says, “Yo, you one of them good-time boys?” and me, I’m thinking that I’m a pro so I can show some sass, so I say, “What kind of time you think is good?” And I’m riding this moment because I get to be all witty and shit, clever, and the car stops and he tells me to get in. And I’m looking around because this is the Bronx yo, not Chelsea, and I don’t want any trouble. But the man shows me some cash and I get in. Second mistake: Don’t jump in a car with a john without checking the backseat first. And the man, another Jamaican, says him don’t buy puss in a bag so open the bag and make me see the goodies, and I zip down my pants and take it out, and then he asks me to jack off and I’m feeling weird, like this is one of those real freaks who just wants to watch me cum, so I start to rub my cock even though it feels really, really weird, and suddenly the car stops and three guys jump out from the backseat. “Fuckin’ batty boy,” one of them says, and they open my door and pull me out. I didn’t even notice that we had turned down some lane and the only witnesses would be rats. So they form this circle and one by one they grab me by the shirt, spin their arms like a whirlwind, and punch me in the face or the stomach, and every time I get hit it’s like another explosion, and I vomit and that just makes it worse. And if I fall they pull me up and punch and kick me over to the next one, who punches and kicks me in the balls and I fall to the ground again and taste the garbage on the asphalt, and my eyes are so blurry that I can’t see nothing. All I see is four blurs bent over me, then all of a sudden there are three blurs, then two. Two blurs jump up and try to fight a new blur. The new blur is black and white at the same time. The new blur flashes something shiny and plunges into one of the two. The last blur runs to the car and drives off. The new blur smells like sulphur. I see a hand coming toward me and I try to push it off, but this last blur is too strong. Then I realize that I was in the air. Gary picks me up and carries me back to this place.

I’m in this shack for I don’t know how long. Back then I thought he was a miracle, but not long after that I realized that the only reason he was on that street was that he was cruising for ass too. I would have laughed if it wasn’t so hard. A gunman on the road, Jamaican at that, looking to pick up a male whore. That said, I barely saw him. His room stunk. It was a hotel room—no, it wasn’t, it was some Christian-home thingy. I soon realized that it was not his house that stunk, but outside. One of those places where garbage is never picked up on time. I didn’t care, I would have followed him anywhere. I was there weeks or months, I don’t know. He was barely there though. Sometimes I would wake up in the night only to hear heavy breathing beside me. He would smell like sulphur and he would be fast asleep. I’m wondering if people have asthma attacks in their sleep.

For a good while I couldn’t see very good so I thought what I was seeing was not really real. I thought I was making it up, but when my eye swelling went down and I woke up and saw who was in bed beside me, I had to slap my mouth shut to stop the scream. In the bed was the whitest man I’d ever seen in my life. I wish I could say how it shocked me, I wish I could. At first I thought he was white. I couldn’t form a word or a fucking thought. He was in the bed, sorta curled up in a red brief. His hair was light yellow, lighter than any blond I know, and his eyebrows were white and his skin was just covered in white hair. I stooped down beside his face and saw that his lips were thick and his nose kinda flat. I’d never seen an albino before. He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. I touched his hair, which was really coarse, and when I moved my hand he was looking at me. We just stood there. I was looking at him and he was looking at me.

Every now and then—shit, who am I fooling, every goddamn day Gary will just disappear like that and don’t come back for hours, sometimes days. And he’ll either be in a really good mood or a really fucked-up one and ask me for coke. I will tell him that I never do that shit and I can feel his punch coming before he even clenches his fist. This is so damn pathetic. I feel like the woman who loved too much. Then again, love is way too strong a word. And sometimes you blur the line between love and gratitude so much that you don’t know if you showing affection or repaying a debt.

Fourth snapshot. We’re in KFC on Gun Hill because the lighting sucks, and we’re eating and fooling around. When he isn’t pissed, or scared, or just in a mood to fuck things up, Gary is the funniest person to be around. And that place, especially in the darker corners round back, is one of those places where he can be himself. He lets out this nervous little laugh and says, “Boy, if some people ever find out, especially me girlfriend them, I don’t know if they’d kill themselves or me first. Then again, they wouldn’t believe it even if they heard it from my own mouth.”

“That you are a faggot?”

“I not no bombo raas claat faggot!” This he says to me even though, for the entire time we have been here, his hand hasn’t left my balls. This is not the kind of situation to get him mad.

“You can call a hardcore gangster faggot?”

“Well, you’re not feeling up a pussy.”

I shouldn’t have said that. He grabs hard, and pain, fucking splitting pain that feels as if something is clawing its way through my stomach, causes me to double over on the table.

“Sorry, sorry…” he says, and he sounds as surprised at what he did as I am. I stomp his foot hard.

“No, you not, you son of a bitch.”

He looks at me long and hard, then lets out a loud laugh. “Well, you certainly go on like a pussy sometimes. Look, how much time you want me to say sorry? Shit, you can gwaan like girl eeh, man? All this intense fuckery. Me can’t deal with that. Look, I have to go do some business, me’ll see you when me see you.”

Three weeks later he shows up at the room we’re staying, almost unconscious, trembling and bleeding. I will never forget the look he had on his face as long as he lets me live. Almost as if he saw God or something much worse. And he’ll never forgive me for seeing him that way. I knew that he barely got away from something. I put him to bed and have to hush him three times when he wakes screaming that they’re out ? get him wid forty-four bullets. You’d think he was reduced to nothing but a little flower in the palm of my hand and all that was left for me to do was to make a fist.

My name is Rockford Goodman. My mother thought she was being cute naming me after The Rockford Files. Even at her most depressed she was superficial that way. Gary calls me Rock and I’m not sure why either. Rockford sounds like shit, I know, so either he can’t be bothered with saying the whole name or maybe he thinks I have some inner strength or something. Right. He’s probably calling me Rock Hudson. I go back home. He’s either waiting for me or coming for me. One or the other.

Fifth Snapshot. I’m alone in this house and can still see the bloodstains. On the living room wall where Andre took the house rifle and shot Daddy in the shoulder. Andre didn’t know all that much about guns so he threw it away and went for a hatchet in the kitchen. By the time he found it, Daddy had already made the mistake to run upstairs. I can bet he was screaming. He must have grabbed the wall to support himself, because it had frantic bloodstains, which have fear written deep in them. Fear written deep. Clever. Man, I should be a writer. A blood trail leads halfway to the bathroom at the top of the stairs. It begins again and continues to Diane’s room. There’s blood in the closet. This strikes me as so damn ironic that he would run for safety into a closet that couldn’t save any of us.

I imagine it happened the same way. He’d be crouched under the musty clothes, so shit-scared that he wouldn’t even realize that his own blood was ratting him. Andre would open the door, and Daddy would see him, and that would be the last thing he saw before his eyes went red. I can imagine the hatchet becoming a part of him with a life of it’s own; taking control of his actions and plunging into flesh like a jackhammer. It feels as if it commands you and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Actually, I didn’t say any of that shit, but the criminal psychologist did, at his trial. Personally, I think that is all bullshit. I don’t think he lost it when he killed my parents. I don’t think he was possessed by some temporary insanity or some Night Stalker bullshit. I think he just had enough. He told the court that he knew how Jane Fonda felt in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? My brother was tried as an adult and is serving two life sentences.

I wonder where Gary is. I wonder why this kinda exhilarates me, and I don’t use that word every day. Maybe he’s doing something that he always wanted, some kinky shit that he’ll take too far. Maybe he’ll enjoy it. He always talks about taking some asshole out in Kingston and how he’ll let him bargain for his life by sucking him off, then kill the guy anyway.

Final snapshot. Yesterday I was sitting on this bed that I’m sitting on now and I hear the door crack. It fucks me up how these things just happen. I know it’s the front door. Living here all these years, I remember the whole house coming to attention when one heard the click and clang of the front door being opened. Gary’s at the door and he’s laughing loud. This is strange. I lived here most of my life and never felt like I belonged, but this man who has never been here already sounds like his name is in the will. He laughs out loud again and I’m thinking he’s either mad or with somebody.

I’m forcing myself not to give a shit. Sitting on the bed, staring into space as if downstairs is some new dimension entirely. Fuck it. I have to see who…No, I hate how this bothers me and I wish it didn’t.

Damnit.

Damn him.

I get up and move to the door. Then turn back. It’s none of my damn business. He laughs again. She laughs with him. Louder, longer. I’m out the door before it can even swing back, feeling the cold concrete and hearing my own feet. The bedroom door bangs shut and rats me. Downstairs nobody seems to notice. Damn that son of a bitch. I don’t want to look, but I deserve to see who’s having so much fun in this miserable house.

She’s already on the floor smiling broad, with white teeth. Her hair is a big red Afro. I hate her already. She’s got these huge breasts with big black circles on each nipple. He grabs one of her legs and slaps her pussy a couple times with his cock. Then he pushes it in and begins to fuck her. She screams immediately. Of course she’s faking it, she could never know what true pain from being fucked feels like. He lies down on top and I see muscles in his back and buttocks flex and release as he moves in and out of her. She looks as if she’s being battered to death. They don’t say a word, only grunt like dogs or something. How does he do it? How does he fuck both ass and pussy but can’t stand either? He rolls over and sees me.

“Ohhhh, Rock. Big, bad Rocky.”

He’s looking at me with a big grin and humming the tune to that fucking Sylvester Stallone movie.

“Baby, look up, some people watching the show. Ooooh, slow down, baby, this train soon reach the station. Rock is one bad girl this you know. You know how bad? She talking ’bout how when pussy getting fucked, ass must get fucked too!”

I hate him.

“Hers or yours?” I say.

I watch the albino man go red. The woman laughs out loud. He jumps up and starts to kick her in the belly. She’s screaming, but he grabs her by the hair.

“You know say me a bad man, bitch? You know say me a bad man?”

He pulls her up and tells her to get the fuck out. She runs, pulling down her dress and forgetting her shoes. I run to my parents’ room, but before I can close the door he kicks himself in. He grabs me and I’m kicking and fighting and trying to hit his balls, but he’s not feeling anything.

“What the fuck wrong with you, eh? What the fuckin’ fuck!”

He pulls me on the bed and straddles me and starts to punch me in the face and slap me and cuss me. And I can’t do anything but fumble around the night table beside the bed, reaching for something, anything, to hit this son of bitch. He’s still slapping me and cussing about me fucking up his business and how it’s my fault that people looking for him and white people just love to fuck up ghetto man life, and he’s still hitting me. I grab around the table and knock the lamp off and pull the crochet off and finally grab onto Mom’s letter opener. Then he swings his hand back to give it to me this time, his final superfuckin’ colossal shot, and as he swings his hand to my face I swing the letter opener to his palm and crucify the motherfucker.

He’s looking at me all shocked and shit, and I’m shocked too. And I think about saying something, and he’s pulling this puppy dog thing that disappears as soon as he notices that I notice. He climbs off me and leaves and I’m watching the door.

That’s why he’s coming back for me.

I’m beginning to think that there’s some deep shit to loneliness. People think loneliness is the absence of people, but I’m starting to think that it’s the opposite of people. And if that’s the case, then loneliness is just as real as having a warm john next to you. Think about it. If you look at loneliness as this perfect state, like this universe of just yourself, then it’s like perfect. I’m impressed with myself, this is some deep thinking. Clever, clever shit. Gary said I think too much.

Gary’s coming. I’m in my father’s deathbed waiting for my blood to join his. I took off all my clothes. You ever notice that most suicides took off their clothes before? Call me suicide by murder. The room’s all dark now. I’m a big boy. I don’t think I’ll cry. But then I do, thinking about my pops and my bro and my sis and wanting to make a bath red from my wrists so that I can be with her. She was always my girl and I still think that by giving in to my pops she was taking the hit for me. Jesus, Jesus, I miss her so much. I just want to tell her I’m sorry and I understand if she doesn’t want me in heaven with her.

I wish this darkness would just take me, then out of the dark he appears, and by the time his eyes and teeth match a description I recognize, I’m already screaming. He slaps me.

“What the fuck wrong with you?”

“Nothing. Why the fuck you hitting me?”

“You in the dark talking to yourself like you brain gone pan screw.”

“I wasn’t talking to myself.”

“Then you thinking out loud?”

“Just forget it.”

“Forgot it already. Move over.”

He throws his shoes off and then 200 pounds of sweat and cigarette smoke land beside me. His hand is all bandaged up and his gun is missing. He does not look at me. Just climbs in the bed. Even when he is not snoring he breathes heavily, it sounds like sinus but to me it’s like he’s cursed to a lifetime of adrenalin overdose. I don’t know how I feel. Kinda I want to, I think, but that’s just a stupid song from Nine Inch Nails and proof to him that a faggot with white skin is the worst kind of faggot. I feel like Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Clever, I know.

PART IV

THE WANDERER

HOME SWEET HOME

BY SANDRA KITT

City Island

It had been years since I was last on City Island. That’s the official name of the community that’s a little spit of land connected to the Bronx by a bridge, one lane in each direction, not far from Pelham Bay Park. The bridge is the only way on or off the island.

I came back for only one reason, and it wasn’t to order a plate of fried clams or shrimp bisque. I wanted to find out what really happened to Brody Miller. The two people in the entire world who would know still lived there on City Island.

I remember it was an adventure to go to City Island with my family and have dinner. Seafood and pizza predominated the businesses that ran the full length of the main street, City Island Avenue, from the bridge at one end down to Belden Street and the pier with its unobstructed view of Long Island Sound at the other. There were two other smaller islands as well, accessible by ferry. As far as I knew no one lived on either. (I now know, however, that short-term jail inmates from Rikers Island are transported there almost daily, for the grisly job of digging holes.) My family had its favorite places to eat, but since then most of those restaurants have been taken over by new owners and new names. Same food.

I never used to believe that anyone actually lived on City Island, as if the stores and restaurants along the main street were a back-lot façade. The restaurants located on the water were the real reason to go. Because of the view of the marina, and the bay beyond the small harbor, and to watch the occasional slow-moving pleasure boats on a nice day. There was something maybe a little exotic about this other world, because it was just barely connected to the rest of the city.

It was only after I met and started hanging out with Jenna Harding in high school, and she met and fell in love with Brody Miller, that I found some of the real charm of the place. Brody had fallen hard, granting City Island the status of Eden. Yeah, Jenna was our official safe passage into the tightknit community of people who’d lived there for generations. But it was Brody who embraced the island with fervor and devotion as if it was also his own. I could never see City Island through either of their eyes, but I went along because Jenna and Brody somehow brought both worlds together, his and hers. But in the end the island showed them both that, either oil and water don’t mix, or never the twain shall meet.

When I heard that Jenna still lived on City Island I knew I had to return. But it wasn’t about her. She was always going to be welcome there; she was one of the island’s own. I always felt more protective of Brody because, as everyone else and everything proved, he had no one but himself. I thought he was still there somewhere. I imagined I even knew where.

When I met Jenna in high school it was the first time she’d been off the island without her family or friends. But she had no choice. City Island schools only went through ninth grade and then all students had to go somewhere else to graduate high school. She said her parents wanted to send her to private school but couldn’t afford it. They were afraid that urban life, and all those ethnic types, would open its great jaws and swallow their redhaired, green-eyed baby whole. I was one of “those people,” but I’d add a little spice to my family by mentioning my American Indian background, effectively demon-strating that, in one way, I was here way before anyone else, like the Indians who originally inhabited City Island.

I started going over there to see Jenna and that’s when my tunnel vision began to broaden peripherally. There were real homes and families. The side streets were small, the blocks short, the homes very close together, barely a human width apart. The island was Old World, like parts of Queens and Brooklyn, with a touch of New England coastal towns before redevelopment. It was sweet. It looked kind of rundown, but interesting. I hardly ever saw other people who looked like me.

When I met Jenna’s parents they seemed, at first, suspicious. Years later I realized that their reception was probably no different from what my parents might have shown had Jenna ever met them and visited where I lived in Washington Heights. My mother worked. Hers didn’t. My father owned a business that had him traveling through three nearby states several times a month. Jenna’s father managed a business on City Island that his family used to own. My mother was the strong family matriarch. Jenna’s father ruled because he was a chauvinist.

Tommy Harding liked to boast that his father was once the unofficial mayor of City Island. The Harding family had been there almost five generations. Tommy took over the title by default after his father died, and was inordinately proud of it. He wasn’t a very big man; slender, a chain smoker, and a big storyteller. Not a lot of formal education, but by no means a stupid man. Mrs. Harding was almost invisible the few times I visited. She kept a clean if unimaginative house. There was a lot of crochet and quilted accents. One was a framed Home Sweet Home sign that greeted visitors just inside the front door.

As much as I was a little bit afraid of Tommy Harding and his big ego, I was more fascinated by his stories of life on the island, what it used to be like. Jenna once confessed, embarrassed but honest, that she thought her father was probably prejudiced. He’d told me that his best friend in the navy was black. But I wondered what he said about me behind my back after leaving his house.

I came to believe that Jenna’s father treated me with the generosity of someone who felt perfectly safe in his universe, and was assured he was far better than I was. Jenna had two brothers. One who’d left right after high school to join the marines. The other had simply moved to a different boating town in Maryland. I wondered if in either case it was to get out of the shadow of their father. Jenna was the baby of the family, a distinction that held pros and cons, and that would ultimately decide her future.

And then Brody entered the picture.

Jenna and I met him at the start of our junior year when he’d transferred in to finish his senior year. He was tall, athletic, good-looking in a bad-boy, smartass way, even though he was neither. He was also an unknown. Neither white nor black, nor Latino, Brody was classic Heinz variety. That meant, whatever racial mixture went into his makeup, the end result was a guy who stood out, drew attention, seemed bigger than life. He had the open personality and charm of someone who went by his own rules but tried hard to get along.

Brody became my friend, the kind of male friend that is only possible when you’re sixteen, and when you have something in common. In our case it was ambiguous background and heritage. Like me he had a curiosity about people, places, and things that made us fearless. But Jenna fell for Brody in the way of a young girl whose heart can be captured, true and fast, just once in her life.

Their romance became public domain, and everyone in school followed its development with personal interest. The other boys wanted to know how long it would take Brody to score. The other girls upped the ante and did what they could to get Brody’s attention for themselves. I was witness to all of it, awed and deeply jealous that no one ever looked at me or sought me out the way Brody and Jenna did for each other.

Yet he wasn’t a player. There was, however, something a bit dangerous and tense about him, like a predatory animal who had very tightly drawn parameters around his space and himself. Even Jenna hadn’t picked that up about Brody, her eyes glazed over with infatuation, and defiance.

Once, Brody and I got to talking outside of school. We’d been let out early because of teacher meetings. Jenna hadn’t bothered coming at all. I felt aimless and not ready to head back home to take up my role as babysitter to my younger siblings.

“So, Jenna didn’t come in today,” he said. He rolled the one spiral bound notebook he ever used, and forced it into the back pocket of his jeans.

“She said it was a waste of time just for a few hours. Anyway, it’s a long bus ride from City Island,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. If I’d known I would have skipped to be with her.”

I looked at his profile. “You’ve been over there? To City Island?”

“Sure. Lots of times.”

“With Jenna?” I thought of her father and the boundaries he’d laid down.

He laughed. “Before I ever met her. I use to fish off the pier near the bridge. I once tried to get a summer job at the marina. Jen and me, we get together and walk around Orchard Beach Park. I have to do the right thing. I want to meet her folks, see where she lives. Let them know straight out Jen and me are together. I love City Island. I could live there.”

“How come?”

“’Cause it’s small. It’s surrounded by water. It feels like home. Kind of cozy and safe and cut off, know what I mean?”

“Like your home?”

“Not where I live now. Where I’d like to live one day.”

“But there’s nothing there. There’s nothing to do but eat. Jenna even says so and she liked growing up there. It’s so different from the rest of New York.”

“Maybe that’s why I like it.”

“Maybe your family could move there.”

“I don’t have a family. I live in a group home. My last foster parents moved before the school year started. I didn’t want to go with them to Norfolk. I was old enough. I could decide to stay on my own.”

I looked at Brody more closely. I was afraid to be too nosy and ask the questions that would give him a history and fill in the blanks.

“Aren’t you afraid to be by yourself?”

“I’ve always been by myself. It could have been worse, I guess. I always knew I was really on my own. I don’t know why my real mother gave me up. I don’t know who my father is. Bottom line, I have to take care of myself.”

“Doesn’t that make you mad?”

“I used to be, but now all I want is my own life, my own place, and to do what I want. I’ve been working part-time near boats and water since I was fifteen. South Street Seaport promised me something full-time when I graduate, but I’m thinking how cool it would be to find a job on City Island. Then I could really stay.”

Brody had always struck me as a guy who said what he meant, and knew what he wanted and pretty much how to get it. But what I wasn’t hearing was where did Jenna fit in? Was she just a stepping-stone to his need to belong somewhere?

His self-confidence was amazing, and it made me wonder if there was some great advantage to having to build your own life, create your own family from the ground up. To not be afraid of the world, not be afraid of being told no. City Island must have seemed like a cosseted haven to him, the safe harbor at the end of the crazy world he came from, where kids were discarded like garbage.

Brody was already eighteen by the time we started our senior year. He looked and behaved older than most of us, which was part of his attraction. We still didn’t know yet how combustible those kinds of traits could be. Awesome to us, threatening to others.

We all had to plot and plan how to get together on Friday nights and weekends for parties and occasional trips into the city to a club. Elaborate lies were created that tested the boundaries of our lives, our families, our communities. Brody had no such concerns and became our de facto leader. I know for me it changed the idea of how big and complicated the world was beyond my own neighborhood. For Jenna I think it was more confusing. How far was she willing to go before she had to turn back home?

“My father is going to kill me,” she inevitably moaned on each new adventure. Like the one that took us to Staten Island, another remote outcast of a place.

In the spring before graduation, Jenna’s parents insisted on hosting a birthday party for their daughter in the tiny backyard of their home. The idea both embarrassed and frightened Jenna, but everyone looked forward to the evening, hoping that the Hardings were cool enough to just disappear so that the real party could go down.

I got there too early, and sat on Jenna’s bed and watched as she finished dressing and did makeup and decided on a pair of cute but treacherous high heels. Her friends started arriving in earnest around 8:30, quickly spilling into the front yard, and the street to the side of the house. Some boy who’d once dated Jenna, before she’d left the island and met Brody, actually showed up, his presence blessed by her father. Goodlooking but, to my way of thinking, too much like a Tommy-in-the-making.

By 10 the party was on, but Jenna was nervous and excited waiting for Brody to appear. Me too. It was such a mixed party that everyone thought Jenna’s folks surely knew about Brody by now. Her father especially was jovial and in good spirits, joking with the boys and drawing lots of raucous laughter. Gracious and flirtatious with the girls, drawing whispered comments like, “He’s kind of cool.” Music and voices and laughter floated like a breeze and wafted over the neighborhood.

Brody arrived a little before midnight, making an entrance that was not soon forgotten because of its simplicity and class. Those are my words. There are some who might give a slightly different spin. In any case, some kind of energy shifted in the yard. With it came anticipation.

Jenna, who had been giggly all evening, ran to greet Brody n a way that left no doubt they were an item. Before greeting anyone else, Brody presented Jenna’s mother with flowers. She was so startled that she barely managed a thank you before escaping into the house with the bouquet. For Tommy Harding, Brody had a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Brody shook Tommy Harding’s hand and thanked him for inviting him to the party, and into his home.

The ice had been broken.

The critical initiation had been passed. Brody was in. All of us closed around him and Jenna like the good buds, comrades, classmates that we were. It totally excluded her parents.

From his pocket Brody took out a delicate chain necklace with a sparkling gem pendant dangling from the center. Jenna turned so that he could fasten it around her neck. We woowooed like a team cheer while Jenna kissed Brody her thanks, and her love.

Given a real choice, I’m not sure that Jenna’s father would have included Brody Miller, and it seemed to me Brody was an unwelcome surprise. Brody wasn’t just another high school friend, he was a young man. He was not just another guest, he was seeing Tommy’s daughter.

The music and laughter continued, and so did the drinking. At one point I noticed that the cake had been brought out and placed on a sawed-down tree stump that served perfectly as a small table. On previous visits to Jenna’s house her father had always complained about the stump, promising to dig it out and get rid of it one of these days, while admitting that it had its uses, like now. The appearance of the cake was a good sign. By 1:30, 2 at the latest, the party would be over and we’d all leave. I wouldn’t have to bare witness to whatever humiliation Jenna’s father was making a case for, as he watched his little girl enjoying herself.

Jenna and Brody held hands, or put their arms around each other. Sometimes they danced, swaying together, hip to hip. Facing each other, the intimacy in their gaze naked and exposed. They looked great together. Years later I’d recognize that Jenna and Brody were setting an example and a standard for our own possibilities in love.

Tommy Harding drank too much. Mrs. Harding tried to draw him aside, away from the party that was not meant for him. Too late, Tommy’s insecurities surfaced and he set out on a course aimed directly at Brody Miller. He suddenly stumbled across the yard, grabbed Brody’s arm, and jerked him around, squaring off.

“I don’t appreciate you comin’ in here and taking over my daughter’s party. Who the fuck are you anyway? Don’t touch her.”

“Daddy!” Jenna gasped in genuine shock.

The crowded yard grew silent so quickly it was as if we were all holding our breath, waiting for this moment.

Jenna’s father and Brody were chest to chest. Brody had the advantage by about three inches. Standing with yet another beer and a cigarette in one hand, Tommy used the other to jab a finger in Brody’s face. Brody took a step back. Jenna was holding his arm. That only infuriated her father more.

I closed my eyes before the first punch could be thrown. All around me people were on the move; standing way back, or pushing through the side gate onto the street. I heard a lawn chair scrape against the flagstone ground and then fall over, as did a bottle that broke. I heard Jenna screaming at her father to stop, her mother wailing like a Greek chorus. I heard Brody quietly telling Tommy Harding to calm down, but I was waiting breathlessly for the tipping point. Brody’s next suggestion that maybe he should leave was overridden by Jenna’s declaration that she was going with him. That sealed it. Both were cut off by a sudden crunch and a thud, a grunt. A highpitched scream rose over the music.

Jenna got between her father and Brody. Her red hair was like a flag, and the only color to be distinguished in the yard lit by lanterns. She was not trying to stop her father but trying to protect Brody. Her choice spurred Tommy Harding into a fury. And it was as if some silent call had gone out. Suddenly, nearly half a dozen men, including Jenna’s former boyfriend, were rushing Brody. They surrounded him, tackling him to the ground.

I heard them calling Brody every dirty word and name they could utter.

“Call the cops. Call the cops!”

It was my own voice I heard, disembodied and shrill. I wanted to make them stop, but I was terrified of the men turning on me as well. No one went to Brody’s aid, and Jenna was wrenched from his side. Once again, he was on his own. He didn’t belong on City Island, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to get a chance to be with Jenna Harding.

I don’t remember hearing police sirens. But the fight had lost its momentum and the men were weary. I couldn’t see Brody, but I knew I had to get out of there. Fear took over. I stepped over the debris that was now the backyard. The birthday cake had been smashed and destroyed, the colorful frosting a globby mess on the ground.

Jenna was crying hysterically and being comforted by her mother, but she kept calling out Brody’s name. Her father was slouched on a step at the back of the house. Another man sat bent over on the tree stump that minutes ago held the birthday cake. Brody was on his knees, silently hunched over and motionless. Two men stood over him, as if daring him to get up. Finally, I took a hesitant step toward Brody, but someone stood in my way to prevent my passage.

“It’s all over. Go home. There’s nothing to see. Just go home.”

“Brody? Come on. Get up. Let’s get out of here,” I heard my own trembling voice.

“Don’t worry about him. We’ll see that he gets home. It was a fight and now it’s over.”

“But he didn’t start it,” I said.

The man got right in my face. “Go…home.”

I hung around outside, shivering not from the night air but from having watched Brody outnumbered by five or six able-bodied men. There were still a couple dozen partygoers hanging around. I waited for Brody to come out so we could head back into the city together.

Maybe twenty minutes later a police car ambled its way up the street. The two officers got out and approached the house as if they were just stopping by for a friendly cup of coffee. No rush to see if a teen named Brody Miller was hurt and maybe needed an ambulance.

I decided that Brody would probably be okay.

I went home.

Jenna was not in school the entire next week. Neither was Brody. The talk was not about the ruined birthday party but about the fight, and Brody getting his ass kicked. There was also talk that Brody and Jenna had run off together. I preferred that story to the one that kept playing in my mind.

Jen returned, sullen and standoffish, for the last three weeks of school, and finally graduation. She had nothing to say about anything, except that she and Brody had broken up.

Okay, I could see that happening. She wasn’t going to defy her own father. She wasn’t going to take a risk, or stand up for what she believed or what she wanted. I can’t say if that was a mistake, but it was certainly her loss.

I, for one, never saw Brody again.

* * *

It was years before I thought I’d figured out what happened to Brody Miller. I couldn’t tell Jenna. Anyway, I kind of lost touch with her a few years after we graduated. Once I did ask her, flat out, if she ever heard from Brody. She said, simply, no. End of conversation. I heard that someone contacted his group home supervisor only to be told that Brody was no longer there. He was past being a minor, a ward of the state, and if he chose to take off without telling anyone, he had the right.

Jenna and I drifted further apart. What used to hold us together no longer existed. I guess that was as much by choice as it was by circumstance. I know now that you have to work at the things you want, like friendship or love. She landed a job at a law firm in New York. I finished college and returned home. Then one day I realized that I had never returned to the island since the night of Jenna’s birthday party. But that was also the start of some not-so-far-fetched thoughts that wouldn’t go away.

Like believing that Tommy Harding and his friends had killed Brody Miller that night and buried him in the Harding’s backyard.

After a while it didn’t even seem so crazy an idea. I’d already witnessed some of the terrible things people were capable of doing to each other, all to protect themselves, their families, their homes…or in the name of God.

Then, one day, I took a bus back to City Island, getting off the first stop outside a restaurant called the Sea Shore. That was as far as I got. I made myself sick wondering, What if I’m right? What if Jenna’s father goes to jail? What if her family is forced to sell their home, and they leave the island in disgrace? What if Jenna hates me? If Brody was really dead, could I be forgiven for catching and turning in his killer, the father of a friend?

But I wasn’t prepared for a full-fledged flashback of the night of the fight, chilling me to the bone on an eighty-degree day. I turned around and caught the next bus off the island. I was shaking like crazy.

It was a year later when I came up with a real plan. I first went to the police precinct that covered City Island and asked about an incident one spring night nearly seven years earlier at the home of one of the residents. The cops made a show of checking old ledgers and computer databases, and said they could find nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing recorded for that Saturday night was an incident involving a small boat that had been stolen by teens and later run aground.

I did a search of newspapers articles and reports for that entire week. Nothing. I kept thinking, Cover-up. Or, had the police arrived to drive Brody off the island, maybe all the way home? But that was part of the problem again. Brody had no home. He’d wanted City Island to be his home. Maybe he’d gotten his wish.

I Googled his name and the date and still got nowhere. But it was more likely that without anyone to champion him, Brody could have met with foul play. Another thing…people vanish all the time. Sometimes, right under our noses.

There was no help for it. I knew I was going to have to go back and see Tommy Harding.

I don’t think I was prepared to learn that Jenna was back, although I’d heard rumors over the years. She was no longer with her parents but in her own place. I couldn’t find her listed in the local directory, so I called the City Island Historical Society, located in a converted school. An elderly voice answered. Of course he knew the Hardings. He also knew nothing of the night that stayed in my memory.

It was a weather perfect day when I next returned. I got off the bus several blocks from the corner where I’d turn to approach the Harding house. I used the walk to look around and found, eerily, that everything seemed pretty much the same as the last time I’d been this far. There was a craft fair in full swing, and the sidewalks were crowded with tables and makeshift booths of local folks selling their stuff. I bypassed it all.

I turned the corner and approached the Harding house. I was caught off guard when I realized that someone was sitting on the tiny porch. It was Tommy Harding in the flesh, alive and well. I stood on the curb and silently stared at him, too struck by warp time to be able to say anything. He leaned forward in his decaying wicker chair.

“Can I help you? You lost or something?”

“Mr. Harding?”

“Yeah. Who’s asking?”

“I went to school with Jenna. Maybe you remember me?”

He silently regarded me, so still and so coldly that I expected him to yell, Get the hell out of here!

“Sure. I remember you now. How’ve you been? Jenna hasn’t mentioned you in years. Well, come on in.”

I walked through the open gate and up to the steps.

“I know you weren’t expecting me. I’m meeting some friends for lunch in a while,” I improvised smoothly. “I thought that since I was here…”

“You want to know how Jenna’s doing?”

“How are you and Mrs. Harding?” I stalled, minding my manners.

“Fine, fine. Grandparents now, thanks to my son living in San Diego. Wife’s out at that street fair. Come on up and have a seat.”

“Thanks, but I can’t stay long,” I said. “I did want to ask about Jenna. How’s she doing, and everything. I lost touch with her a few years ago.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. I wondered if he was putting together Jenna leaving City Island to go to high school and meeting me. And Brody.

“Well…you know Jenna. She became Miss Independent after she finished high school. Moved into the city, got a job…”

“Did she ever get married?”

“Two years ago. A young guy she grew up with from around here. He’s a cop in the city. Ran into Jenna when he gave her a speeding ticket, and boom. Before you could say City Island they’re planning a wedding.” He cackled gleefully at his own joke. “Sorry you weren’t invited.”

He wasn’t sorry at all, and neither was I. Things change. “I hope she’s happy.”

“She sure did make a beautiful bride. Come inside. I have an album with all the pictures.”

He got up and headed into the house. I hadn’t expected Tommy Harding to make it so easy for me. The inside of the house had not changed either. The first thing I still saw was that Home Sweet Home sign on the wall. It suddenly bothered me a lot to see it. While he was trying to find the right album, I walked toward the window that faced out on the backyard.

“Here it is. Let me turn on the light. See, wasn’t she something? Her husband is a great guy. Known him all his life. They live on the other side of the avenue.”

“So, it’s true. She moved back to City Island?”

His smile was knowing and amused. “She never really left. City Island is a great place to raise a family. The fruit don’t fall all that far from the tree, you know.”

I knew. But I’d hoped that the story would have turned out differently. I bent over the album opened to Jenna’s wedding ceremony. She made a stunning bride, the smiling man standing just behind her a handsome groom. I stared at the images wondering if there’d ever been a chance that Jenna’s future husband might have been Brody? I leafed through the pages but quickly lost interest.

“Why don’t you stop over and say hello? I’m sure Jenna would like that.”

I wonder.

The phone rang and Tommy Harding excused himself to take the call.

That was the moment I needed. I hurried to the window, my heart racing, knowing that this was the moment of truth. Out the window the yard had changed, but not in the way I expected. A small deck had been built, squeezed into one corner. But I also saw that the tree stump was still there. It had not been dug up to provide a convenient hole. The only thing likely to be found beneath it were very dead roots.

“How do you like the deck?”

I grabbed at the opening. “The last time I was here was for Jenna’s birthday our senior year. It ended in a fight with one of our friends, Brody. I don’t know what happened to him after that night. Do you?”

“Well, I sure don’t. Don’t remember the guy very well. Lot of drinkin’ went on that night. Wife told me the next day I made a fool of myself, embarrassed Jen. Too much beer,” he chuckled, unrepentant.

He walked back to the door. I knew that was my invitation to leave. He’d been gracious and let me in. But I wasn’t going away till I got what I wanted. Information. The truth. The whereabouts of Brody.

Halfway across the small living room I happened to spot a bottle of Johnny Walker Red on a bookcase. It was still sealed. It could have been a different bottle than the one given to Jenna’s father that night. It could have been the same. It was something else I’d never know for sure.

I said goodbye to Mr. Harding and walked off his property. Behind me I heard him whistling, comfortable and safe in his kingdom on the bay. He’d given me Jenna’s address, but in that moment I don’t know how much I really wanted to see her again. Too much distance had formed between us, and I was really pissed off with her. She got to come home again, get married to someone else, and settle down like Brody never existed. How could she forget what they’d been like together?

Nevertheless…I crossed City Island Avenue to the quiet streets on the other side, looking for her address. When I found it and saw the life she was living I knew for sure the past was over. Dead and buried.

I was startled when a door slammed on the side of the house and a tall man walked around the car parked in the narrow driveway and prepared to get into the driver’s seat. He stood poised with one foot on the doorframe.

“Come on, Jen. Move it. We’re late.”

A second later the door opened again and the former Jenna Harding rushed out. She hadn’t changed either.

Her flaming hair was still the same length and style as in high school, as in her wedding photos. And she was still answering the call of men like her father who had never ventured very far from this place. Brody might have made a difference. But I forget. He wanted to live here too.

I was going to leave without making my presence known, but Jenna saw me and stopped dead in her tracks. Over the top of her white picket fence, and about seven years, we stared at each other. In her eyes, for a split second, I saw someone I used to know.

“Hey,” she smiled brightly. “What are you doing here?”

Over the fence we air-kissed. The man in the car gently tapped the horn.

“Wait a minute!” she yelled, irritated, turning once more to me. The smile reappeared. “Wow. It’s been so many years.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“So you heard I got married,” she shrugged.

Just then something sharp and bright sparkled at her throat. It was the pendant that Brody had given her on her birthday years before. I couldn’t believe it.

“Let me introduce you to…”

“You’re in a hurry. I just saw your father. I…stopped by to say hello.”

“You did?”

“Well, I actually came for the street fair,” I fabricated again. “He told me you live here.”

“You should have let me know you were coming. I would have invited you to visit, but we’re heading out to his folks for dinner.”

“Go ahead. I won’t hold you up,” I said, stepping back.

She suddenly reached out to me. “Wait. Did you ever hear from Brody?”

Her question was so unexpected that I looked at her hopefully. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

She silently shook her head. “I don’t know anything. Daddy kept telling me everything was going to be all right.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jen, come on, already!”

“Stop yelling. I’m coming,” she pouted.

We stared once more at each other.

“I never saw him again after that night,” she said.

“Maybe he never left the island, Jenna.”

“He did talk about signing up for military duty, and then coming back here.”

She didn’t get it.

The car sounded again.

“I really gotta go. Call me sometime, okay? We’ll get together.” She hurried to the car and got in.

I knew I never would. I stood and watched as the car backed out of the driveway and the former Jenna Harding proceeded with her life as a newly minted matron of City Island, having given up all opportunities to become someone else.

I was overwhelmed with disappointment. I’d held out hope of solving the mystery, positive that something terrible had been done to Brody after the party and he’d never left the island. The body buried in the backyard turned out not to be true. Worse, Jenna appeared as much in the dark as I was.

So, what had happened to Brody Miller?

Had he crept away alone to lick his wounds? Been threatened to stay away from Jenna and City Island? Had he given up on his dream and moved somewhere to create a new one? Was he hiding in the military, always looking for a few good men, and the only place that would give him a home, no questions asked?

The fair was still in high gear, the beautiful weather bringing out more people than the sidewalk space could actually support. Many had given up and drifted into nearby cafés and restaurants to get out of the heat. I stopped in my tracks and was grabbed by another thought.

What if, as I’d believed for so long, Brody was still here. Just not here.

I turned around and began walking again. This time I was looking for a sign that would point the way to one of the other small islands just off the north shore of City Island.

It was called Hart Island. Well-known, but not often discussed. There was a ferry that went over, but no one ever went there just to visit.

I found Fordham Street, which cut through the middle of City Island at its widest point and extended to the ferry stand. I walked there and then stood on the dock staring out at Hart Island. I really don’t understand why I continued to believe, deep in my soul, that Brody’s final resting place was over there. In any case, this is where it ends.

With no family or real address, with only a name known in a very small circle, it would be so easy for him to disappear. With no record of his existence, there would certainly be none of his passing. Like so many others who never fit in anywhere, a final home may have been made for someone once known as Brody Miller in Potter’s Field.

A VISIT TO ST. NICK’S

BY ROBERT J. HUGHES

Fordham Road

I could have found it in my sleep, I could have made my way by touch, or even sense, through the turnstiles, to the trains, to the seat, my seat, the one at the middle, the one that let me out closest to the Fordham Road exit, the one I’d considered my stop, my station, my neighborhood, for too long. But I kept my eyes open. I wanted to see how it had changed, I guess, I wanted to see how it had not, and how twenty years had wasted away—twenty years of my life, my half-life.

It was all so new to me. Again. This life, this freedom, this air. Even the fetid smell of the sweating subway station, even the feral rats that nibbled on the black and glistening garbage bags, even the putrefying corpse of a drunk wheezing on the end of the oily platform, they all meant freedom to me. In the car, they all meant the world had gone on. The big-busted Latinas in their halters with their hoop earrings and stilettos, perched on the benches giggling, half women, all girl. The attitudinous black boys, boastful and wary, manful and scared, sitting with hooded eyes in the corners. The plaid school kids in clutches, the Laotians, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, whose features I couldn’t figure, whose Asian geographies had populated the place when some more of the Irish had seeped out in the recent past. But not all of them had gone. Not my mom. Not my sister. Me, yes. My brother, of course, gone. This had been mine once, this neighborhood where all I saw was squalor, all I savored was stench, and all I felt was opportunity slipping away. This was now mine again, at least in time, for an hour, for two, for today. For more, though. For more. Always, for more.

My neighborhood. My home, once. My home never again. My home was far away, had been, for too long, for too needlessly long. And all because I’d been afflicted with stupidity, and never thought about repercussions. I’d never figured that a victimless crime would eventually have one. We are all victims, somehow, sometime, somewhere. No matter. But though I would never live here again, I had to come back just for now.

The train pulled out into the air and became an el, and the light made me feel, as always, as if I had just discovered grace. The sun blossomed over the rooftops. A few people on the car took out cell phones, and began to shout over the din, din themselves. At Fordham Road, I stepped down again onto the street. I cupped my hand over my brow and got my bearings. Not that I needed to. But I wanted to survey the shifting landscape. The stores were different, but the sidewalk held the same hubbub, now less Irish, now more other, less pink, more beige. The views I had thought vivid faded as my memories met new banks, aging bodegas. There was that White Castle, still going, still open twenty-four hours. Mike’s Papaya, too, dusty and yellow. There the 99-cent store. And there the Mega 99. There the pawnbroker, now with debt solutions in seven languages. And new nail and hair palaces. China Nail. Beauty J. Fordham Nails Ltd., tatty and limited indeed. And the restaurants: Centenario V, Comidas Latinas y Mariscos, Excellents II. English must have been new for them once, but twice? I’d taught ESL upstate, part of my good works there, my rehabilitation. If good had meant anything. It got me here, then, partly, it helped my release. But here, I still didn’t know. I gazed again. There, on the corner, the little bakery, and across from Devoe Park a white van, El Rancho, selling frituras and chimichurri. There, tucked away just off Father Zeiser Place, Patsy’s Bar, the old reliable, and, oh, up ahead, my undoing.

Across University Avenue at the Fordham Road intersection stood those stately gray twin bell towers. Positioned between them above a stained-glass window, a cross, small and unnecessary, punctuated the hot blue sky, as if anyone needed reminding that this was a church. St. Nicholas of Tolentine. Unwelcoming below were the same wooden doors still blistering paint a shade of iron-rich dried blood. My church. My parish. My grammar school. My baptism, my communion, my confirmation. My bête noir. My childhood in a granite sanctuary. Here was my soul anointed in the baptismal, my brow moistened by the holy-water font, my fingers sulfured by matches snuffed at the foot of the saint, my conscience soothed by muttered pleadings at the altar rail, cosseted by lies in the confessional. Shadowed by scuffling in the sanctuary. Haunted by the shouting. Sickened by the blood. Hounded in the darkness. I shouldn’t be here.

I noticed on the sign outside that mass was beginning in ten minutes. I looked over to my right at Devoe Park, where a listless player was shooting hoops, his ball hitting the court in lazy thuds. I ascended the seven heavy marble steps. A Latino man was more sure than I and, coming up behind me quickly, held open the creaking door. I nodded gracias and followed him in, staying a moment in the dank narthex. The stone fonts were empty. Had they been filled, would I have dipped my finger in and touched the water to my blasphemous temple? Attempted my own atavistic ritual of ungranted forgiveness? I would have. I would have relished the blessed water fizzling to steam on my iniquitous fingers as I dared dishonor God. But I was spared that visible damnation for now. I ignored the dusty fonts and went in, standing at the back under the choir loft, letting my eyes adjust.

It was sticky here in the muffled light. A fan at the back whirred, faint against the humid afternoon. Two stained-glass windows on the right side near the choir loft were cracked open at the bottom, under a scene of Jesus speaking to the elders. His early years. When he was filled with promise. Millennia until they’d discovered speed and crack and all of that delightful nastiness.

About twenty-five people were here in church, dropped like random seeds along the hard furrows of the pews. Most of them were at the front, sprouting near the apse. A few knelt to the right side, under the white figure of St. Nicholas floating on a high shelf by the transverse door, a rare papal touch of statue in a church austere enough to have been Episcopalian. But no, here was more sign of a particular denominational kitsch, a chapel at the left transverse, a shrine to the Virgin, Nuestra Señora de Providencia, for the defiantly devout and luckless. I walked that way, barely genuflecting in front of the altar, just another worshiper. The church was empty on the far side but for one man wearing in this heat a camouflage jacket, perhaps from the Army-Navy store on Davis around the corner. Perhaps a veteran. Perhaps a murderer. Perhaps a brother in carnage. And still touched by his religion. Or his disgrace. Or his memories. He could have been Puerto Rican. He could have been Irish. His white hair glowed as if dappled by some interior star, and he held his head down, in sleepy prayer, a cane propped against the pew before him. I walked past him into that side chapel. The front of the church had begun to rustle with the movement of the priest; he checked the sound system, a few taps on a mike, followed by a rumple of fabric as his surplice sleeve scraped across it. Testing.

The chapel was dark too, with but a few candles glowing electric in their enclosed ruby glass biers. I put in a quarter, and another light sprang to feeble life. Before, in my distant youth, this place had been a vague chapel for the Virgin of the Whatever. She wasn’t particularly providential for me, whoever she’d been. I couldn’t recall her mission, or mine, for that matter—beyond offering her candles, real ones then with flickering flames unlike the repellant little flashlights now. The battered kneeler, imprinted with the depression of countless others, was still there, askew, pushed away from the array of fake votives; someone had risen awkwardly and shifted it. Perhaps the camouflaged veteran Garcia-Gerrigan out there finding way to his unsteady feet and lamentable cane. On the wall was a plaque in Spanish and several overemotional icons of the Virgin’s face. A painted statue of that fortunate Mary guarded one corner, and a small onyx one kept sentry at another. Here was a shrine of true belief, simpleminded, strong, primal.

I left and moved softly back to the rear, to another corner, where a statue of St. Nicholas, this one brown instead of white, more earthbound, rested at the wall. This was one I had hoped to find; I hadn’t seen it at first, its own beige camouflage hiding it from my greedy eyes. Its feet were polished from countless eager peasant fingers. I ran my hand along its pedestal myself, feeling as obvious as if I were a surplice brushing an open mike. I looked around me, a furtive supplicant. I felt around the back of St. Nicholas, searching for an indentation underneath. I stepped back, to bow in specious prayer, to scrape my mind for where it might have been placed. It had to be there. They never moved these plinths, they were bolted to the floor and their false idols to them, secured against the marauding horde, the petty us, the larcenous me. I felt again, pious and plaintive, my fingers touching the worn marble feet. There. Yes. A nib of something metal by the back right side, wedged tightly in. Just as Jimmy had said there’d be. I would return.

I dropped another quarter into a candle slot, saw that it lighted, picked up the parish bulletin from a wall holder, and found an empty pew. The bulletin was in Vietnamese. I didn’t try to read it, but turned it over, as I had always done in church, to examine the advertisements on the back, for funeral homes and auto repair shops, for abortion counseling and broker-free apartments, all in English. The list of priests was there on the second page. One Irish. Two Latino. One Vietnamese. The church hours. In English. Evening vigils. What was today? Yes. Tonight.

I looked up along the long, high-ceilinged nave from where I sat. I had remembered clerestory windows above the aisle roofs and the vaulting, but that must have been in a dream, or I’d imagined someplace grander than this. A conflation of conscience and hope, perhaps. The light softened toward the altar, where the apse lay in a wooden shadow.

The priest, russet-faced, bearded, sixtyish, Irish, walked out again. He wasn’t wearing a chasuble, a nod to the warmth that permeated even the usual coolness of a stone church. Just an alb, and his surplice, the barest vestments of office, the merest priestliness. He had an open, kind face. He began the service, hands apart in a limp crucifix, saying, “We open up to a God who loves us.” I bowed my head as if in prayer. But no. No. No love here. I wondered how much he believed himself, and how much was a scam. I’d wondered that aloud to the prison chaplain, and toyed with the idea of vicardom or something like it myself—it could beat the library. But that was then.

I looked back at the statue. A leaning parishioner with a boozy paunch and droopy neck met my eye from the row behind me. I tilted my head down a fraction. Just another believer biding time.

A church can breed its own defiance and devotion, personal and fierce. I looked up and considered what the window to my left might mean to me, in my own dim trepidation, had I considered a metaphor of suffering for myself. In Memory of the Schmitt Family, with its scene of the Sermon on the Mount, maybe? They died too long ago for me to care, for either the paltriness of their demise or the hubris of their son remembering them in glass. What about the Doyle Family, by their brother? The incorrigible Prodigal Son. No. He would never return, at least not repentant. Or, on the right side, the window depicting Jesus’ mother at the foot of the cross? No remembrance from a guilty son or battered brother marked it. Just a generalized suffering. Mary’s face here cowed by grief, her followers propping her up, others holding Jesus’ body limp with temporary death. The words Mary Sodality were painted at the bottom. Mom’s group of rosary-wielding hysterics. She now, I thought, would be waiting sullen at the Oxford apartments just there in screaming distance on Webb Avenue. Not waiting for me. But maybe waiting for news of me. And perhaps, too, like Mary, for release. Mine, perhaps. Hers, maybe. And she too had her own ministry. Of shame. I’d be there later to serve under it. It was important. Not the service. The being there.

One of the parishioners announced a reading from the book of Hosea. I heard just a few sentences, as my thoughts wandered outside, into the glare oozing through the windows.“I will lead her into the desert, and speak to her heart…the days of her youth…The Lord is gracious and merciful…I will espouse you the right of justice.”

The gospel just after that went by quickly. It must have been a paragraph, a weekday snippet of good news. I’d missed it, turning around again, as if to look at the choir loft, as if to fool my friendly parishioner there behind me. The priest spoke. I turned to face him, settled myself, head slightly bent. His sermon. He said, “How do you see God?” He paused; not too oratorical. He meant it. “Do you remember your youth?” Do I. It’s all I ever had and squandered. “Can you awaken in yourself the love you had?” No. Because I didn’t. So many questions. Like the thoughtful believer he obviously was, the priest tried to connect the readings, to make quotidian sense of them for us in our tawdry lives, here amid the perspiration and second thoughts of Christ’s distant followers.

My mind meandered through the consecration. The key. The sanctuary. I’m sure the stash hadn’t been found. It must still be there. Had to be. We stood. The Lord’s Prayer. We all murmured it, even me, finding the words again easily enough. The people at the front were holding hands. When had this touching begun? I hadn’t been in a church since that night, ten years ago. I hadn’t attended mass for ten years before that. When had we all become so, I don’t know, Pentecostal? They’d be speaking in tongues next.

“Let us offer each other the sign of God’s peace,” the priest suggested, and the hand-holders held on and looked at each other with shy disbelief in actual forgiveness, while those of us until then blessedly free of contact turned and made nice to strangers. I reached back and grasped the fleshy hand of the man behind me, who gave me a weird little smile. No, you don’t, I thought, widening my gaze. You don’t know.

I shuffled out of the aisle, and slowly went up to take communion, along with the redeemed brethren beside me. It meant nothing to me, I convinced myself, this ritual, but still my heart began to thump with the inchoate tremor of the damned. I did not believe in this tasteless wafer, but I feared somehow the wrath. I had always believed I’d be found out further, even after being discovered back then, limp and bloody, curled fetal in the chancel where I’d collapsed after the beating, after hiding, hoping to remain hidden. Then, it was fear of my punishment. Now, it was dread of another crime. Now. But then. Not back then. Not when I had not killed my brother. It hadn’t been me. Despite what my mother believed. Now, I wanted to see the sanctuary door again. To remind myself of where I’d been, or broken in. I thought it looked the same, but couldn’t be sure. Even the church changes—witness the newfangled grasping. I took the host in my hands, muttered my false thanks, and gave a little glance to the right of the altar. Later.

I shuffled back in holy ignominy to my pew, and leaned forward against the row before me, aping prayer, as we all do no matter what we think we believe. I prayed to Our Lady of Providence. I prayed to the sad spirit of my brother, wherever he ended up. Wherever my mother’s useless prayers might have positioned him in the afterlife.

The priest sat after the communion rite, to read announcements and utter remembrances. “Let us pray for those who are isolated in institutions, prisons, nursing homes, hungering for the warmth of home.” How many of this sparse little congregation knew prisons? How many of them knew what the warmth of home was, or did they just pretend to carry with them a phony memory of affection to get themselves through their leaden days? I had cut off my family. I had turned back all letters. I knew they would be filled with the screeches of my mother’s despair, my sister’s keening anger. I kept aside only that one of Bella’s, thicker than most, the guard signaling it contained cash for when I got out. But I could barely read even that except to take her offering and deny her the satisfaction of forcing me to hear of her generosity and deluded, misguided, untoward hope. Her stultifying superiority in matters moral.

“Let us pray for Father Tran, who is visiting family in Vietnam,” the priest said. “For Father Guzman, in Argentina, working with the missions there. And Father Terranova, in Costa Rica this July.” No one was at home. These roaming Augustinian mendicants spent their summers proselytizing among the heathens of the world. And tonight—I looked over the pastoral staff list on the bulletin—only white-haired Father Farrell would likely be on hand. “Let us go in peace. The mass is ended,” he told us. I waited as the church emptied, to walk about. But a clutch of Latinas were nattering on with the reverend Farrell there by the altar rail, his own trio of “excellent women,” Excellents III, perhaps. I left, after having walked once more toward the apse, to glimpse the chancel door.

Before heading to what my ma considered home, I decided to stop at Patsy’s again. Temptation, no. Just, I don’t know—people, places, things, all of which I’d been warned against. As if it mattered, when there were fewer people I knew. The places I’d remembered were few too, and the thing I wanted, well, it was the only reason to be here. But it wouldn’t be at Patsy’s. Where I shouldn’t be either. I was supposedly clean. At least I was no longer using, had broken that habit fairly early on, managed to get through the years unimpeded, but for one lapse. I could handle the bar now, I thought. Just not yet my mother.

It was just after 1, and the westerly sun had begun to shaft along the bar just as it had back in the day, turning the sudsy beer golden, the shots of rye amber, swathing the nursing codger briefly in light before a sepulchral pallor reclaimed him. Danny—God, it was he, still here, lanky as a Joad—leaned against the till, a towel draped over his shoulder, his attention taken upward by a blaring documentary. A standard-issue sot leaned over the bar, his elbow nestling his grizzly chin, his face turned downward but biased in the direction of the television. In a booth among those that lined the back a couple cooed inebriated nothings at each other; on their table were a tallneck Miller and a highball, half finished, plus a few empties. The lovebirds’ heads turned briefly toward the door as I came in, and Danny glanced my way, but only to sigh slightly. This was his afternoon quiet, so to speak, and a trio of tipplers was enough for him. Reluctantly, he turned away from the television.

“Can I get ya something?”

He didn’t recognize me, haloed as I was by the sun.

“Coffee.”

“There’s a bakery round the corner.” Not unfriendly, not inviting. His voice carried a trace still of his mother’s Ireland. He had spent summers there, I recalled, his ma’s folks’ Donegal place. This bar was his now, I took it, had been his father’s, but he must be dead, ancient as he’d been back then. They all must be gone.

“I see a pot there.”

“That’s tar.”

“Ah. Club soda, then. With cranberry.”

He gave me a wary nod, assessing me for hipsterdom or worse, sobriety. But my clothes, though clean, were downmarket and decades-old, my demeanor humble. Please, warden. He scooped some ice into a glass, squirted soda onto it, and added a pink splash from a plastic jug. He tossed a cardboard coaster before me, nestled the glass on the word Patsy’s swashed across its center, plunked a swizzle stick between the cubes, and tapped the bar with his knuckles. On him.

“Thanks.” I gently lay a couple of surviving bucks down. I had nothing, really. My sister’s regretful wad, folded into that recrimination I didn’t read when I’d reclaimed my belongings, had disappeared quickly. Train fare, subway fare, fare. I was down to tips. And maybe that key.

He turned again to the TV. “The church?” He spoke over his shoulder, but shifted his position so his back wasn’t to me. I remembered. People did come to see it, St. Nick’s. The local landmark. Basilica of the Bronx, sans basilica, sans historical interest, really, but passing tragic for me.

“My mother.”

“The Oxford, then?” Where most of the remaining Irish lived, the well-tended, tired apartments in the shadow of the church, in the clutches of it, off Devoe Park.

“I’ve been away.”

“You do look sorta familiar.” My hair was thinner, my sallow face held penitential hollows. I had the bearing of forbearance, which is to say I looked beaten down. He eyed me, his brow furrowing. “What’s her name? Your ma?”

“Doyle. Agnes Doyle. My sister Bella lives with her.”

“And you’re Davey. You must be. I remember Bella. I still see her at church every now and again.” Danny had folded his arms across his chest, the bar rag draping over his left shoulder. I couldn’t read his expression. It was, if anything, neutral. “You must be out.”

“Must be. Yesterday.”

“So. A new life then.”

“I hope so.”

“At mass, were you?”

“Yeah. Don’t believe much, now, but it couldn’t hurt.”

“No. But.”

He meant the memories. Even in a changing neighborhood, some things are remembered. The scene of the crime. It had actually been part of a long scene, that had begun at the check-cashing place where my sister once worked.

The lump of a drunk down the bar turned from his drink and looked over at me, sensing something. I assumed my prison face, and he shifted his glassy eyes down again. I’d spent several unremembered years here, in various stages of blackout and fury, seething over something petty, something my brother said, something my mother did, something my sister wanted.

“So you’re off the sauce.”

“Yeah. Best thing for me. Ruined my life.”

“It can.”

“You must see a lot of that.”

“Sometimes. But it’s an old crowd here.”

“So…how’s business?”

“We manage.”

“And your ma?”

“Back over. For a while now, with her sister, near Ards. Rural ass of backwards. It’d drive me batty. We manage here.”

“We.”

“My wife’s a lawyer now. You remember Sheila. Sheila Corrigan, from seventh grade?”

“Of course.” Bouncy and becurled and just a little shiftyeyed. I was surprised she’d made it through the LSATs, let alone passed the bar. “That’s great. Good for you.”

“We live over in Riverdale, near her mom now, but we own this building, so it’s an investment. I’m a landlord now too.”

“And it’s all starting to come back.”

“We were lucky.”

“Location.”

“It’s coming back. Near the church is good. And the church isn’t going anywhere. So then. So.”

His unasked question: my plans. Practice for me for Ma, perhaps, and for Danny something to tell later to wee Sheila, as we used to call her, the cute curly-haired little minx. Jimmy had a thing for her back then. Before we were old enough to fail, which wasn’t too old at all.

“Weighing options. Such as they are. Open to suggestions.”

Danny nodded.

“I taught a bit up there, English to some of the cons, reading too, and the library. I worked there. Maybe, I don’t know. Something. I don’t know.” They don’t hire cons in the school system. And I’d never seriously considered it anyway. “Social work, maybe.” A lot of us end up there, facing what we laughingly called our demons. “I see White Castle is hiring.”

“You’ll find something. You always were the smart one,” Danny said. “Good you’re on track again.” Such forgiveness. Well, we hadn’t hurt him. At least, not that time, not directly. God knows I’d been thrown out of Patsy’s enough before that night.

The tough little man from the back booth came up for a refill. He looked at me. I looked at him, the rough-hewn snake tattoo on his wiry forearm. We knew where we’d been. We were marked, tattooed or not. We nodded barely, and he turned back to his girlfriend, or moll. Nah. That would be me. Top o’ the world, Ma.

“Say hi to Sheila for me. Thanks.” I headed out, and over to the Oxford.

I ambled along University Avenue, and turned left at Webb. They didn’t know I was out, let alone in the neighborhood. I was taking a chance here—they could be away themselves. But Ma never went anywhere, or at least she hadn’t when I’d roamed the neighborhood spreading unhappiness, and Bella wouldn’t be far from her. Apart from a Catskills hiking trip or some such with one of her other chubby spinster girlfriends, she didn’t do much except judge harshly. I had no idea how she spent her time. I did know she was a nurse, and probably had become one so she could talk back to our mother with the impunity of the health care industry and treat her patients with the contempt she always showed me, seeing as I had been unavailable for quite some time.

The building looked the same, a little older, but cared for. Pachysandra thrived on the ground behind the iron fence, and window boxes flourished above. I pushed open the fingerprinted glass door to our old lobby and saw her name there on the buzzer in the vestibule. I hesitated a second, then put my finger on the button and buzzed. There was a crackle on the other end. I buzzed again.

“Who is it?” Creaky and old.

“Davey.”

Crackle again.

“It’s Davey, Ma. I’m home.” I hated using that term, but I had to. The door didn’t click. Was she considering? I pressed the buzzer. “It’s Davey, Ma!” I shouted into the crackling once more. The door clicked, reluctantly it seemed, and I scooted in before she changed her mind.

I pulled open the elevator door and stepped in. This old elevator, from the 1950s, struggling under the weight of years, musty with the aromas of pot roast and futility. I hadn’t been in an elevator since I could remember, since that night, perhaps. I got out on the fourth floor, made the right to our old apartment, and rang the bell there. I heard a fumbling with locks following a long pause, as she probably checked me out in the security peephole. She opened the door.

“Ma. It’s me,” I said, bending to embrace her.

“Oh, Davey, you’re killing me.” She pushed me away. “Why didn’t you let us know?”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you have. I never knew what to expect. You didn’t write.”

“I couldn’t, Ma. I was too ashamed.” I was lying immediately, back to myself of old. I’d be high as a kite next.

“Come in, come in, let me look at you then.” She took my hand in a Pentecostal grasp of her own and drew me toward our living room. She had withered a bit, and her hair, like mine, had thinned, though hers nestled in soft cirrus clouds above her head. What was left of mine was shaved close.

“Ma, I’m so sorry,” I lied again.

“I can’t get over it,” she said, sitting down in a recliner that still had the same crocheted throw I’d last seen who knows when. She stared at me, as if I were an apparition of the sort she prayed against. “What are you doing here?” Her tone had shifted quickly, as if she realized it was me, and not my brother come back from the dead.

“I’m from here.”

“Not for ages. Not since you left. The only time you came back, there was trouble.”

“I’ve been through a lot. I’ve changed.”

“So have we all.”

“I wanted to see you.”

“What is it you need?” Sharper now, again. I could never fool her. “Is it money? What are you doing? When did you get out?”

“Ma, it’s not money.” Though it was, it always was, in the end. And at the beginning. I noticed on the little table next to her recliner a photograph of Jimmy and me, from our reckless teens—when weren’t we reckless though?—taken at our cousin Patty’s wedding. I had hair, Jimmy life. My mother saw me eyeing it. Tears had begun to shine in her eyes. “Last night. I came right here.”

“We never knew anything about you.”

“I was safe there. As safe as you can be. In there.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She paused. “You were never safe.”

“I was though, on my own.”

“I’d already lost one son.”

“There’s no excuse. I know.”

“And after that night, after you come back for one day, you and Jimmy—”

The phone rang. Mom stopped sniveling and picked up the receiver. “Of course I’m crying. Yes. Yes. No. Not that. Davey’s here. Yes. No, don’t come. I don’t know if he wants to—no. He didn’t. I’m fine. Yes. No. Alone. I will. But…no. I’ll try.” She put the receiver down and kept her eye on it for a second, as if expecting it to spring to life again.

“How’s Bella?”

“Oh, she’s angry she isn’t here.” She turned her face to me.

“That’s nothing new.”

“Don’t start.”

“I haven’t. I just came to see you.” Bella was a necessary by-product of the visit, like gas.

“Do you expect to stay here?” Not unkindly. Not motherly.

“No. Don’t worry. I thought I’d spend a little time with you—”

“Before moving off again.”

“You don’t want me here.”

“You don’t want to be here. You never did. Ever since your father died.”

“That wasn’t it.”

“And what have you found on your travels, your wandering? What great insights have you uncovered? We’ve been in the dark for, what, twenty years? You’ve been here and there and shut up without a word. Except for that one time, that one night, that one day when everyone knew. But since. It’s like we’ve been dead.”

“You could’ve considered me in some friary somewhere if that would’ve helped put your mind at rest. You always wanted me to be a priest. And I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Bother? Bother us? That’s like a suicide thinking he’s helping others by shooting his face off. That’s a lie. You know it. It’s cowardice. And it’s wrong. It’s wrong. Oh, Davey.” And she began to weep, her head falling onto her arms, her bony back contorted with her sobbing.

I watched her cry. I couldn’t ask her to stop. I couldn’t comfort her, certainly. I couldn’t demand anything of her. I just needed to wait there until dark, so I could leave, retrieve the stash from the church, and be on my way wherever. I looked around at the room, different from what I’d remembered, but when you remember only in decades, some things lose focus. The sofa was new. To me. And the big television. But the picture of Jesus, that famous painting that graced every Irish household in the Bronx and Queens and every damn borough, the Lord looking nothing so much as a film star, like a schoolmarm’s dream of the savior, that was there, in laminated eternity on its own little easel on the buffet table. There were palm fronds from Easter, dry behind the painting of a thatched house in County Cork, a generalized scene of whimsical poverty. Those hadn’t changed. The furniture was new, from what I remembered, but then, that was not to be relied upon.

My mother calmed down after a few minutes, and we sat there in relative silence for fifteen minutes or so. I was reluctant to speak further, and I thought Ma was too rundown by her outburst. But I was wrong. She’d been waiting.

The latch turned in the door. My mother and I looked toward it. Bella bustled in, older, wider, white-clad, wrathful.

“What have you done to her?”

“Bella.” I stood. She pushed past me, in her best busynurse mode.

“Ma, is everything okay?”

“We were just sitting here.”

“Has he done anything?”

“I’m fine.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Bella.”

“Never the courtesy of a reply in ten years and you show up unannounced. You. You never changed.” She glowered at me. “Sit, Ma. And you—sit where I can see you. And don’t move. I hope you hid your purse, Ma.” She went into the kitchen, returning with a glass of water and a pill, giving them both to our mother. “Drink.” She sat on the sofa facing me.

“So. You must have used up all the money I sent you.”

“Thank you. I never thanked you.”

“You didn’t. But I didn’t expect you to. When did you get out?”

“Yesterday,” Ma said.

“And you’re here now. For how long?”

“Not long. Just a visit.”

“So you must have something planned.”

I didn’t answer that, but assumed an expression of surprise.

“You might fool Ma, but you can’t fool me. You may think we’re dummies here in the old neighborhood, those of us who never left, too stupid to get out, but then, you thought everyone was stupid except you, didn’t you?”

“All I’m here for is a visit, Bella,” I said. “I know I was wrong.”

“You have never been right. Ever. And you and Jimmy together, I don’t know which one was worse.”

“Bella,” said Ma.

“Oh, Ma, cut it out. He was no saint. He’s dead and buried, and it’s been ten long years, but for heaven’s sake—”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“I have never believed that.”

“What? That I didn’t kill him, or don’t you believe me?”

“I have never believed you.”

“Bella, I’m not here to explain myself—”

“Then why are you here, Davey?”

“—but to try to make things right. I even went to mass, for God’s sake.”

“They’ll never be right while you’re roaming the streets. And you’ve never believed anything long enough to make a go of it. Mass. Hah.”

“It was all Jimmy’s idea.”

“So you said. So we heard.”

“That was the truth!”

“So you say.”

“I didn’t kill him. He told me to get away. He didn’t expect we’d run up against anyone else.”

“You left him there, bleeding.”

“It was an accident.”

That was the thing: It had simply happened. We had not counted on evening services, the sodality of tiresome bleating women leaving just as we’d arrived, the priest closing up, finding us at the statue, panicking at the sight of us at a time when the neighborhood had transitioned downward and dangerous, shouting, hitting me with the bronze candlestick he’d grabbed from the nave. Jimmy had hit him in turn after grabbing the candlestick from him, and being stronger, had brained him. I could see the screaming, leaching gash on the priest’s bald skull, and Jimmy, not realizing I was dazed, had thrown me the gun, which slipped and revenged the priest right there, the shot resounding like a chorus through the church. “Run,” he had said, always my protector and often my temptation, pushing it amid his shock and gasping, hot and smoking to me, and I did run, hoping to hide it, and myself, and had stumbled back bruised and bloody up the aisle toward the chancel where we’d just broken in and hidden the stolen cash. I’d tripped at the altar rail, like Cagney stumbling through the bleeding snow in The Roaring Twenties, and fallen finally in the sanctuary, victim at last to the ferocious bashing the priest had inflicted upon me. The adrenaline had kept me aloft until then, but at last I had collapsed, unconscious, while Jimmy lay dying and the priest lay dead. I was supposed to have kept watch while Jimmy hid the key under the statue for us to find later, I was supposed to have prevented the priest from finding him, I was supposed to have made sure the church had been quiet. No one was supposed to die.

“You two together were an accident.”

“You were always led astray,” Ma said.

“As if Davey needed coaxing. Always the easy way, always too smart to work.”

“I told you. I’ve changed.”

“If you’d changed, you’d have stayed away. You want something.”

“I had to make amends to you.”

“Don’t, Davey. Just don’t. Spare us having to believe you and regretting it later. I’ll fix you something and you can be on your way. I’ll give you some money to tide you over, how’s that? I’m sure you’ve got some chippie stashed away somewhere, or some prison pal’s pad you can crash at, right?”

“I don’t want your money, Bella. You’ve been too generous already.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have sent you a thing. You might have never come back. How stupid I was to soften even for a moment.”

“I’ve never had a chance to tell you how sorry I truly am. About Jimmy. About what happened.”

“Apology accepted.” Which meant it wasn’t.

“It’s been a long time,” Ma said.

“We’ve gotten used to the peace, Ma and me, haven’t we, Ma? We’ve gotten used to knowing where you were, and not being a danger to us.”

“So then. I see. Look, I never hurt you, or never meant to. And you’ve never left.”

“You don’t just leave, Davey. Oh, you do, but I like it here, all of the mix.”

“It was getting rough.”

“We lasted though, didn’t we, Ma, didn’t we? The Bronx is in our blood, just as it’s in yours, along with something else.”

“Jimmy hated it.”

“Jimmy was a fool. A criminal like his father.”

“Bella!”

“Ma, enough. A criminal like you. I expected more from you, after the scholarship to Prep. But a little learning is a dangerous thing. It gives you ideas.”

“I always had ideas, Bell.”

“You had a fool for a counselor, Davey, and that was your brother, and when it wasn’t him it was yourself. Things came too easily. You never had to work for them.”

“You think prison was easy.”

“Maybe you learned a little about yourself.”

I had. That didn’t mean I’d actually changed.

“You can sit there proud, Bella, and look down on me from your moral mountain, but I don’t hear you. I served my time. I did my obligation to society. I regret what happened, but we all make mistakes, some of them larger than others. You’re no one to talk about Jimmy. He can’t defend himself against your slander. He had more life than you’ll ever have, dead though he’s been these ten years. So we took a few easy steps. It wasn’t as if you hadn’t left hints about all the security problems at that cheesy job of yours. Jimmy told me you were going on so about the idiotic systems there—you were practically begging us to rob it, you might as well have given us the key to the front door and the combination to the safe, which both were easy enough to find, and you think you’d be more trusting, wouldn’t you? But you’ve got more there going on underneath your stuffed shirt than you let on, don’t you? You’re your father’s daughter too, you know. So don’t act all high and mighty with me.”

“Unlike you, I worked for every penny I’ve ever got.”

“And resented every minute of it too. So I’m a dreamer.”

She snorted.

“So sue me. I’m sure Jimmy did his magic on you too. Don’t say he didn’t. You look for someone to blame, and never look inside.”

“Oh, please, you with your holier-than-thou act—you’re a con, and you always will be.”

“Ex. And at least I owned up to my part in things.”

“Don’t fight, Davey,” Ma said. “Don’t. Don’t come home after all this time and start fighting. But stay for dinner. Bella, let him be. For me, now. It’s been too long.” She hauled herself up and headed to the kitchen.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Bella leaned toward me. “I don’t trust you, Davey. I don’t believe you’re here to make amends, as you call it. In twenty years, you’ve shown up exactly twice, and the second time was a total disaster. So forgive me if I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance of things not working out so great now that you’re back.”

“I can’t control what you think, Bella. I’m not here to hurt you, or Ma, or take anything from you or expect anything of you. I don’t know what I’m doing, where I’m going, but it won’t be here. I’ve always hated here. I don’t want a home. I don’t want a home here.”

“And yet, you are here.”

“Not for long. Listen—I know I hurt Ma, but it was killing me here. It was better that I disappeared. It was better. Jimmy stayed, and look what happened to him. He went job to job, hating every single minute. Only he told me he had a way out.”

“He did. Thanks to you.”

“And so I was the sucker. I showed up for him. He asked me to. He said he needed me. He was my brother. He said he was breaking out of here. He wanted my help. He needed money. He knew where to get it. So I came.”

“And saw, and conquered. I got it. Davey, I’m not going to argue with you. I want you out of here, because you’ll drive Ma crazy like Jimmy did, with his drinking and drugs and thievery and scheming. You’re the same, with your lying and acting as if you know everything that’s going on, acting like because you read a few books you know more than anyone. What did you think would happen after you helped Jimmy? That he would reform? That you would become upstanding? You always spoke like someone who knew something about the world, but you never got beyond the sound of your own words, you never really made sense. I don’t think you believed yourself even, what you said. And like I said, I can’t argue anymore. I want to make sure Ma is all right—and let her have a memory of you where you’re not getting someone killed.”

“And what did you think you’d do, once they found out we’d used your key?”

“I knew nothing about that, and that was proved in court. The money was never found.”

“Sometimes the dice falls the right way.”

“And don’t start with your accusations. I was never in on your scheme, and I won’t have you saying that.” Her voice had been rising. She turned toward the kitchen and back to me. “And I don’t want you hanging around anymore. Giving Ma ideas that you’re going to change. It’s been hard enough, goddamnit, getting her stabilized all these years without you giving her false hope again about whatever. I don’t know what you’re planning, but you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t after something.”

“I promise. I’ll be out of here tonight.”

“And going to mass. As if you believe in anything. Stay away from church.”

That wasn’t going to happen. But the rest of the afternoon and early evening passed without too much palpable rancor on Bella’s part or too much uncertain regret on Ma’s. I told them in so many words about prison life, about tutoring cons, about escaping the drudgery by reading, about keeping my head low. I didn’t tell them about the money, or the plan, or why Jimmy and I had thought that we’d escape the police by running into the church after we’d tripped the alarm like the rank amateurs we really were. Churches don’t offer sanctuary to petty thieves. But we’d managed to stay ahead, and since both Jimmy and I had been altar boys, we knew the layout of St. Nick’s, the stashing places in the chancel, and one particular cabinet behind the vestment closet that had a trick bottom, which one of the older boys had told us about in secret years before. It had been a hiding place during Prohibition, where a generation of miscreant boozy clerics concealed their illicit hooch and extra altar wine. We’d stored comics there and, in our gormless Catholic way, porn of the lamest kind, succulent pouts and ballooning breasts, along with the odd pint of Night Train to glaze the eyes and heighten the erotic possibilities of marginally naked half-beauties. But the priests had long since cottoned on to our feeble depravities, and had nailed the compartment shut so that it could no longer be a repository of half-baked filth and vice. Yet both Jimmy and I had remembered the drawer down the years, and he’d told me to come back and retrieve our stuff when things had cooled down, in case he couldn’t get to it first. I’d opened that false bottom that night, and then replaced the nails carefully, so it would remain closed and not tempt a new breed of clerics, altar boys, or minor thieves. We’d planned to break through at a later date, weeks perhaps. That date had dawned ten years on.

I left my mother and Bella’s apartment with no promise of anything other than an effort to let them know where I might be, how I might be reached, what I might do. In the end, I almost regretted—almost—my leaving, as Bella had lost some of her hostility and Ma had become less alternately weepy and accusatory and more resigned and benign, like the flock of women in the window captioned Mary Sodality.

* * *

Dusk had crept in and settled over Devoe Park when I left the Oxford. The white El Rancho van had moved on for the evening, and the ball courts were quiet. The church shadowed the trees below it there, and I walked around the building in shadows myself. Someone was exiting the side door. Good. It was still open. I dashed up just as the door swung closed behind her.

“It’s over,” she said to me. “The service just ended. You missed it.”

“Just a quick candle,” I said. “My Ma’s sick.”

She nodded, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world for a far-too-skinny middle-aged bald man wearing shabby clothes to pop into church and say a prayer for his mother. The baleful predator’s ex post facto atonement. But the door had shut behind her, and it locked with a thunk. I pulled on the handle, but it stayed. No way in here. But no mighty fortress was our Lord: I’d remembered that the windows of the vestibule were sometimes kept ajar on hot nights, like this one, and the priest might not yet have gotten around to locking them. I hurried around toward the front in the growing gloom and spied a window cracked open to let in the city air. This side of the church was quiet, abutting the rectory. The tined fence was designed to keep thieves from getting over, but nothing prevented me from leaning against it to get my balance. I managed to shimmy myself up a bit, gripping the granite ridges with my fingers as my feet perched on a small crossbar between the rails. Leaning over with one hand on the outside wall of the church, I pushed the window further open with the other, but it stuck just six inches above the sill. I took a breath and, more forceful—and desperate—I pushed again. This time it unstuck and shot up with a rumbling clack. I heard it echo inside, but I pulled myself over the sill, and squeezed in before I was noticed. I stood in the vestibule, calming myself, wiping a trace of sweat from my forehead, and pushed open the door to the main part of the church, as quietly as possible, its hushed creak sounding like a screech to my ears. But I was in.

The priest had his back to me. The services were indeed over. He was near the altar, actually toward that providential chapel, and didn’t see the new arrival trying to make his own luck. I slipped down the far aisle, and snuck over to the statue of St. Nicholas at the back. That key to the sanctuary, to the vestment drawers, was my chance. That drawer was hiding close to $25,000.

In the dark at the rear of the church, I was invisible. I felt quickly around the statue’s base, and located the nib of the key. It barely protruded; Jimmy had done a good quick job of shoving it under there. I needed to tilt the statue to get to it, but it was a little too highly placed for me to do it with ease from where I stood. But I had little time, and couldn’t draw attention to myself by searching for a bench. Ah, but there, by the vestibule door, a little table with the parish bulletins. I was able to lift it, and position it near St. Nicholas. I didn’t see the priest, that Father Farrell, who must still be getting ready to close for the night. I managed to get myself atop the table, though I scattered a couple of bulletins, which floated down to the aisle. They sounded like a rush of leaves to me, but they were, I hoped, still too faint to be heard up by that chapel.

Standing on the table top, I pushed the head of the statue toward the wall. It was heavy, heavier than I had thought. I didn’t know how I’d get that key from the bottom without making noise. Jimmy and I hadn’t thought of that back then on that fatal night. We hadn’t fully thought things through, as usual with the two of us, especially when we were in our cups, as we had been since I’d returned the day before to see him. But now I was sober. Or at least not drinking or using. And I needed that key. And that money. And to leave.

I tested the statue’s angle of repose, and it stayed leaning against the wall. I hopped off the table, exhaling an unfortunate oomph as I hit the hard floor. I was no longer young. But I heard no sounds of alarm. The light was almost nothing here, though my eyes had adjusted. I reached under the tilt of the statue’s base and found the key, scooping it back and pocketing it. I wanted to leave the statue where it was and get out fast, but that would be foolhardy in the extreme, as I’d forgotten gloves and my prints were all over the patron saint of this benighted parish. I crept back up onto the table, repositioned the statue, and rubbed it over with my shirt sleeve, hoping I’d erased everything I touched. I was careful descending from the table this time, managed to move it back to its place by the door and retrieve the fallen bulletins. I placed them back on top, in no particular order of language, the Babel of parish news.

I still saw no one, and apparently no one had seen me. I’d been planning this moment for so long—pictured myself à la Shawshank on a Mexican beach whiling away my twilight years.

I crept toward the chancel. I hadn’t heard the door shut, but the priest must have gone home, perhaps through the sanctuary door that connected to the rectory. I hoped the lock hadn’t been changed—another point we’d never considered—and then that purloined key fit easily in the slot. As I turned it, the door swung open and the lights went on ablaze.

I squinted. Before me was Father Farrell. And Bella, a look of menacing satisfaction on her face.

In my shock, all I could utter was a stupefled, “What are you doing here?”

“We could ask the same of you,” Bella said. “Father Farrell, this is my brother Davey, long lost and now returned. Father Farrell’s fairly new here, Davey, and probably would have noticed you at mass earlier. Luckily, I gave him a call as to what you were probably up to, and my hunch proved, as you can see, correct.”

I started to turn.

“And don’t try leaving. The police are on the way.”

“My money.”

“Oh, I know why you’re here. But even if you’d managed to get in, you wouldn’t have found it. Do you think you were the only one who knew about that trick drawer, you and Jimmy? You think you were the only altar boys, and only altar boys knew about that hiding spot that the priests had nailed shut? You think altar boys are sworn to a vow of silence? You think we schoolgirls knew nothing about your filthy ways? Hah. You didn’t live in a vacuum, Davey, though for all you noticed about what was going on around you, you could have. Just because you didn’t talk to anyone didn’t mean people didn’t talk about you, or about the church, or about anything that went on there. Your secrets. Brother. You thought you’d had it over everyone, didn’t you?”

“You said the money hadn’t been found.”

“So I did. So I lied. So, in your words, ‘sue me.’ We found it soon after you were sent away. I told the cops where they might look, and your little stash was history.”

“So you planned it. All afternoon. Pretending to be nice to me.”

“You never did see the obvious, Davey. Always too smart for everyone. You think Danny wouldn’t talk? You think Ma was feebleminded by your Prodigal Son returns act? You think no one but you knew the score? Too many books and not enough sense. You thought you kept things close to you, but you were like a bad movie. You always wanted the easy way out.”

“That was my money.”

“Never. Father, do you hear this?” The priest was silent, uncomfortable, a bit ashamed, I felt, to be witness to a sister selling out her brother, her only surviving brother just returned from years away, unseen, unloved. Father Farrell’s head tilted; the sound of sirens grew closer.

“In my own home. You betrayed me.”

“It was never your home, Davey. You said that yourself. You couldn’t wait to leave. Your home is far away now, and has been for a long while. You took us for fools. Now you can go and stew on it once again, and figure out where you went wrong.”

I shook my head at her. I would not let her win. The police arrived and I submitted to the handcuffs as if I were a Pentecostal penitent in the arms of rebirth. I looked away from Bella, and at the priest. Maybe I’d seen the light, or at least I could make do with what I had. “I will espouse you the right of justice,” I told him, keeping my eyes on his horrifled face as the cops led me out to the car. “I open myself to a God who loves me.”

NUMBERS UP

BY MILES MARSHALL LEWIS

Baychester

Kingston believed he wasn’t a regular at Golden Lady, seated at the bar sipping a plastic cup of whiskey. Silky served his Scotch and amaretto without asking only because she had a great memory like most bartenders, he thought. Kingston considered the cup in his hand and reminisced over the club serving bottles of beer and glasses of mixed drinks years back, before some brawls with smashed Coronas forced a policy change. He also recalled gonzo tricks Silky used to perform with Heinekens in her dancing days, way before her transition to barkeep. Kingston raised his Godfather to Lacey, onstage sliding down a silver pole at the center of her baby-oiled, spread-eagle legs, eyeing him from upside down. Lacey was just the thing to take Kingston’s mind off the hundreds he’d lost earlier at Yonkers Raceway, the robbery of his house days ago, and other recent troubles.

Disorienting strobes bathed Lacey and two other bodacious young women pacing the stage, gyrating hips and stripping under the synthesized pulse of Ciara’s “Oh.” Kingston didn’t consider himself a regular but Lacey’s partners knew from experience not to bother trying to entice money out of the black guy in the stingy-brim fedora. Lacey sauntered over to the head of the crowded bar, bent down, and flashed her fleshy ass just for Kingston, flexing the muscles of each cheek to the beat. Kingston shifted her garish yellow lace garter belt with a finger to place one, two, three paper-cut-crisp twenty-dollar bills between her thigh and the elastic band. Lacey undulated her thick behind in ecstatic waves of motion.

Come 2 o’clock, Golden Lady’s neon sign—a naked blonde lounging in a martini glass—quickly faded into the distance. Kingston and Lacey sat in his onyx Buick zooming up the Bruckner Expressway and out of Hunts Point. Full-blast cool air circulated new-car smell throughout the ride. Kingston’s radio, per usual, tuned in to CD101.9: “I’m in the Mood for Love,” King Pleasure. Plastic jewel cases of smooth jazz CDs cluttered the floor and butter-leather backseats. En route to Baychester Diner, Lacey peered into the illuminated sun visor applying foundation, lipstick, and eyeliner, bitching about the shady tactics Butterfly and Sunflower used to dominate lap dances all summer long. Kingston’s characteristic silence was so typical that Lacey never considered that her sugar daddy might be disturbed.

The all-night Baychester Diner harbored the same two wisecracking women in kempt hairweaves found at the counter every weekend past midnight. Each sported something slightly outré signaling her street profession. One wore a bright Wonder Woman bodice with deep cleavage on display, the other scarlet fishnets with a spiked leather dominatrix collar. Both brandished five-inch stilettos. At the far corner banquette a young couple argued in Creole patois.

“Si ou pa vlé bébé-an, ale vous an,” hissed the pregnant teen in the pink Von Dutch cap.

Kingston and Lacey found an isolated booth and ordered breakfast from a homely waitress. Rain broke the August humidity, slicking the asphalt of Boston Road, while Kingston explained all about the Hernández brothers pushing their numbers turf further down Washington Heights into Harlem, their violent efforts to force him out, and his contingency flight plan to New Orleans.

“King. You gonna up and leave just like that?” Lacey asked. She craved a Newport.

“They ain’t runnin’ me out,” he bluffed. “I done made plenty these past fifteen years. I don’t mind it. Business ain’t like it used to be nohow. Playin’ the numbers is old school, kiddo. More white folks is movin’ into Harlem now and they don’t know nothin’ about me. They play Lotto.”

Lacey laughed.

“You never talked about retiring to New Orleans before.” Not to me, she thought.

“I done told you ’bout the house. We ain’t never been together, but it’s down there. Since 2000. My cousin look after it, she over in Baton Rouge.”

“When are you talking about going?”

“I ain’t right decided yet. Could be two weeks.”

“Two weeks? That’s enough time for you to wrap up everything?”

“We gon’ see.”

Kingston held the door for Lacey and a trucker hand-in-hand with the collared mistress from the counter. Outside all four smelled a faint aroma of barbecue sauce wafting from the local KFC. The illicit couple commiserated on the corner and crossed Baychester Avenue, stilettos clicking on concrete, to a motel with three-hour rates.

Kingston pulled his sedan out of the lot and down Boston Road blaring “This Masquerade.” By the song’s end he’d parked again, less than a mile away at Boston Secor Houses. Lacey grabbed his humidor from the glove compartment.

On the red leather sofa Kingston silently flipped stations searching for baseball scores and fiddled with his cigar while Lacey showered. His sky-blue fedora rested on the adjacent pillow, revealing the receding hairline of his freshly cut Caesar specked with gray. He clicked off her TV and leaned over to untie his Stacy Adams, tightening abdominal muscles buried underneath a stout stomach. His growing belly caused him to chuckle at his own jealousy, wondering what sort of younger man her own age a sexy girl like Lacey would attract once he was gone. Lacey would adapt easily, Kingston imagined. She was all of twenty-two. Life adjustments would come harder to Kingston. Comfortably set in his ways, he never vacationed away from his St. Martin time-share, never ate anything outside of the standard ten dishes he either bought from takeout restaurants or Gussy cooked for him, never deviated from his usual Yankees game, jazz concert, or horse race for recreation. Deciding to uproot his life from 1839 Bruner Avenue to the bayou sprang as much from Kingston’s recent unidentified angst as the threats from Héctor and Eddie Hernández. Kingston finally took a lighter to his cigar.

“One of us has too much clothes on,” Lacey said.

She left her cream silk robe untied at the waist, smoking her own tobacco of choice. Tracey Lott bore only fraternaltwin resemblance to her onstage character, always fragrantly oiled, primped, oversexed. Nearly naked again for the second time tonight—clean, shea-butter-exfoliate scrubbed, and nail-polished in her own apartment now—Tracey looked softer, younger.

Kingston called her Tracey at times, Lacey most often, but it didn’t bother her. The last time they saw one another Lacey had dropped X before his unexpected arrival at Golden Lady and rambled all sorts of private personal information afterwards, about her Jehovah’s Witness upbringing, her strict mother (the neighborhood crossing guard), her young cousin’s molestation, her absent dad, and her first fuck at fourteen. Maybe too much for Kingston, she thought.

Lacey flicked cigarette ash into a seashell and sat in Kingston’s lap. The leather sofa farted. As she unbuttoned his shirt both their thoughts clouded with notions of tonight maybe being their last tête-à-tête.

Kingston and Lacey were both more passive than active participants in their own lives, mirrors of each other in that sense. Kingston had inherited the mantle of running numbers from his late father, working under his wing after a brief enlistment in the Gulf War. His life’s work was more due to his own passivity than the passion for the numbers game that his father had held close. Kingston loved Gussy in his way but their union was mainly convenient. She was his Girl Friday on the job. Their relationship saved Kingston the trouble of seeking a woman attracted to his limited social graces who could also be trusted and accepting of his illegal trade. Money only goes so far. Despite over half a million squared away from almost two decades of business, Lacey, an exotic dancer from the projects, was the most ideal mistress he found himself able to draw.

Lacey, too, let her life dictate its own direction, leading from a bust-up with her mother at seventeen to accepting dubious advice from her stalker ex-bf Tré-Sean to sell nude photos to websites and dance at Hunts Point holes like Al’s Mr. Wedge and Golden Lady. The night a zooted pair of homeboys roughly snatched off her thong and dashed out the club with their booty nine months ago, she was comforted by Kingston, a familiar, benevolent customer, and their affair began.

Stripping his shirt, standing and leading him to her bedroom, she felt powerless to trip up the chain of events sweeping Kingston out of her life. Lacey thought sex might solve the problem, her familiar recourse. Their cigarette and cigar sat burning away in an Orchard Beach conch, plumes of smoke dancing an acrobatic tango.

Kingston returned to 1839 Bruner Avenue in the early morning to discover the SUV stolen.

Gussy would find the charred BMW of their steady bettor Wallace parked outside Fordham Hill Apartments on her nighttime jog to the Harlem River, stripped and torched to black cinders save for the pristine license plate: CRM-114.

* * *

Like aging hippies cooking organic groceries in a kitchen full of all-Hendrix-all-the-time, Gussy and Kingston were throwback ’70s soul babies. This wasn’t immediately obvious but there were telltale signs: Gussy’s leonine Afro and multitudinous silver bracelets, Kingston’s allegiance to jazz musicians like George Benson and Grover Washington, Jr., who were on the rise when he first started buying vinyl.

The couple met in Kuwait and were instantly simpatico. For Kingston the army was brief, another way to synchronize his life with that of his father, who served in WWII. Buckshot shrapnel lodged near his heart resulted in a quick honorable discharge. For Gussy the army was a career move lasting five years longer than the Persian Gulf strike. With her discharge nine years behind her, former Private Augusta Wilson still hit the shooting range a few times a year and took weekly power runs through Fordham with Parliament on her headphones.

On Monday, Kingston and Gussy put in a normal day at the spot. The sparse bodega Kingston rented on Amsterdam was locally understood as a storefront for his operation. Starting shortly after 12 o’clock, Harlemites stopped by with their three-digit numbers on betting slips, handing them off (with their cash) to Hillside at the front counter. Some old-timers sat for a spell with the Daily News, picking out items to talk shit about: the Maori-inspired tattoo covering Mike Tyson’s face; Michael Jackson’s expatriation to Bahrain. Both Kingston and Gussy fielded calls in the large back office, jotting down more phoned-in numbers. (Lacey played Kingston’s DAV-485 license plate in a box combination: 485, 548, 854, etc.) All day Kingston’s two runners—Pookie and Elliott—returned from the backs of bars, bodegas, barbershops, beauty parlors, billiard halls, and street corners throughout the Bronx and Harlem, dropping off their books of bets. Gussy tallied the incoming cash on an old adding machine till her index finger was sore, at which point she’d use the end of her pencil. From noon to 6 each of the three numbers would post based on the last dollar digits of the total handle from Yonkers Raceway’s daily win, place, and show bets.

By 5 o’clock, Monday’s number was four-two. Hillside left for the Bronx, picking up Chinese takeout from the Orient. Kingston and Gussy, alone, still spoke in code, agreeing to hold off talk of the Hernándezes until after work: City Island, Sammy’s Fish Box. Finally a zero came in. Not one person had hit the number. The three totaled all the final slips, over five hundred dollars gross profit.

Hillside walked to nearby Hamilton Terrace to score from his coke dealer. Kingston and Gussy drove onto the Macombs Dam Bridge out of Manhattan just after 7 o’clock. CD101.9 started a David Sanborn marathon as they sped up the Major Deegan Expressway.

Kingston felt like a ghost, but in a good way. Ever since deciding to give up his patch of Harlem to the Dominicans, Kingston was more conscious of his interactions with the people he’d leave behind, more aware of places he probably wouldn’t see for a long time. He thought of getting skied with Hillside for old times’ sake, or fucking Joie, the former girl-on-the-side stripper over at Sin City who preceded Lacey in his life. Stress was at the root of his recent ulcers and so this new feeling of liberation was welcome. Kingston felt relieved, like knowing the exact date of his approaching death (and rebirth) and appreciating his last moments on earth.

* * *

“I know you been scheming. Them motherfuckers got it coming. What’s the plan?”

Kingston was getting distracted by the general lilt of a nearby conversation, two overweight brothers seated behind Gussy eating whole Maine lobsters and linguini. The larger man continually mispronounced Nikes to rhyme with Mikes. They waited on their own platter to arrive.

“Gus…” Kingston laughed. “You sound like Foxy Brown. Ease up, Sheba baby.” He took hold of the thick white napkin underneath his flatware, spreading it in his lap over navy velour sweatpants.

Gussy smiled, holding her head in her hands. Bangles slid to her elbows, jangling. “Héctor and Eddie were safer than they knew till they burnt up Wallace’s Beemer. They gotta pay for that shit if anything.” The BMW was in Kingston’s possession as a marker, till one of his regulars finished paying off a big debt. Now Wallace’s X5 was ashes. “Who the fuck are they threatening?” she asked heatedly. “They think they’re just gonna keep upping the ante until we get the fuck outta Dodge? Is a goddamn car bomb next?” Gussy lowered her voice. “I was thinking, maybe we could pay off somebody over at the racetrack to report what we tell ’em, like a fixed hit. If we had one of our own hit the number with Héctor and Eddie for some gigantic amount, then we could bankrupt the sons of bitches. Or…I don’t know who they pay off at the NYPD but we could find out, make a deal, and get ’em locked up for a while.”

“That’s good thinkin’. But really, kiddo, the way to do this is to leave in peace,” Kingston replied wearily. “We’ll send word back by their baby sister. Elizabeth was the one rollin’ up on Hillside last month from the get. She doin’ her brothers’ biddin’, we’ll let it ride like that. Once they know we fixin’ to leave, that’s the end a that.”

Gussy sighed, just as their bald, husky waiter returned delivering shellfish on a Formica tray. (Kingston, as always, ordered the lobster, king crab legs, and Spanish yellow rice for two.) She tied the plastic bib around her neck thinking back to when she first suggested Kingston invest in property. The Creole cottage he bought five years ago in the French Quarter had become the getaway home he’d never have brainstormed on his own. Though Kingston wasn’t much for vacations, running numbers six days a week, Gussy planned ahead for whatever retirement might come with forethought he consistently lacked. A condo in North Carolina, near an old childhood friend of Kingston’s, was Gussy’s first choice. But Kingston overruled, choosing New Orleans instead, for its jazz history.

Gussy reconnected with Kingston after leaving the service as a tie to the civilian world and to continue what they had started during their twenties in the Middle Eastern desert. She considered love to be an active decision, a conscious choice. She gave her heart to Kingston because, from her viewpoint, he needed the direction it was her nature to provide, and becoming the main woman in his life gave her access to his ample savings. Marriage might never be on the horizon but Gussy always appreciated the cushy situation she long ago stepped into as his assistant and lover.

The attached row house at 1839 Bruner—passed down from Kingston’s parents—must be put on the market, Gussy thought, cracking a lobster leg. She’d be breaching her own lease at Fordham Hill. Their collective furniture would need to be packed and shipped south, sold, or given away. (The cottage was sparsely furnished and completely undecorated.) They’d require two tickets to Louisiana sooner than later. Hillside, Pookie, and Elliott would have to be informed fast—Gussy was sure they wouldn’t have seen this coming—and the Amsterdam lease would also be broken. This was all irreversible stuff. She hoped Kingston had measured everything carefully.

“Is it worth it?” she asked softly.

“It’s time for a change,” Kingston replied, his mouth full. He finished chewing, measuring his words. “Seem like ain’t nobody wanna end up like they parents nowadays, and I gotta count myself in that too. Daddy always promised my mother he’d give all this up and retire down to Florida someplace and never got the chance to do it before she passed. I worked right up beside him till the end and it was clear to me…” He paused. “I just know he’d a done things different if he coulda. Fuck Héctor and Eddie, it ain’t about them. The house been robbed before. I just don’t wanna do this no more.”

Kingston’s initiative took Gussy a bit by surprise. “Well, I’ll handle the details, just let me know what you intend on doing yourself and I can take care of everything else. I can leave enough for Hillside and the fellas to take care of themselves till next year.” She smiled. “I can’t believe we’re really going! I do love it down there.”

“It’s a new day, Gus. I done made ample money off a this, God bless Daddy. There got to be more to life than Baychester and Amsterdam Avenue. Y’know, New Orleans is a big jazz town.”

“Really?” Gussy knew this already.

“Hell yeah, the Marsalis family hails from down there and…”

* * *

Kingston Lee never wore an earring. Back when he was a teenager at Evander Childs High, putting a hole through your right ear branded you a fag. But the year his boys all pierced their lefties together at a jewelry store on White Plains Road, Kingston just couldn’t do it. He failed to understand why everybody now seemed to get tattooed at the drop of a hat. He’d always had an aversion to anything that could make him substantially different than he was when his personality gelled as a youngster. Gussy learned this about him early on, deciding it was how Kingston had reached forty-two without any children. Moving from New York City, leaving the only real profession he’d ever known, felt to Kingston like bungee jumping with a sometimey cord.

His father had started the business in the ’60s, from a nearly bare stationery store on 233rd Street. Waiting for Jiffy Lube to service his ride that humid, overcast Sunday—he intended to leave it to Wallace and call things even—Kingston walked from Boston Road and up Baychester to 233rd, taking rolls of mental photographs. Passing Spellman High’s football field he remembered fingering a cheerleader before a game underneath the bleachers; he was a mean running back, she favored actress Jayne Kennedy and knew it. Up the hill he passed the Carvel stand his mother crashed into when he was ten. (“Fasten your seat belt,” she had said dead calmly, realizing the Oldsmobile’s brakes were failing.) Comics & Comics was long gone, another memory now. And the Big Three Barbershop.

Zack Abel, Jr. cut hair at the Big Three Barbershop with his father Big Zack from the time he and Kingston attended Evander together. Big Zack and his wife were staunchly religious; the Big Three of the shop’s namesake were naturally the Son, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, though the secular folks coming in for their fades had no clue. Muhammad Ali had his Afro trimmed there once sometime after the Thrilla in Manila, and a yellowed photo of Ali sitting in Big Zack’s highchair stayed taped to a mirror till the shop closed. Kingston and Zack’s fathers both died in 2000. Big Zack’s death seemed to mature his son. He summarily sold his father’s shop, moved to North Carolina for a Cablevision job, fell in love, and had a son two years ago. Kingston missed Zack, the only friend he felt he really had outside of Gussy. Zack’s move left Kingston a bit ill at ease ever since, as if his life was a jumped-the-shark TV show the network refused to cancel.

Kingston reached the address where his father’s operation first started, now an insurance office. He stood there and removed his Kangol as if out of respect, wiping sweat from his brow with the white cap. He recollected his aunts, uncles, and his own mother dreaming up the number when he was a child, searching through slim stapled pamphlets by Madame Zora and Rajah Rabo listing corresponding numbers for different dream themes: love, sex, death. He got spanked for losing his great-grandmother’s tattered Aunt Sally’s Policy Players Dream Book once. His parents let him play occasionally; he recalled hitting for the first time at nine: a whole twenty dollars, all spent at the Good Humor ice cream truck that crept down Bruner playing Sammy Davis, Jr.’s “The Candy Man.” His neighbor Miss Lois once scored a combination hit on the very day she needed to pay her back rent to avoid eviction; she threw a lavish block party and bought herself Jordache jeans for every day of the week. And how many misadventures had young Kingston heard about Chink Low, one of his dad’s first runners, the brother with folded eyelids who never wrote down a number that police could confiscate, memorizing them all without fault? Or Chink’s running partner Clarence, who ended up as a regular on The Mod Squad?

The memories were cathartic. Just one month away, September 2005, Kingston would turn forty-three—with not much more to show for his life than what was left him by his father. He tried to pinpoint the source of his recent melancholy attitude; he knew it had started before the Hernándezes. Was it the birthday of little Zack the third, Gussy pressuring him for a baby? Kingston refused to believe his near depression had anything to do with a midlife crisis; he had a curvaceous kept woman on the side and hundreds of thousands of out-of-circulation Ben Franklins hidden in a safe at the spot on Amsterdam. He tried to envision what he wanted that he didn’t yet have, and it came down to this: He wanted to be his own man.

All his life, Kingston had been following his father’s path to uphold a perceived legacy, yet he couldn’t feel the same obligation on his shoulders anymore. Time and circumstance had moved on, and now, so would Kingston. His father had migrated from Georgia to lay his own path to personal freedom on the streets of the Bronx. Now Kingston would reversemigrate back, attempting to find his very own life purpose in Louisiana. This one-sided turf war was the perfect excuse. Let ’em play Lotto, he thought, liberated.

The phone in his pants vibrated.

It was a message. His battery must have been low, he imagined, having missed the call. Lacey’s voice. They hadn’t spoken since she rang in her number a week ago. She’d reconciled things with Tré-Sean. She wished him well in New Orleans. She asked him to not drop by Golden Lady or the Secor projects before leaving. She hung up the phone.

* * *

How intriguing, Lacey thought, that she found herself magnetized by two of the older black community’s archetypes, the numbers man and the pimp.

Tré-Sean Niles ostensibly sold crack from his apartment on Webster Avenue, but persuasive game was his true métier, and Lacey knew it. Never mind how he convinced her to try their relationship again after scary antics like sitting in his beat-up Benz near Boston Secor obsessively monitoring her subsequent men and one-night stands or surreptitiously checking her answering machine until getting caught. Forget how he convinced Lacey to work out her exhibitionist tendencies by posing naked and selling the images to the likes of PlumpRumps.com (splitting the profits) or sharing her shakedancing take. Days ago, Lacey dog-eared Confessions of a Video Vixen on a night of weakness brought on by Kingston’s leaving, called Tré-Sean, and navigated the following conversation.

Isn’t it fascinating how certain women create whole careers from men wanting to have sex with them? Tré-Sean asked. As a kid he had questioned his horny older brother on why he was so transfixed by Elvira’s Movie Macabre when he knew the pasty, buxom Goth girl would never actually show her breasts. For Tré-Sean this was the same disappointing tease performed at stripclubs with all the incredible-looking naked women (like Lacey) who one could never really fuck. Madonna in Penthouse made an impression on his young mind, but when he saw Pamela Anderson blowing her husband on a homemade tape, his philosophy all came together.

Tré-Sean told Lacey that Paris Hilton giving head, having sex for all the world to see on the web, and then becoming even more popular, made perfect sense. The only reason Paris and Pam Anderson had celebrity in the first place was because men fantasized about how they’d be sexually. Tré-Sean recently met a friend of a friend of a friend in the adult film industry who rationalized that the relation between seductive music videos and hardcore pornography was identical to the relation between a funny joke and an explanation of what’s funny about the joke. Lacey thought she understood.

Tré-Sean finally laid out his scheme. He was given tickets to the Adult Video News Film Awards from this same new acquaintance. He proposed they go to Las Vegas for the ceremony and network. So much more money could be made in porn for so much less work than dancing, Tré-Sean reasoned, and they’d already made some private sex tapes of their own. Celebrity in this field might lead to celebrity in another, he said. (And if not, it’s the same thing underneath it all anyway, he thought privately). His contact guaranteed him a meeting with a producer, Max Hardcore.

Lacey held the line silently. Kingston’s decision bothered Lacey up until the point she accepted that she didn’t mean enough to him for an extended invitation to the bayou. That Monday Lacey lost the number, but the numbers man lost Lacey; she had called her ex the same night.

“So whassup?” Tré-Sean asked.

* * *

In the service, another grunt who’d been a bartender in New Orleans taught Kingston and Gussy how to mix a Tom Collins: gin, tonic, lemon juice, sugar, and a maraschino cherry. In his friend’s honor, Kingston entered their spacious backyard carrying glasses of the poison from the cottage’s indoor bar. Sweltering Southern sunrays beamed through his loose T-shirt and bright Bermuda shorts. Gussy reclined on the powder-blue deck chair by their concrete pool dressed in a gold one-piece swimsuit and Onassis-style shades, rubbing sunblock over her toned legs. Kingston seated himself and passed her the drink; he sipped his own and fired up a cigar.

The two celebrated the impulse purchase of a quicksilver Cadillac that morning, Gussy’s choice. Kingston drove it straight out of the dealership. Like the sensation of a phantom limb, they both considered playing the new GNU-556 license plate for that Friday and had to stop themselves from phoning it in to Hillside. BellSouth had just connected their phone service the day before. Cousin Dot left a message from Baton Rouge about an issued hurricane watch for a nearby tropical storm, Katrina. The tempest had just touched Florida, with a seventeen-percent possibility of hitting New Orleans. Kingston, puffing a Havana, couldn’t imagine it being worse than the storm he’d just weathered.

THE BIG FIVE

BY JOSEPH WALLACE

Bronx Zoo

It was like the punch line to a stupid joke.

Q: How cold is it?

A: So cold that the dogs are sticking to the fire hydrants.

Only, in this case:

Q: How cold is it?

A: So cold that even the polar bears are shivering.

And it was that cold, eight degrees above zero and headed down. So frigid that clots of ice bobbed and clattered down the stripped-bare Bronx River, that the bison he’d passed on the way in, their shaggy humps edged with frost, breathed out huge gouts of steam like irritable snow-capped volcanoes.

But Akeley didn’t mind. In fact, the plummeting temperatures made what he’d come here to do easier.

Though not too easy. No point if it was too easy.

He stood beside the ice-skimmed pool, between the concrete wall and the jumble of manmade rocks that were supposed to remind visitors of the Arctic. If there was anyone there to be reminded on this gray, deep-winter day, when the zoo was open but no one came, when this patch of the Bronx was the least populated two hundred-plus acres in the city.

The only place, the only time of year, when you didn’t feel like an ant, one among eight million scurrying along predetermined pathways, carrying food back to the giant rectangular mound you called home.

And the zoo was even emptier than usual today. Akeley had known it would be. Known that even the keepers would be hidden safely inside, except when the feeding or cleaning schedule forced them to venture out into the deep freeze.

Almost as empty as the Arctic itself, where great white bears might live out their entire lives without seeing a human being. Carnivores so wild, so untamed, that they didn’t recognize the danger in a rifle, didn’t understand what a large-bore cartridge could do, didn’t realize they were supposed to go down, and so instead kept on coming at you, as if they were above death.

But you had nothing to fear from these zoo bears. They had lost their freedom, their wildness, their purpose. You could see it in the way they got fat, the way they smelled, rank, like something inside them was rotting away. You could see it by the toys the zookeepers had given them. A pink ball, a split plastic barrel, a metal garbage can.

Akeley had often seen them tossing their toys into the pond, then belly-flopping after them, making enormous splashes as the spectators laughed and cheered. It was like watching a kitten cuffing a catnip-stuffed toy mouse, safe and easy and cute, and these defiled bears seemed to respond to human approval just the way kittens did.

Only…not today.

The big one, the sow, lay at his feet. She had sunk down onto her belly and laid her head on her paws. Her eyes were on his, eyes normally sharp as obsidian, but growing rapidly duller, more distant, as the seconds passed. Akeley watched until the last glimmer of light drained out of them.

A small trickle of blood ran from the hole where the bullet had entered, but most was trapped beneath her layers of blubber. To anyone outside the fence looking in, she would seem merely asleep.

The cub stood just a few feet away. Perhaps three years old, but already weighing six hundred pounds or more. Big enough to fight, to attack, to kill, but in its defiled state able only to stare down at its mother, then up at Akeley. Its body was shaking so hard that he could hear its teeth chattering.

So cold that even the polar bears are shivering.

But this one, of course, was shivering in fear.

The hunter hoisted his heavy duffel bag over his shoulder and turned away.

* * *

It was a good-sized show at the Holiday Inn Aurora, one of many hotels carved out of wrecked farmland on the outskirts of Denver International Airport. Something like two thousand tables spread across the floor of the convention center, holding endless rows of double-action safari rifles, police revolvers, shotguns, military hardware. Cartridges lined up like rows of gravestones. Knives and nunchaku and pepper spray. Signs saying things like, Laser scopes must be operated only by exhibitors.

Antiques too. A twenty-one-inch-barrel Volcanic rifle in .41 caliber, a circa-1650 Spanish epee, bear traps from the Colonial days, even a 1940s Jeep that had crossed the Sahara which the kids could climb on.

In other words, the usual. The same stuff you’d find at a hundred other gun shows on a hundred other exhibit floors in a hundred other cities.

One thing was different this time, though.

Up on the eighth floor, in the Executive Suite.

* * *

It had been a poor shot.

He could see the animal near the rear of the enclosure, leaping again and again off the floor, landing sometimes on its belly, sometimes on its back. Then getting onto its feet and flipping upwards once more, like a marionette dancing from the ends of a callous puppeteer’s strings.

A golden lion tamarin, one of the world’s smallest, rarest, and most beautiful monkeys, its spun-gold fur stained with black blood.

Akeley studied the hole in the glass front of the enclosure and saw what had happened. The glass had deflected the .22 round, just a little, but enough to prevent a clean kill.

He shifted his gaze to the wounded monkey. The others clustered above it on the vines strung across the enclosure, wide dark eyes showing the human emotions of fear and pity, the twittering of their birdlike voices coming through the glass to his ears.

The hunter sighed. He couldn’t leave it like this. Someone might notice, figure out what had happened, and stop him before he was done.

A door leading behind the scenes was located just inside the Monkey House’s entrance. Before he tested the handle, he looked around, seeing only a small group of teenagers over near the Zoo Center and a pair of nannies wheeling strollers toward the tropical warmth of the World of Birds.

No one paid him any attention. If they had, they’d likely have mistaken him for a keeper anyway. He’d dressed in khaki for this day.

He had his tools ready, but the door was unlocked, the passageway inside deserted. It smelled of rotten fruit and old urine, and the calls of captive animals came to him through the small hatches that led into each enclosure.

He found the entrance to the tamarin exhibit without trouble—he knew the layout of every building—and ducked inside. The little golden monkeys flowed away from him in alarm. They knew he was no zookeeper.

The wounded one, still leaping and falling, fully occupied with trying to escape its agony, didn’t notice him. Droplets of blood from its gut wound lay scattered across the floor.

The hunter reached for his duffel, then paused. Decided there was a better way to end this.

He squatted down and lifted the tiny monkey, insubstantial as a flake of ash in his hands. As he brought it close to his face, it stopped struggling and lay there looking at him, its gaze full of unwarranted trust. So used to humans, so tame, that it expected him to take away its pain.

So he did.

He laid the corpse behind a thick growth of plastic ferns, then straightened and looked into the eyes of the little blondhaired girl who was watching him with rapt attention through the glass.

* * *

There were five of them in the hotel room, sipping single malt and telling stories. Taking their time before getting to the matter at hand.

The Big Five, they called themselves. A joke, kind of, but also a boast. The Big Five: The most dangerous mammals in Africa. Lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, Cape buffalo. The ones you stalked if you were a real hunter.

Among the Masai, you weren’t a man until you’d killed a lion. For European and American hunters a century and more ago, just

a lion wasn’t enough. You needed all five.

And you knew where to get them. The Serengeti. The Mara and the Selous. Amboseli, under the shadow of Kilimanjaro. You could shoot till the barrels of your bolt-action repeater melted, or till a rhino got his horn into your gut. Either way, no one cared.

Today, though? Today, all those places were preserves, and you were supposed to head to game ranches in South Africa or Zimbabwe instead. Places where all you had to do was hand over your plastic and choose from a price list of what you wanted to shoot. As if you were sitting in a restaurant and ordering off a menu.

A baboon, your basic appetizer, cost seventy-five dollars. Two hundred for a warthog, two-fifty for an impala, nine hundred for a wildebeest, all the way up to two thousand for a waterbuck and twenty-five hundred for a giraffe. Most of them so slow and stupid that you might as well have been some Texas bigwig blasting away at farm-raised quail.

The original Big Five were on the menu too, though their prices were never listed. You had to ask. But if your pockets were deep enough, you could still follow a guide out and knock down a semitame lion or sluggish buffalo on a groomed veldt that looked like something you’d see on a golf course. And then go home and brag on it to your friends.

The state of big-game hunting in the twenty-first century.

Unless you wanted more, and knew how to get it.

* * *

Standing close to the glass, the girl peered up at him. She looked to be about seven, with fair skin, a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, curly blond hair emerging from a green knit hat, and eyes so large and pale blue that he thought he might be able to see through to her brain if he looked right into them.

How much had she seen? She was old enough to understand, to tell her mother, to scream. She could ruin everything.

He leaned forward, looked past her, seeing only a young woman in a black parka glancing at the squirrel monkeys across the way. No one else was in the Monkey House.

He had choices, then. There were a couple of different ways this could go.

He tried the easiest first, and smiled at her.

She smiled back.

Okay. Good. Tilting his head, he gestured at the golden lion tamarins on the branches around him. Alarmed, they leaped away toward the farthest corners of the enclosure. But the girl saw only adorable little monkeys doing tricks, and laughed. Then she pointed to her mouth and made chewing motions. Feeding time?

He gave an apologetic shake of the head and showed her his watch. Later.

Her lips turned downward in disappointment, and she shrugged. Then she glanced over her shoulder. He heard her voice dimly through the glass: “Hey, Mom—there’s a man in there!”

But by the time the woman turned to look, he was gone.

* * *

Wilson and Crede, the lawyers, had bagged a bull elephant whose crossed tusks, as pitted and yellow as mammoth ivory, weighed a combined 407 pounds. Smithfield, the bluff and hearty CEO of a company with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and New York, had shot a black-maned lion in Namibia that measured eleven feet from head to tail. Clark, the lobbyist, tall and skinny, had faced down a charging three-thousand-pound black rhino, standing his ground and firing his Brno ZKK-602 until the great beast came crashing to the ground not five feet from where he stood. And Kushner, the tanned, nasal-voiced neurosurgeon, had discovered that the leopard he’d shot was still alive, and had finished the job by jamming his fist down its throat until it died of asphyxiation.

Or so the stories went. Who knew what the truth was? And who cared? They were good yarns, and to the Big Five the telling was almost as important as the feat itself.

Taking their time, they opened a new bottle. Soon the room was filled with a familiar camaraderie.

The only thing slightly off was the presence of the sixth man in the room, the one sitting a little back from the circle. A decade older than the others, tall and rangy, he had sun-creased skin, a mustache that had once been blond but was now white, and deep-set eyes the faded blue of sea glass. He sat slouched comfortably in one of the teak-and-gold chairs, his long, tapering fingers occasionally drumming an odd rhythm on his thighs. His piercing gaze moved from one to another, and though he smiled at their loud jokes, he spoke only rarely himself. His drink sat untouched on the table beside his chair.

The others would have liked it if he’d joined in, maybe shared some of his own stories. But no one even considered asking.

They all knew his reputation. He was the one who sometimes disappeared for months at a time, going where no satellite could find him, living off the game instead of just bringing it home to show off. The one who people said could read a landscape with cheetah’s skill, follow the herds as relentlessly as a hunting dog, stalk his prey as silently as a leopard. The one whose obsession for the kill had once made his guns seem like extensions of his body. The one who had seen everything, shot everything, lived a life the rest of them could only dream of.

He was the one they all wanted to be.

Which was why they’d come to the Executive Suite.

* * *

A red-tailed hawk was circling over the thatched roofs of the zoo’s fake African village, peering down from the steel-gray sky at the shaggy baboons milling about on their pitiful, barren hillside.

Akeley had seen ospreys here, peregrines, once even an eagle that had wandered over from the Hudson. Predators all, their brains always processing the information their eyes transmitted. He wondered what they thought when they looked down on the apes, tigers, and wolves below.

Probably something like: Man, if I could kill that, I wouldn’t have to hunt again for weeks.

“Sir?”

Shit. He’d been drifting, something he did a lot more frequently these days than he once had.

Drifting could get you killed.

“Sir, I need to talk to you.”

A deep voice, Spanish accent. Slowly the hunter swung his gaze down from the sky and focused on the man dressed in white shirt and blue slacks, an inadequate navy-blue jacket zipped up in a hopeless attempt to block out the icy wind. A walkie-talkie swinging from his belt. The name on his white laminated badge read, F. Cabrera.

A zoo security guard, with chapped cheeks and watering eyes. Unhappy to be outside in this weather, but staying polite for now, probably because of Akeley’s age.

Still, the hunter could see that F. Cabrera was young and self-confident. A smile and a few conciliatory words wouldn’t stop him. And his politeness wouldn’t last long if he didn’t get the answers he was looking for.

Too bad.

“Sir, I had a report of a man fitting your description exiting an authorized-personnel door of the Monkey House.”

Akeley didn’t reply, just turned away and started walking, heading south and east, his strides eating up ground.

“Hey!” Cabrera sounded shocked by this display of insubordination. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

Akeley kept going.

The guard got in front of him again. Now his face was stony, and he showed some teeth when he talked. His hand hovered over the walkie-talkie.

“Papi, you really think it’s a good idea to make trouble?” he said.

Akeley took stock. Down the path toward the African Plains he saw a family—Mom, Dad, ten-year-old, toddler, swaddled baby in a stroller. They were out of earshot, and even if they hadn’t been, they would merely have seen two zoo employees talking. Nothing worth giving a second thought to.

Cabrera cut a glance at Akeley’s duffel. “What you got in there?”

“Books.”

“Huh.” Imbuing the single word with scornful disbelief. “Why don’t you open it and show me?”

The hunter shook his head and started off again, moving faster this time. He felt a hand on his arm, shrugged it off, then felt it grab him again, hard, and half-spin him around.

“You come with me.” Cabrera spat out each word. “Now.”

“Okay,” Akeley said, “I won’t fight you.”

“Good.” But Akeley thought that the guard looked a little disappointed.

They walked together, Cabrera still holding his arm. Up ahead loomed the dark, squat stone walls of the World of Darkness. Akeley waited until they’d gone ten more steps, fifteen, and then broke free and headed up the path toward the building’s front doors.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cabrera said, and came after him.

They went through the turnstile, the door slamming open once, and then again, and into the permanent near-blackness designed to encourage nocturnal animals—bats, skunks, snakes, wildcats—to put on a better show. The hunter could see perfectly in the darkness, an ability he’d possessed for as long as he could remember. But the people inside, hearing the sound of the slamming door, turned dim, clouded eyes in his direction.

Behind him Cabrera, blind, fumbling, tried to put him in a bearhug. Akeley turned and hit him three times, hard, twice in the gut and once in the jaw.

The guard made a small, despairing sound in his throat and slid to the floor. The hunter spoke into his ear, a whisper that no one else could hear over the squeaking of bats and the rustle of porcupine quills.

“You don’t stop me,” he said, “before I’m done.”

One corner of the exhibit was roped off for construction. Quickly Akeley carried the unconscious man past the barricade and dropped him against the wall. No one would see him there, and he would stay quiet for a while. For long enough.

Akeley headed back toward the door, past a pair of teenagers staring at the fruit bats and a small figure bent over the glass scorpion case: the little blond girl from the Monkey House, turning to look at him as he went by. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness by now, and she recognized him as well.

“It’s you,” she said in a half-whisper.

“Yes.”

“Look at this.” She pressed a button, and instantly a black light came on. Under the glass, a pair of large scorpions fluoresced, a brilliant glowing blue. “Aren’t they cool?”

“They sure are.”

As he went out the door he heard her say, “Hey, Mom, look—”

He stood for a moment outside, the north wind in his face. The sun, heading for the horizon, had at last pulled free of the low clouds, and cast weak shadows behind the spindly trees and litter-snagged bushes.

The hunter drew the cold air deep into his lungs and started heading west, toward the setting sun.

Wondering if he’d already lost too much time.

* * *

Was “Akeley” even his real name?

No one asked. Even where he came from, where he’d been born, was a mystery. Some said Germany, others England, still others swore he was the son of a ranching family that had lived in Rhodesia for generations. His quiet voice, with its gruff edge, seemed to carry a slight accent, but gave no firm clue to its origins. Nor did anyone know how he had gotten the scar that began beneath his jawline and ran along the side of his neck before disappearing under the collar of the long-sleeved safari shirts he always wore.

A man out of time, people said. Stories told at gun shows, in gentlemen’s club lounges, and in the field, creating only this blurry portrait, all the more compelling for being so incomplete. If he chose to call himself Akeley, that had to be good enough for them.

Even Smithfield, the CEO, had seemed awed when they first met. “Were you the one—” he had started to say, before something in Akeley’s expression made it clear that he shouldn’t finish. Smithfield didn’t usually care what other people wanted—why bother when you could fire anyone who disagreed with you?—but he’d stopped short, cleared his throat, and finished, lamely, by saying, “Glad to know you,” in an unexpectedly hoarse voice.

But he’d recovered by the time they got down to business. “Fifty thousand each?” he said. “Why not make it a hundred?”

Getting some pleasure watching the others wriggle a bit. Then seeing Kushner, the guy who drilled into your skull and fucked with your brain, frowning as he put an end to that. “Fifty,” he said. “As we discussed.”

Everyone else nodding.

But Kushner’s eyes were on Akeley. “And you’ll match it.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Make it five hundred thousand?”

“What it adds up to,” Akeley agreed.

That had been the deal from the start, but still, there was something about hearing it out loud. Smithfield laughed, a sound like a zebra’s bray.

But Kushner wasn’t smiling. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you raising the stakes?”

The hunter stretched like a cat in his chair. “Added incentive,” he said.

Though, really, this group hardly needed any.

* * *

The zoo would be closing soon.

Not that it mattered much, not usually. In preparation, the hunter had spent a week living here, on the grounds, and no one had ever gotten a hint of his presence. You couldn’t “close” something so big and sprawling and overgrown, you could just tell people it was time to leave and assume they’d listen.

And because people were sheep, they usually did.

Cawing flocks of crows flew overhead, blown by the wind like flakes of soot as they headed toward their nighttime roosts. Below the heedless black birds, the last few zoo visitors, scattered groups of two or three, hurried toward the parking lots near the Bronx River Parkway and Fordham Road.

But the hunter had someplace else he needed to be.

Moving faster, staying in the lengthening shadows, he kept to his course.

West.

Toward the African Plains.

* * *

“We all decide who wins,” Smithfield said.

Everyone nodded. It was the only fair way.

Wilson said, “We get together afterwards and vote.”

More nods.

“And fill each other in.” Smithfield’s lips turned upward. “Every last detail.”

Their favorite part from the beginning.

“We decide where yet?” Kushner asked.

“Great Western Gun Show,” Akeley said.

“Salt Lake City, that is?” Kushner asked.

Akeley nodded.

“Listen, though,” Wilson said. “If we can’t, like, agree, who gets the tie-breaking vote?”

Everyone looked at him, but no one spoke. They all knew the answer to that one.

* * *

There.

The prey. As unaware, as self-deluding as the monkey had been, and the bear. Another degraded animal that had convinced itself it was wild, free, unfettered.

The hunter felt himself relax. He was in time.

Just.

It was standing half-hidden behind a screen of bare forsythia. Leaning forward, head hunched low, fierce dark eyes focused on something the hunter couldn’t see. Then, almost imperceptibly, it shifted its weight, muscles tensing as it assumed a predator’s classic pre-attack posture.

Time to put an end to this.

Moving as fast and silently as a shadow, the hunter came up behind it. “Don’t do that,” he said.

His prey jumped, swung its head around, and stared at him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” it asked.

* * *

They drew lots. Each got a different zoo, a different part of the country. Minnesota, Miami, San Diego, Washington, the Bronx. The targets: the zoos’ biggest and fiercest animals, or their rarest, or their most difficult to approach.

“I think they’ve got the whole Big Five at my zoo,” said Crede, who’d drawn San Diego.

“Yeah, but I’ve got pandas,” said Smithfield, who was headed to Washington.

Only Wilson seemed to have some reservations, now that their plan was becoming a reality. “Yeah, but—” he said. “I mean, aren’t all these things going to be, like, too easy to kill?”

His words drawing scornful looks from the rest, as if they’d all long since considered that possibility, and discarded it.

Akeley said, “Sure. But who said it was about the kill?”

“Well—” Wilson fumbled for words. “Then…then what is it about?”

Akeley stared at him. “It’s about the hunt,” he said. “The plan. The approach. The wait. The moment—the one moment. And the aftermath.”

Just like it used to be.

* * *

He looked into Kushner’s sickly yellow eyes.

The neurosurgeon. Back in the Executive Suite he’d worn some fancy cologne, but now he smelled like powder and heated steel and sweat.

And something more. Something…undone. Unfulfilled.

The hunter let his gaze follow the direction that Kushner had been pointing his Browning autoloader. There, walking along the path that bordered the gray and barren African Plains—nothing like the golden expanse of the real thing—were the surgeon’s final targets.

The little blond girl and her mother. Heading obliviously toward the Asia Gate, walking fast in the gathering darkness, but not faster than a .338 cartridge could fly.

Kushner looked down at the girl, then back at Akeley. The lust for the kill was still strong in him.

“Please,” he said. “Please…let me finish.”

* * *

Kushner hesitated in the hallway outside the suite as the others took the elevator down to the exhibition floor. Then he stepped back inside the room. His deeply tanned face was underlain by a reddish flush.

“I have a question,” he said. Akeley waited.

“The kills—” The words were cautious, but the surgeon’s eyes gleamed.

Akeley guessed what was coming next. “What about them?”

“Do they have to be—” A deep breath. The gleam brighter. “To be—animals?”

Yes: what he’d expected.

The word had gotten around about Kushner over the years. How he’d accidentally shot and killed a porter on safari in Namibia, and then another in northern Kenya. Garbled rumors of yet another death, maybe in the Peruvian Amazon, maybe in Thailand.

Or maybe both. The world was full of potential victims, places where a rich American could get away with murder.

“Well,” Akeley said, “aren’t we all animals?”

Kushner blinked, then grinned. His lips were wet. “And will it—will it help me win?”

The hunter merely shrugged.

Knowing that the surgeon would take that as a yes.

* * *

“What else did you kill?”

The girl and her mother had moved out of sight.

“What?”

The hunter thought about the time he’d lost in the World of Darkness. “I saw the bear and the tamarin. What else?”

“Snow leopard. Bengal tiger.” Kushner squared his shoulders. “I don’t understand,” he said. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You aren’t supposed to be anywhere. This is my zoo. You’re just the money man.”

“Oh?” The hunter unzipped his bag. “And who do you think I am?”

“Akeley—” the neurosurgeon said, then stopped.

The hunter reached into his duffel for the first time all day. “Do you even know who Carl Akeley was?” he asked.

Kushner, looking at the bag, gave a little shake of his head.

“A hundred years ago, a little less, Carl Akeley was one of the world’s great sportsmen. He loved to shoot.”

Out of the duffel came his Winchester. His elephant gun. There was already a .458 Magnum in its chamber.

“And then he saw that the hunt was becoming a farce, a slaughter. And so he gave it up.”

The hunter hefted the rifle in his hands. It was a good old gun. Like him, it was almost ready to retire, but he thought they both had one more shot in them.

“Akeley saw the day coming when the great herds would be nearly all gone, and the honorable hunters of past years would be replaced by amateurs, men who cared only for the kill, not for the contest. So he decided to fight to save what was left.”

The surgeon, his tan turned the yellow of rotting cheese, was staring at the gun. He didn’t appear to be listening.

The hunter sighed. It was useless trying to explain. He raised the gun to his shoulder.

The surgeon followed the movement with red-rimmed eyes. “What about the others?”

The hunter permitted himself a little smile. “The others,” he said, “are behind bars.”

The surgeon put his hand to his mouth. His gun bag lay forgotten at his feet. “And me?” he asked.

“You I wanted for myself.”

The hunter wrapped his finger around the cold steel of the trigger. With a sudden, smooth movement, he swiveled so the rifle was aimed directly at the surgeon’s head.

“Know what?” he said. “I think you should run.”

* * *

They’d all gone at last, taking their Scotch, their memories, and their anticipation with them.

The hunter sighed. His legs ached as he walked over to the refrigerator and took out a Tusker. Not a great lager, he had to admit, but still. It reminded him of the smell of the savanna, the safari of white clouds marching across the enormous Kenyan sky, the nasal bleats of the migrating wildebeest herds, and, further off, the grunting cough of a lion proclaiming its territory.

All a vanished world in a bottle of beer.

He sat down, unsnapped his cell phone from its clip on his belt, and did what he’d always done at the end of a long day’s hunt, just before he pulled the trigger.

He checked to make sure his escape route was rock-solid.

* * *

Kushner was shivering uncontrollably.

How cold is it?

“Run where?” he said.

“Wherever you like.” The hunter leaned forward, touching the barrel of the Winchester gently against the surgeon’s quivering temple. “But start now.”

With a sick, despairing look, Kushner turned and stumbled away. He nearly tripped, then regained his footing and ran, legs pumping, arms flailing, northward up the path. The hunter could hear him gasping out the word “Help” again and again as he ran, but he had no air in his lungs to shout, and anyway, there was no one around to hear him. The zoo was closed.

Fifty yards away he got, a hundred, before he came to a break in the wall of bushes. There he hesitated, looking back over his shoulder, as if he might spot Akeley in the gloom. As if there was any chance of ever seeing the hunter, if the hunter didn’t want to be seen.

For a moment more Kushner jittered on his feet. Then he reached a decision and turned, intending to go cross-country toward the road that bordered the zoo.

Akeley, having known he’d do that, waited.

For three seconds, four, the surgeon was out of sight. Then he reappeared in a clearing, a tiny gap where a vine-ridden maple tree had come down in a storm. He paused, looking around, listening for any signs of pursuit. But it was nearly dark now, and his pulse was pounding, so his eyes and ears told him nothing.

That’s how it usually went. The wildebeest about to be swatted to the ground by the lion, the Thomson’s gazelle the moment before it faces the cheetah’s rush. Victims so rarely recognize mortal danger until they feel its jaws around their throats.

Kushner straightened and took the first of four steps—just four—that would have carried him to the road and safety. At that moment, when escape suddenly seemed so close, so possible, the hunter’s index finger tightened.

The Winchester kicked hard against his shoulder. But he was used to it, and knew how to keep his head still, his eyes focused.

So he got to watch the .458 perform its own brand of surgery on the neurosurgeon’s brain.

* * *

The doors of the 5 train rattled open before him. He stepped into the nearly empty car, beginning the first leg of a journey that would land him in Panama late that night. There he would collect the money the Big Five had planned to dole out to the “winner” of the zoo slaughter.

And after Panama, where?

Africa, of course. Poor, besieged Africa, just a shadow of what it had once been, but still the only real place on earth. Sitting in this capsule of plastic and steel, he gazed at the continent’s limitless skies, tasted the wind-borne dust sweeping across its vast savannas.

The train’s doors half shut, then squealed and opened again. Two people entered.

The little blond girl and her mother.

They sat down opposite him. The woman, looking cold and worn, closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the plastic seat. For a minute or so, the girl played with a stuffed monkey on her lap. Then, as if sensing the hunter’s presence, she lifted her head and looked directly at him.

Her eyes widened and spots of color rose to her cheeks. He saw her lips move. You, she said silently.

He gave a little nod.

The girl stared, as if willing him not to disappear once more. Then she dug her elbow into her mother’s side.

“Honey!” The woman didn’t move. “Let me rest.”

“But Mom,” the girl insisted, “it’s him! The man from the zoo.”

The woman sat up. Now her eyes were open.

“See?”

The woman saw. The corners of her mouth turned down.

Having savored her moment of vindication, the girl went back to her toy. But her mother scowled at the hunter all the way to East 86th Street, as if she knew—just knew—that he’d been stalking them all afternoon, and even now was planning to leap across the aisle and finish the job.

PART V

ALL SHOOK UP

ERNIE K.’S GELDING

BY ED DEE

Van Cortlandt Park

All three of us turned sixteen halfway through the first summer of JFK’s presidency, when all things seemed possible. Lefty Trainor, Brendan O’Leary, and I had spent that summer caddying, drinking beer, and unsuccessfully trying to lure BICs, otherwise known as Bronx Irish Catholic girls, into Van Cortlandt Park. Okay, so maybe not all things seemed possible.

It was 9 p.m. on a hot Friday night in August and we were in our usual spot on the curb outside the White Castle under the el station at Broadway and 242nd Street. We were checking out the skirts and wolfing down belly bombs. Local street wisdom had it that the little cheeseburgers were the best way to soak up the quarts of Rupert Knickerbocker beer we’d imbibed across the street, in the park. Three quarts of warm beer for $1.19 on a park bench had loosened our vocal chords for a doo-wop session under a streetlight we’d smashed to make it harder for the cops to zero in on us. Cops didn’t like doo-wop or guys our age. But in the dark and without the element of surprise, they were no match for us in Vanny. As my mother said, “You ran through that park like a bunch of savages.”

“Here comes God’s gift to women,” Lefty said.

“Kronek or the horse?” I said.

Patrolman Ernie Kronek was the worst human being in the Bronx. Kronek was a NYPD mounted cop assigned to patrol the 1,100 acres of Van Cortlandt Park. He’d made it his personal mission to torture us. If he’d caught us in the park drinking beer and singing he would have charged at us, swinging his nightstick like he was the King of England on his polo pony. He loved to whack us, then smash the beer. We all had bruises from Ernie K. at one time or another. He truly hated us, but he loved the girls. Every night, about this time, he’d ride across the parade ground to the southwest corner of the park. He’d sit there atop his horse and stare at the girls coming down the steps of the el station. Treating them to a gaze at his manly physique. Asshole. Everybody knew it. Even the other cops.

* * *

On the opposite side of Broadway, the local men were gathering in Hagan’s Bar to wait for the early edition of tomorrow’s Daily News. It was a Bronx ritual. Every night around this time they’d leave their apartments and walk to Hagan’s to have a cold brew and listen for the bundles to be tossed from the truck. Then they’d have one more while Irv from the candy store cut the bindings and stacked the papers on the outside racks. On Saturday nights the three of us helped Irv put the Sunday paper together. We lugged the early edition off the sidewalk and stuffed each paper with the Sunday magazine, the comics, the sale ads, and the classifleds, which had come earlier in the week. Our hands and faces would be black with printer’s ink, but we had two bucks each burning holes in our pockets. Irv always tossed in a free paper, usually a torn one, but we only read the sports section on the back five pages. Between Irv’s deuce and the money we made caddying at Van Cortlandt, the nation’s oldest public golf course, we didn’t need anyone’s free newspaper.

“It’s gotta be the horse,” Lefty Trainor said, as a tall redhead in pale blue shorts giggled and pet the big Tennessee Walker. The horse was named Con Ed for the electric company who donated him. Ernie K. called him “Connie,” but it wasn’t a female. Poor Connie had the worst of it, having to lug Ernie K.’s fat ass around. We held no grudge against the horse, who after all was just an innocent animal. The cop was another matter; we watched in disgust as he flashed his Ipana smile down on the thirtyish redhead, his square jaw jutting outward.

“Who does the woman remind you of?” Lefty said.

“Maureen O’Hara,” I said.

“No, c’mon,” Lefty said. “B.O., who do you think she looks like? Seriously.”

We’d called Brendan O’Leary “B.O.” since kindergarten. B.O. was having a lousy summer, ever since he got dumped by his girlfriend. Lefty and I had been going through every joke known to man and Milton Berle, trying to cheer him up. He’d been a real sad sack, especially when the beer buzz began to wear off. Getting him back to his happy old self was the main reason we started our vendetta against Ernie K. The nuns had taught us that the pursuit of a worthy goal can help take your mind off your own problems.

“Marilyn Monroe,” B.O. said, but Marilyn was a blonde. He wasn’t even trying. He did, however, smile and wave to his dad, as he pushed through Hagan’s door. B.O.’s dad was a detective in Bronx Homicide; that’s how we knew the other cops considered Ernie Kronek an asshole. As every Friday night, my dad was already in Hagan’s, in his corner near the window.

“I got a buck says he bags this one,” Lefty said. “She looks half shit-faced to me.”

I’d never bet against Ernie K.; his act was a smooth one. He had a nose for a certain type of woman. The type my father called “free spirits” and my mother called “hoors.” He’d quietly offer these girls a special ride. It was against the police department’s rules, but he’d make an exception in their case, winking as if they were coconspirators in some rebellious adventure. He had a soft spot for beautiful women, he’d say. Then he’d have them walk into the park, to a bench behind the trees, near the old stone house, the family mansion, now a museum. Ernie would wait a few minutes, looking around to see if anybody was watching him, then slowly amble toward the meeting spot. He’d have the woman stand on a bench, then he’d pull her up onto poor Connie, letting the woman feel his powerful arms. He had a whole routine; a slow romantic tour of the park’s historical highlights, all the while moving deeper into the dark recesses of the park, to his “special spot.” We had Ernie K.’s act down pat.

The screech of metal on metal drowned out conversation as the Broadway train clattered to a stop above us. Red sparks floated in the night air. With the exception of creeps like Ernie Kronek and a few others, this was the best neighborhood in the city. We had everything, because 242nd and Broadway was the end of the line, the last subway stop in the Bronx. The place was always crowded, day and night. We had five bars, two candy stores, and Manhattan College just up the hill. Commuters going to or returning from school or work or partying in Midtown got off and caught a bus for Riverdale or Yonkers. Husbands, wives, or mothers, whatever, parked on the Van Cortlandt side of Broadway and waited for their loved ones. Guys bought flowers, others stopped in one of the bars for a quick pop before going home to the bride. An endless supply of skirts floated down from the subway platform above. But most of all, that park across the street. Thank you, Van Cortlandt family, for the biggest backyard in the universe.

Back to this Ernie K. thing. Looking at it now I can understand that one of the reasons we hated him was that he was successful with women. All the girls we knew acted like he was a movie star, or something. Even my sainted mother would say, “He’s a fine figure of a man.” I won’t repeat what my father said, but most of the male population of the neighborhood agreed with him. And on top of that, he was a mean bastard.

“There she goes,” Lefty said. “I told you she was a live one.”

The redhead slung her big droopy purse over her shoulder and headed off into the park. Not many woman ventured into the park alone at this time of night, so I felt pretty sure Lefty was right.

“I got a buck says he goes in less than ninety seconds,” Lefty said, holding his birthday watch up to the light. “He knows this one’s a hot number.”

“I’m not up for the hunt tonight,” B.O. said.

“Come on,” Lefty and I whined simultaneously.

We’d been tracking Ernie K. all summer. The idea was to make a record of his on-duty romantic trysts and somehow use it against him. Our plan was to send an anonymous but very specific letter to NYPD Internal Affairs and get him transferred to the ass end of Staten Island, or further, if anything was further than that. But B.O. got cold feet, afraid that somehow it would get back that he was involved and indirectly hurt his dad. He said his dad always talked about how the department hated rats. Cops didn’t turn in cops.

“We’ll turn his ass in,” I said. “Your name won’t even come up.”

“Naw, I don’t mean that,” he said. “It’s just that my stomach isn’t good tonight. We must have gotten some bad beer.”

“Beer is never bad,” Lefty said. “Food sometimes, beer never.”

The sweet smell of anisette cookies wafted up from the Stella D’Oro bakery. When I looked up to breathe it all in, Ernie K. was gone.

“It’s Howdy Doody time,” Lefty said.

It took a few minutes for our eyes to adjust to the dark. B.O. continued to express doubts, but Lefty and I kept moving. We knew Ernie took his prizes on an L-shaped route: east behind the mansion to the nature trail, then north past the lake and along Tibbetts Brook. Very romantic on a moonlit night, especially if you can ignore the sounds of the train and the roar of cars on the Major Deegan Expressway. Eventually he’d get to the black and silent heart of the park, where we were headed.

Since we knew where they’d wind up we took a diagonal route. Straight across the parade ground, the soccer and rugby fields, to the cross-country course. We all ran high school cross-country and knew the world class course by heart. Across the flat to the cow path, then a sharp left and up through the woods, up along old Mohegan Indian hunting trails. It was a steep, rocky incline to the the top of Cemetery Hill, 150 feet above sea level. B.O. stopped twice to throw up. Not that unusual. Even sober runners do it on Cemetery Hill.

The guidebooks call it Vault Hill, because Stephanus Van Cortlandt, the first native born mayor of New York, built a vault there in 1776 to hide the city’s records from the British. Later it became the family burial grounds. Everybody around here calls it Cemetery Hill.

We ducked through a hole in the fence, then weaved between the old tombstones, all of us sweating and gasping. My pulse was thumping in my neck and I was close to tossing some belly bombs myself. We crawled the last ten yards, the wet grass cooling us down. At the edge, we overlooked a small circular clearing against the hill, hidden by trees. We figured it was once an Indian camp that the guidebooks missed. Now it was Ernie K.’s love nook. We weren’t there ten minutes when we heard a woman laughing.

“I told you he’d be in a hurry tonight,” Lefty said, as he checked his Timex with the glowing green hands and recorded the exact time for the accurate records of our planned indictment of a bastard cop. Shhh! B.O. reminded. We were above them, but only about thirty yards away. Our chins against the turf, we all clasped our hands in front of our faces, to block the sound of our breathing. Only our eyes showed over our clasped hands.

We were far enough from roads and highways to hear the sound of crickets. The moon was close to full, so the place was lit like a stage play. We’d be able to see them better, but if we weren’t careful, they could definitely see us. Then we heard twigs and brush breaking, and Connie snorting. We spotted the yellow calvary stripe on Ernie K.’s uniform pants. At least the stripe was cool. Only mounted cops were allowed to wear it. Connie stopped in the middle of the clearing. Ernie K. twisted around, lifted the woman off the horse, and slowly let her down. The guy was powerful, I had to admit that.

“It’s her,” Lefty whispered in my ear.

“Who?” I said.

“But don’t say anything to…” he said, pointing in B.O.’s direction.

What the hell is that about? I wondered.

The redhead stumbled around, more bombed than I originally thought. She put her shoes in her floppy purse and began dancing like a gypsy in the movies. Arms waving, hips swaying. Ernie K. tied Connie to a tree, as the dancing redhead began unbuttoning her blouse. I didn’t know a woman like this, how could Lefty?

“Dance with me, Ernie,” she said, reaching around to unsnap her bra. Then she danced and danced, and stripped and stripped. Tossing her clothes onto her floppy purse. Until she was bare ass. Totally bare ass.

I wish I could say we left around this point, because this part is a little embarrassing for good Catholic boys like ourselves. But no one would believe me. We never left. We always stayed to the bitter end. Give us a break; we were sixteen years old and this was the most skin we’d seen outside of National Geographic. Besides, most of the sex in Ernie K.’s nook was hidden by tree branches or blankets. Really. Well, usually. But not this night; this was Loew’s big-screen big, plus Technicolor and Cinemascope. All we needed was popcorn.

“Bridget Fahey,” Lefty whispered.

* * *

“No shit?” I said, way too loud, but the redhead’s louder singing drowned it out. I’d heard about Crazy Bridget, but couldn’t remember ever seeing her before. She’d left for California years ago, leaving only her reputation for wildness behind. The Fahey’s lived in Lefty’s building, so I believed him. And I figured if I didn’t remember her, then B.O. probably didn’t either. B.O. was the problem. The part I didn’t know how to handle. How could I tell him that this bare ass redhead was the older sister of Margaret Mary, the love of his life? But Bridget was already naked and dancing in the moonlight. The damage was done. I figured any notification could wait. Besides, the nuns always told us that some things are better left unsaid.

Leather creaked as Ernie K. removed his gun belt and hooked it over Connie. He sat on a stump and began removing the high boots. This was special. Sometimes he didn’t bother taking his boots off, but crazy Bridget was singing in Spanish and shoving her ass in his face as she pulled off his boots, like some drunken scullery maid in an Errol Flynn picture.

B.O. and Lefty were silent, and eerily still. I think we all sensed this was going to be a memorable night. For Crazy Bridget it could have been just an average night. Who knows? She bumped and grinded in the Bronx moonlight, imploring Ernie K. to hurry. The older guys in our neighborhood always smiled when they talked about Bridget. After she left, her younger sisters were kept close to the house, rarely straying from the sight of Mrs. Fahey, ever-present in her third-floor window. Lefty said that cloistered nuns had more freedom than Margaret Mary Fahey. But he never said it in front of B.O.

Naked himself, Ernie K. stepped away from the tree stump and began an awkward, limping dance. It was obvious his bare feet were too tender for God’s pebbled earth. He moved in a slow yet palsied twist. Chubby Checker would have died of embarrassment. Finally Bridget put him out of his misery and moved toward him, arms spread wide, shaking her alabaster breasts. Moving right up against him. The slap of skin on skin. Ernie K. stopped dancing and wrapped her in his arms. B.O. pulled his hands down from his mouth, to keep his glasses from fogging up.

“Over there, over there,” Bridget cried, and pointed to a grassy spot right below us. She pulled Ernie K. by his arm. To right below us. We could have spit on them. With Bridget’s insistence the cop carefully laid himself down on the small patch of grass. But no sooner had he gotten down…she sprung up.

“Wait right there, sugar,” she said. “I need something.”

She ran back across the dirt floor of Kronek’s love nook toward her floppy purse. I figured she needed some woman thing, but I was more worried about Ernie K. If he leaned back to gaze at the stars glittering over the Bronx he would have been looking right into our faces. Instead, Bridget reclaimed all his attention.

Because she came back waving Ernie K.’s gun.

For the first time in my life I understood how certain moments play out in slow motion. It seemed unreal, half dream, half hallucination. Ernie K. had his hand in the air as if it would stop a bullet. Bridget came within a few feet of him and stopped.

“Give me the gun,” he said.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“This isn’t funny, Bridget.”

“What’s my last name, you self-centered bastard?”

“You don’t want to be doing this. Put the gun down, we’ll both walk away. No repercussions.”

“No repercussions,” she said. “You don’t know the first thing about repercussions.”

“I’ll never mention this to anyone,” he said.

“I know that for sure,” she said. “You’ll never mention this to anyone.”

I felt B.O. start to fldget next to me. He didn’t like stress of any kind. And this was big-time stress.

“What is my name?” she said again.

The cop, on his knees, had been slowly working his way up, but when he started to stand she fired the gun over his head. The muzzle flash lit Ernie K.’s face, showing it a sudden pale gray. But the sound, the shocking blast and its echo, caused the three of us to come off the ground. They had to hear it in downtown Yonkers. Ernie K. went to his knees, then lay flat out. We could see him trembling.

“What is my last name?” she screamed.

It was then that B.O. decided to be a hero. He stood up, yelling, “He’s a cop! You can’t shoot a cop!”

They both looked up.

“Witness, they’re witnesses,” the naked mounted cop said.

“I’ll goddamn shoot anyone I please,” Bridget said.

“But not a cop,” B.O. insisted.

“Run for help,” Ernie K. said. “Say it’s a ten-thirteen.”

B.O. turned to run. He knew the location of all the police call boxes in the park.

“Fahey,” Lefty said. “Her name is Bridget Fahey.”

And there it was, out there for all to know. B.O. stopped cold.

“Mr. Trainor is right,” Bridget said. “And this conceited, arrogant police officer knows the Fahey name all too well, do you not? All too well.”

Bridget circled Ernie K. Dust rose from her feet as she shuffled to put her back to us. Out of modesty, or a better shooting angle. I didn’t know which.

“You shoot me and these kids will tell,” he said. “Every cop in this country will hunt you down.”

“You exaggerate your popularity,” she said.

“You can’t shoot a cop,” B.O. said.

“Even one who had sex with a sixteen-year-old?” Bridget said. She said it to us. “A sixteen-year-old who happens to be my sister.”

Bridget Fahey only had one sixteen-year-old sister: Margaret Mary. The same Margaret Mary who wore the pin of the Blessed Virgin on her school uniform. The same Margaret Mary who B.O. claimed as the love of his life. I felt my mouth go dry.

“Shoot him,” Lefty said. “She has to shoot him, B.O.”

“No,” B.O. moaned, and then he babbled something and stumbled backward, banging off Van Cortlandt tombstones. He started to run, with his hands over his face. His knee cracked into a rock and he went down. Lefty and I went after him. I picked up his glasses and yelled for him to wait, but he was gone, moving fast. Lefty and I were faster, but we couldn’t catch him. The second shot brought us off the ground again, and probably on record pace. Then we saw B.O. make a right on the cowpath and we sprinted hard. Lefty finally brought him down with an open-field tackle.

B.O. was gasping, and crying, and trying to say something about hating us. I handed him his glasses and he smacked them away. But he should have put them on to see the naked redhead galloping toward us across the open field. Bridget came right at us, her hair flying in the wind. She brought Connie to a halt, then she tossed her purse to the ground. The bag was no longer floppy, but full and round. It hit with a thud.

“She cut his head off,” B.O. said.

“Oh, stop it, all of you,” she said, as she dismounted. She hadn’t had time to dress.

Lefty pulled B.O. to his feet. We were only about fifty yards from the traffic moving on Broadway. Bridget stood in front of us, and we all stared at the ground. I focused on her painted toenails. Either dark green or black.

“I didn’t shoot him,” she said. “God knows I wanted to. But it would only make things worse.”

“If Ernie ain’t dead,” Lefty said, “he’s going to make us pay for this.”

“He’ll do nothing of the kind,” she said. “He doesn’t want anyone to know a thing about this. He’ll make up some story. Like he went in the lake to save someone, and someone stole his horse.”

“We’ll tell them the truth,” B.O. said.

“He’ll say we’re the ones who stole his horse,” Lefty said, “and we’re lying to protect ourselves.”

“My dad will believe me.”

“Your dad will never know, Brendan,” she said. “This has to remain our secret.”

“How do you know my name?” B.O. said.

“I know all of you. I know Mr. Trainor, and you, quiet man,” she said, nodding to me. “But I know you best, Brendan. For all you might think ill of me now, I’m close to my sisters. And I will do all that is necessary to protect them. Understand me?”

“He should be arrested,” B.O. said. “It’s rape. It’s statutory rape. Ask my father.”

Bridget sighed heavily. I heard the old Yonkers bus, the Bernacchia line, chugging home. I wondered if they could see us out in the open field. Or would they even believe their eyes.

“Look at me,” she said. “All of you. Look at my face.”

That wasn’t going to be easy. I knew that if I looked up my eyes would be uncontrollable, caroming around in their sockets like loose pinballs. It hurt, but I looked up, and I’d never seen so many freckles in my life. Freckles everywhere. Everywhere.

“I want you to listen carefully to me,” she said. “Especially you, Brendan.”

“He should pay for what he did,” B.O. said.

“We cannot have him arrested,” she said. “And after I leave here, none of us will ever speak of this again.” She took B.O.s hand. “I truly hate to tell you this, but Margaret Mary didn’t want to leave you this summer. She had to go away.”

In that moment I think we all realized we had just acquired the first deep secret of adulthood. We understood it was a test of what kind of men we would become.

“You know how this neighborhood is,” she said. “They’ll destroy Margaret Mary. That’s why she needs your loyalty and your unconditional love. And in a few weeks, when she returns, I want you to act like nothing happened.”

“You got it,” Lefty said. “What do we do now?”

She kept her eyes on B.O., as she handed Lefty Ernie K.’s gun belt. His revolver was back in the holster.

“Wipe this clean and reload the two bullets,” she said. “Get rid of the empty cartridges. Then deliver this horse to Hagan’s bar. Say you found him wandering in the park. I want this man humiliated.”

“We’ll do it for Margaret Mary,” B.O. said. He wiped his eyes with his shirt and put his glasses on. Then he took the gun from Lefty and reloaded. “I’ll toss the cartridges down the sewer,” he said. “Then I’ll tell my dad I found the horse in the park.”

Bridget smiled and put her finger to her lips in a gesture of silence.

“You okay, B.O.?” Lefty said.

“Fine,” he said.

“Take one last look,” Bridget said, and whirled around, a blur of red hair and freckles upon alabaster.

We helped B.O. fold Ernie K.’s uniform and tie it to Connie’s saddle. She’d even kept his underwear. Bridget dug in her purse for her clothes.

“We’ll take care of the humiliation part, Bridget,” Lefty said, but she’d already dressed and was running toward the subway.

The nuns were right: Pursuit of a worthy goal takes you mind off your problems. I felt oddly relieved, as Lefty and I walked to the phone booth near the White Castle. I grabbed the phone book and began looking up numbers. Lefty, using an accent that sounded like no ethic group I’d ever heard, called the police to report a crazy naked man threatening people near the lake in Van Cortlandt Park. We called the Fire Department, the Parks Department, the Yonkers PD, the FBI, and every newspaper we could think of. We had to go get more dimes.

In less than five minutes, a dozen emergency vehicles were searching the park. Their sirens were almost drowned out by the blare of car horns. traffic backed up at least three blocks on Broadway. They were all in a line behind Brendan O’Leary, who led Connie right square down the middle of Broadway. He actually looked even better than his happy old self. A man on a mission.

THE PRINCE OF ARTHUR AVENUE

BY PATRICK W. PICCIARELLI

Arthur Avenue

Frank Bernardo stood ramrod straight in front of the fulllength mirror in his bedroom for his daily self-inspection. It was a ritual before he left his apartment that he had not missed for as long as he could remember. The black silk suit draped perfectly on his six-foot frame; his alligator loafers shined to a deep gloss, his white-on-white shirt starched stiff as a pizza crust. He smoothed a red-and-black patterned sevenfold silk tie and pinched a perfect dimple under its Windsor knot. A silk pocket square picked up the red in his tie, and his diamond pinky ring shone like a thousand suns.

He ran his hands lightly over his full head of silver hair, careful not to muss what took him nearly ten minutes to style into place. He was fifty-eight, and any man thirty years younger would have killed to have his thick mane. His eyes still sparkled despite what they had seen during his lifetime of service to the Genovese crime family. His had been a life of discipline, honor, and loyalty; a devotion made all the more important since his wife had passed away from the ravages of cigarette smoking. They hadn’t had any children, not for lack of trying, and medical tests pinned the cause on a childhood infection of Marie’s. It mattered little, La Cosa Nostra was his family. It was all he had these days, and he liked that just fine.

Frank Bernardo was a traditionalist. Despite his wealth, he had remained in the Pelham Parkway apartment over whose threshold he had carried his wife upon returning from their honeymoon thirty-five years ago. He still shopped in the same grocery store, still traded stories about the old neighborhood with the same barber who had been cutting his hair since before it went gray. Lose tradition and you lose your humility, your sense of place. Tradition creates order, and order was what la famiglia was all about; order was what put the word “organized” in organized crime.

These days tradition was going to hell. The younger generation of hoodlums were little more than wind-up dolls. No moxy, no balls. Half the new breed would flip on the family if they got a traffic ticket. The last ten years had seen scores of made men running to the feds for deals rather than serve one day in jail. Pussies.

He’d never aspired to be anything higher than a captain, knowing how difficult it would be to control over a thousand soldiers as a boss. He was smart enough years ago to realize that this thing of theirs was soon going to get out of control with the passage of draconian federal laws designed to dump their ranks in jail with hundred-year sentences.

Frank Bernardo ruled with an iron hand. No one in his crew ever so much as walked down the same side of the street as a fed, let alone ratted against the family. To even mention a cop show on television brought a barrage of cursing from Frank that would make even the toughest soldier wince. Anyone caught discussing business on a telephone would be severely disciplined.

It was because of the no-phone-for-business rule that Frank found himself preparing for a face-to-face with one of his most trusted lieutenants, Sonny Pescatore. An infraction had been committed and they would meet at Frank’s restaurant on Arthur Avenue to discuss what to do about it, or more simply put, Frank would be issuing an edict and Sonny would be carrying it out.

* * *

Frank Bernardo walked to his restaurant, the Roman Cave, every day. It was a hike, a little more than a mile, but he wouldn’t give in to old age and worse, show his crew that he was getting soft. He’d been making the trek since he bought the joint years ago. Another benefit of the stroll was being able to meet and greet “citizens,” as people in his world referred to those who were not “friends” of theirs. Another tradition—and not bad for the ego.

He eschewed a top coat on this brisk spring morning, took the stairs from his sixth-floor apartment to the spotless lobby, and headed west along sun-drenched Pelham Parkway. This was a pleasant residential neighborhood of modest homes and apartment buildings on treelined streets. In recent years most of the Italians were bailing for the suburbs. Those who remained were entrenched, mostly around his age or older, the type of person who was born, married, raised kids, and died in the same house. These were the people who waved, offered condolences for his recently departed wife, and sought counsel. Frank was a man who could bestow favors, solve problems, and put the occasional wayward husband back on the straight and narrow.

Today was no different than any other day. By the time he was approaching Arthur Avenue, he had spoken with over a dozen people, some whom he knew, others who dropped names. One elderly man actually kissed his pinky ring, a symbol of respect befitting a man of Frank’s stature. He kept a notepad with him so he could write reminders of phone numbers, people he promised to call, dates he intended to keep, as he strolled and counseled those who needed his help and advice.

Frank entered Arthur Avenue from 189th Street. The avenue was jammed as usual. Tourists looking for a great meal in one of the area’s fine restaurants mingled with neighborhood wiseguys, mommies pushing strollers, and the occasional meter maid out to spoil everyone’s day.

Whereas he garnered deference and admiration among the older inhabitants of Pelham Parkway, here he felt the emotion go toward fear. Frank was recognized immediately by a group of young men who sported what he liked to call ninety-mile-an-hour haircuts and Mr. T starter sets of gold chains, barely hidden behind a uniform of billowing silk shirts jammed into tight jeans. They averted their eyes as he passed by them, some muttering, “How ya doing, Mr. B.?”

Without losing a step and not making eye contact, Frank shot back, “Don’t you fucking guys have jobs?” He got no reply, but hadn’t expected any.

Others in the know gave Frank a wide berth, the occasional tourist following suit and wondering just who the hell this guy was. Less than two blocks from the Roman Cave, Frank eyed the competition. Good restaurants the lot of them, but what the tourists didn’t know was that many of the established Italian eateries were now owned by Albanians who were passing themselves off as Italians. A lot of the local wiseguys had relocated a few years back because of an overzealous federal prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani who made it difficult for them to run their illegal gambling establishments. This left room for the Albanians to come in and take up the slack, their illegal profits funding new restaurants. But Frank hadn’t been scared off because he didn’t fear Giuliani or anyone else. People feared him, and from that fear came respect, even from a hotshot federal prosecutor with a bad comb-over. No one fucked with Frank Bernardo.

What the hell, Frank thought, more than enough for everybody, and lamented the passing of the old days. But there were still a few of the multi-generational joints left. Ameci’s, where the actor Joe Pesci once worked as a waiter until being discovered by Robert DeNiro, was still going strong. Fucking Pesci, Frank thought; guy makes it big and never comes back to the old neighborhood except to shoot a movie and leave in a limo. Another pussy.

A little further down the street Frank waved to the owner of the Full Moon, where Paul Newman ate while filming Fort Apache, the Bronx. It used to be called the Half Moon before they expanded. Frank figured maybe in a couple of more years when the Roman Cave was doing even better than it was now he’d buy the place next door (whether the owner was selling or not) and change the name to the Roman Coliseum.

He crossed the street by Mario’s Restaurant, thereby avoiding a bunch of Scarsdale mamalooks who wanted to chow down on some meatballs and spaghetti in the same place where Michael Corleone blew away two guys in a scene from The Godfather, and walked past the storefront where a lot of the action took place in A Bronx Tale. Yeah, Frank mused, the world’s a friggin’ stage.

* * *

The Roman Cave was gearing up for the lunch rush when Frank walked in. Two waiters were folding napkins and a porter was waxing the wooden floor with a power buffer. The restaurant was long and narrow, with two rooms, lighting dimmed to an intimate duskiness. The bartender, a neighborhood fixture named Cheech, was preparing his bank behind the mahogany, black leather—railed bar in the first room. He was wearing the prescribed uniform for the service staff: white shirt, solid red tie, both under a black vest that matched his pants. He smiled and waved with a fistful of cash.

“In early today, Mr. Bernardo.”

The restaurant’s staff were all men, mostly older neighborhood guys who had honed their skills in the finer restaurants in Manhattan, and were working toward their golden years in a joint closer to home. Frank nixed waitresses early on because he thought they detracted from the upscale theme of the place.

“Hey, Cheech. Got a meeting with Sonny. He in the back yet?” Frank stole a glance at himself in the gold-flecked mirror behind the bar. Looking sharp.

“Yeah, he got here about twenty minutes ago.”

Frank nodded. Next to a rat in the ranks he hated to be kept waiting the most, and his soldiers knew it. Sonny, a good kid, was always early. He breezed past the handful of tables in the barroom and through an alcove that led to the dining room.

Sonny Pescatore was seated at Frank’s personal table, which was situated in the rear of the dining room and far enough away from the other tables to avoid conversation being overheard. The walls were covered with red and silver wallpaper that Frank had imported from Italy, and each of the twenty-two tables was covered with a crisp linen tablecloth, folded linen napkins, sparkling glasses and utensils, and a footlong candle supported by a gleaming silver candlestick.

Sonny waved and Frank smiled. Sonny Pescatore, at forty years old, was Frank’s personal choice to replace him should the time ever come, though Frank was not entertaining thoughts of retirement, and Sonny knew it.

Sonny stood as Frank approached.

“Frank, how are you? You’re looking very fit.” He pulled a chair out for his captain and waited for Frank to sit down before he followed suit. There was no handshaking, a custom which didn’t fall into Mafia tradition.

Frank patted his stomach. “You watch what you eat, Sonny, get good exercise, and you keep a flat belly. You don’t see too many fat old people, you know?”

Sonny smiled, nodding. For ten minutes they made small talk, Sonny knowing that when Frank was good and ready he’d tell him why he had been summoned.

Finally Frank said, “Something’s gotta be done about Augie.”

Sonny looked confused. “Augie? Which Augie, Frank?”

Frank stared at his lieutenant. The kid was sharply dressed in a dark gray pinstriped suit and a floral tie, and he imagined his shoes were brushed to a high shine. One thing Frank demanded was that his crew dress well anytime business was being conducted; this meant suits, not sport coats, and the first person to grow a mustache would have each hair gouged out with a dull knife. Men in La Cosa Nostra were clean-shaven as a matter of tradition.

But as sharp as Sonny was, sometimes he didn’t think.

“Augie Pisano,” Frank said. “We got only one Augie.”

“Hey, sorry, Frank. Coupla new guys we got working the terminal, thought we had another Augie in there somewhere.”

“Well, we don’t,” Frank said. “Keep up, kid. This is your crew.”

“Okay, okay. So what’s the beef?”

“The beef is, Sonny, that I called Augie last week for a sitdown and he didn’t show. No fucking phone call, no nothing. He had me down here playing with myself for over an hour.” Frank’s hands were white-knuckled on the tablecloth, which wasn’t missed by Sonny. “So this is why he’s gotta go. I called him and he didn’t come. He’s a dead man.”

“Frank,” Sonny said, leaning closer conspiratorially, “no disrespect, but maybe we should give Augie a pass. He’s a good guy, good earner.”

Frank waved a hand. “Fuck him. I hear he’s also talking subversive about me. You hear anything about him talking subversive?”

Sonny shook his head. “No, Frank. It’d be my job to know that. My ear’s to the ground, always is. I don’t hear nothing about Augie talking subversive.”

“Kid, listen to me. Remember Joey DiChicco? Remember I said a few years back that I thought he was talking to the feds? Remember that? Was I right or was I right?”

“Yeah, Frank, you were right.”

“You’re goddamn straight I was right. If you hadn’ta clipped him we’d be having this conversation in friggin’ jail.”

Sonny held up his hands. “Hey, when you’re right you’re right, boss.”

A waiter passed through the dining room and breezed into the kitchen. They waited less than a minute until he came back out carrying a case of Scotch, disappearing toward the bar before they resumed their conversation.

“Okay, so maybe he ain’t talking to the feds, but he’s sayin’ things behind my back, about the way I’m runnin’ this crew. That’s talkin’ subversive. I want you to take care of the problem. Do the Bronx Park thing like we did with that asshole Petey. Bury the prick next to Petey; they can bullshit together about how fuckin’ stupid they are.” Frank chuckled. “That fuckin’ Petey. He knew he was gonna die and all he wanted was that we didn’t plant him without his shoes. What an asshole.” Frank sat silent for a moment. “I granted him his last wish. If they ever find him, he’ll be wearing a pair of alligators.”

Sonny swallowed. “You’re all heart, boss.”

Frank leaned across the table, his eyes cold and piercing. “Listen, kid, watch your mouth. I brought you into this crew and I can have you taken out. You know what I mean?” Disrespect. He hated it.

Sonny let out the breath he’d been holding for what seemed like an hour. “Sorry, Frank. It won’t happen again.”

Frank examined a well-manicured hand. “Ah, it’s okay. Let’s eat.”

They ate a leisurely lunch of sautéed eggplant, washed down by a twenty-year-old bottle of Chianti Classico. Frank reminisced about his crew’s greatest hits (“and I ain’t talkin’ about the friggin’ Top Forty here”), while Sonny nodded in deference to his boss. Shortly after they had finished several cups of espresso and an equal number of cannoli, the Roman Cave opened for business and the lunch crowd surged in. As a handful of tourists mingled with neighborhood people and waited to be seated, Frank dismissed his lieutenant.

“Too many ears here now,” he said as he gripped Sonny’s shoulder. “Do what you gotta do and call me when it’s done. You should be callin’ me sooner than later, you know what I’m sayin’?”

Sonny stood up. “Understood.” He nodded and turned, leaving Frank to savor the dregs of his espresso.

* * *

Sonny Pescatore stood on the sidewalk, a hand reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He lit one, dragged deeply, and surveyed the street. Halfway down the block, parked in a bus stop, a shiny black Chrysler 300 with tinted windows flashed its headlights. Sonny smiled, took another pull on his cigarette before flipping it into the gutter, and walked toward the car.

The front passenger door cracked an inch and Sonny grabbed the handle and slid onto the front leather seat. The driver looked at Sonny through tinted glasses.

“How’d it go?”

Sonny shrugged. “Like we expected. Fucking shame.”

The man nodded. “Who does he want whacked this time?”

Sonny smirked. “You’re not gonna believe this. Augie Pisano.”

The man’s eyes widened noticeably under the shades. “You gotta be shittin’ me. Doesn’t he know Augie’s been dead since what…1988?”

“Eighty-seven,” Sonny corrected. “And Frank oughta know, he clipped him.”

“Jesus,” the man said, “is he that far gone?”

“I’ll tell you how far gone he is. We sat in that friggin’ shithole for an hour and he was convinced he was at his old table in the Cave.”

The man turned away from Sonny and stared across the street at the McDonald’s from which Sonny had emerged. He shook his head. “I heard about people who have this shit, but never knew nobody who actually had it.”

Two women in their twenties sashayed by, short skirts clinging tightly to their rock-hard asses. Sonny followed them with his eyes until they turned the corner.

“Your Aunt Connie gets it,” Sonny said, “my Uncle Bennie, no problem; they can’t hurt us. But Frankie was shootin’ off his mouth about guys we had whacked for the last twenty years. He can hurt us.”

“That shit he remembers; that he wears the same friggin’ dirty sweatsuit every day, that he forgets.”

“Go figure,” Sonny said. Frank Bernardo had been a powerful captain, an old-school Mafia boss who believed in omerta, the rule of silence, like kids believed in Santa Claus. But after his wife died fifteen years ago and the Roman Cave was burned to the ground by a bunch of Albanians out to thin the competition, Frank began to lose his grip. Maybe old age had something to do with his decline, Sonny thought. He was, after all, pushing eighty, but the reasons for Frank’s condition weren’t the family’s concern. The damage Frank could inflict on the family was.

Frank had become an embarrassment. Demoted to soldier and given virtually no responsibilities, he’d been carried by the family for the last several years despite the fact that he was becoming a Class A pain in the ass. Unshaven and slovenly, he always wore that same moldy sweat suit of indeterminate color, bathed only occasionally, and harassed everyone on the street with whom he came in contact. It’d gotten so bad lately that when people from the neighborhood saw him coming, they’d duck into the first available storefront.

And forget about the young punks. Sonny had bitchslapped two of them for spitting on Frank just a few weeks ago. But loyalty only went so far; honor and fearlessness were for the young and able. And then there was that bullshit about loose lips sinking ships. Too many ships with valuable cargo floating around Arthur Avenue to be scuttled.

* * *

“When?” the man asked.

Sonny pulled an untraceable prepaid cell phone from his coat pocket.

With a tangible sadness in his voice he said, almost inaudibly, “No time like the present,” and punched buttons on the throw-away phone. He waited a few seconds and said, “Okay,” when a male voice answered. He gestured to the driver. “Head slowly down the street when I give you the word.”

They waited in silence for a few minutes until two young men dressed in black leather jackets walked briskly up the street toward the fast-food joint.

Sonny poked the driver in the side. “Now.”

With the car in gear and slowly rolling up the block, Sonny gazed with a look of melancholy through the plateglass window at the old man hunched over a cup of tepid coffee, muttering to himself and running his fingers over a bald pate. There were a few patrons in the place, but they all gave Frank Bernardo a wide berth, not out of the respect he once enjoyed, but because he was a slovenly old man who didn’t smell right.

The two young punks breezed through the door, now with ski masks securely in place. The Chrysler was almost adjacent to the storefront, and Sonny stared transfixed as the two men extended their arms, black automatic pistols at the ready in gloved hands.

Sonny had to crane his neck as the car cruised past the restaurant. He saw Frank stand, throw back his shoulders, and shake a fist at approaching death.

Sonny grabbed the driver’s shoulder. “Stop the car.”

“Here?” The driver was incredulous.

Anger flared in Sonny’s eyes. “Stop the fucking car!”

The Chrysler came to rest in the middle of Arthur Avenue, engine idling while Sonny watched an old soldier muster up a final bit of pride and face what he knew was his assassination. In those few seconds clarity returned; Frank was once again strong and would face death like a man.

Words that Sonny couldn’t hear were exchanged as the gunmen fired a barrage of rounds into Frank Bernardo. Patrons tossed Big Macs and shakes and planted themselves firmly on the greasy floor facedown. Sonny saw Frank mouth a torrent of words, though they were muffled by the thick glass and ringing shots. But Sonny knew what those word were.

Assassinato, assassinato.

As the bullets found their target, the old man got stronger. He pushed the table aside and lunged for the shooters, who retreated as they continued to fire.

“Jesus Christ,” Sonny said softly, “he’s gotta have ten slugs in him.”

Finally, Frank fell to his knees. One shooter stepped deftly around the old man, put the muzzle of the gun to the victim’s bald head, and fired one final round. Frank Bernardo toppled over like he was pulled down by a ship’s anchor. The two men spit on their motionless victim, dropped their guns, and ran to the door, flinging it open and slowing to a walk as they calmly made their way up the street to where Sonny’s car still idled. As they walked they high-fived each other like two adolescents congratulating themselves after winning a soccer game.

The driver threw the car in gear.

“Wait,” Sonny said, and clamped a hand on the driver’s arm. In the distance the muted sound of sirens pulsated.

The driver was visibly agitated. “Jesus Christ, Sonny! We gotta get outta here.”

“In a minute,” Sonny said, and stepped out of the car. He walked across the street and waited.

The two gunmen were laughing now and rapidly approaching Sonny. They smiled, seeing their boss and knowing that if this didn’t get them their buttons, nothing would.

Sonny let them get to within twenty feet before he pulled a nine-millimeter pistol and cut the two shooters down with one shot each to their torsos. Surprise and pain swept across the faces of the killers as they dropped to the ground and began crawling away. One made it under a parked car, but left no room for his partner.

Sonny, in a controlled anger, straddled the exposed shooter and put two rounds in his back. Blood pooled on the sidewalk as Sonny carefully stepped over the dead man, leaned under the car, and emptied his magazine into the remaining whimpering wounded hit man.

A crowd had gathered, and when Sonny stood up they turned their backs in unison and began scattering. Sonny jammed the gun in his waistband, walked quickly to the car, and got in. The sirens were louder now, easily within two blocks of the scene.

“What the fuck?” the driver said, as he forced himself not to leave twenty feet of rubber getting off the block.

“The old man deserved better than that. He was a caporegime, for Christ sake! Spit on a made man? Laugh? I don’t fucking think so.” Disrespect, Sonny hated it; he had learned all about respect from the late Frank Bernardo.

Sonny lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply as the car drove onto the Major Deegan Expressway. If the cops could find anyone to admit being at the scene of the killings, they wouldn’t be able to remember a face, let alone an age or the race of the shooter.

This was, after all, Arthur Avenue.

YOU WANT I SHOULD WHACK MONKEY BOY?

BY THOMAS ADCOCK

Courthouse

The young guy sitting next to me at the bar looks like an escapee from one of those rectangular states where blond people live who wind up in Los Angeles where my own kid went to escape from me.

He’s wearing a cashmere turtleneck and matching tobacco-colored corduroys and a green suede jacket that would be a couple of months’ pay if my secretary had to buy it. He’s blond, of course, with California teeth and a hundred-dollar haircut.

Two minutes ago he walked in and looks around the place like he knows everybody. Which he doesn’t. Then he walked over my way and took a load off.

How this guy found his way to a dive like the Palomino Club, let alone the Bronx, I am about to find out.

So who am I, sitting next to this Jack Armstrong type and doing my bit to be one-half of an odd couple? And what’s this bar about?

The Palomino Club is neutral territory for a bunch of us who depend on one another to keep the criminal justice system of the Bronx a going concern. Meaning the cops and the crooks and guys like me, since all roads lead to lawyers.

Over the bar right where I’m sitting, there’s a creased photograph of a curly-haired squirt with his ears folded under a cowboy hat and he’s sitting up on a big cream-colored horse with a flowing white mane. At the bottom of the picture it says, Camp Hiawatha 1953.

That’s me in the saddle, by the way. I always sit near the picture of my youth.

I am now a grown-up man of five-foot-six, if you can call that grown. I am sort of round and practically bald-headed. I have lived on the Concourse since my days in short pants. The fact I now get my suits made by a tailor with liver spots over on Grant Avenue who claims he sewed for Tony Curtis after he stopped being Bernie Schwartz from Hunts Point doesn’t fool anybody. So says my kid.

My kid says I’m so Bronx haimish there’s no way my name could be anything besides Stanley, which it is.

So imagine how curious I am about this tall, sun-kissed, golden-haired guy—goy—who took stool next to me when he could have sat down in a lot of other spots.

The guy orders a cosmopolitan. Nate the bartender cuts me a look that says, Nu?

Naturally, I am wondering myself. So I start chatting up Jack Armstrong.

“Look at these,” I tell him, holding up both hands so he can see my pink palms. “Soft, hey? Nice?”

“For crying out loud, Stanley—”

This is from Nate, who is rolling his eyeballs like Jerry Colonna used to do on The Ed Sullivan Show. I am not currently speaking to Nate on account of he encouraged my kid to break up the firm of Katz & Katz.

Yeah, I get your point, he says to my kid. You got to be your own person, he says to her. You have to find your own space. Feh! Since when is Nathan Blum talking hippie?

“—Not with the schtick already, Stanley.”

I think about telling Nate, Life is schtick, numb nuts. But instead I keep him on my list of people to ice, which I hope irritates him like a nail in the neck. He picks up another Hamilton from the little pile of cash on the wet mahogany in front of me and pads off, knowing to bring back another Grey Goose marty, the hump.

I get back to business.

“No kidding, Jack,” I tell the golden boy. “Look at these hands.”

“It’s Blake, actually.” He smiles, which blinds me. “Blake Lewis. I’m in from the coast.”

Who says this?

Well, what did I tell my kid about Hollywood guys with the teeth she thinks are so freaking fabulous? Phony-baloneys, all of them. No parents in the history of the world ever gave the name of Blake to their innocent little boy, not even to Jack Armstrong here.

“So, Blake, feel the hands.”

He touches one palm, then the other one.

“Soft,” he says. “Nice.”

“Smooth like a baby’s pilkes.”

“You must be terribly proud of those hands,” says Blake Lewis with the suede and cashmere. He sounds terribly like somebody who doesn’t want you to know he grew up in a splitlevel eating casserole and Jell-O. “You didn’t have to work hard—like your father did.”

This golden boy, he knows?

“My old man painted houses,” I tell him, playing it casual, like maybe Lewis here hit on a lucky guess. “He had hands rough as shingles. Me, I don’t paint.”

“I heard that. I heard you’re an attorney.”

“Not an attorney. I’m a lawyer.”

Lewis smiles and swivels on his barstool to scope out the place again. The usual suspects I mentioned are here.

Three fat capos by the names of Peter “the Pipe” Guastafaro and Charlie the Pencil Man and Nutsy Nunzio are eating bloody steaks in a corner booth. The steaks are so big they’re going to have meat breath for the next couple of days.

Down the middle of back dining room is a long table full of potato-faced Irish detectives in shiny suits. They’re drinking champagne to celebrate a take-down that’s going to earn everybody commendations, and making eyes at the bling-bling brown-skinned girls the latest gold-toothed hip-hop prince on his way to bankruptcy court brought along with him.

The local Chamber of Commerce boys are here, with long-legged women they’re not married to. One of them decides to showboat. He hands over an intriguing wad of cash to a crewcut desk sergeant from the 44th Precinct and says, “Take care of the other guys too.” He has not yet learned that sending money by cop is like sending lettuce by rabbit.

Hanging around the bar to either side of me are solid-built guys keeping a quiet eye on one another, along with some tabloid guys, including Slattery from the Post.

Slattery came with the detectives from his tribe, but now feels the need to drink something that’s not bubbly. He’s got buck teeth and a mustache from the ’70s he ought to get rid of.

The solid-built guys are nursing seltzer. Their fingers on the glasses are as thick as rolled quarters. They’ve got enough firepower concealed under polyester suit jackets to hold off an invasion.

Down at the end of the bar, the D.A. himself is getting a bang out of showing a gaggle of Wall Street attorneys the other side of the tracks. And working the room, of course, are my comrades of the Bronx criminal defense bar. They’re handing out business cards.

Lewis turns back to me and says, “I hear you’re a lawyer who knows how to motivate certain types of people.”

He says this with no sense of irony or amusement. I notice I’m still sitting here with my pink palms up in the air, like I’m about to get mugged by a guy who’s prettier than anything I ever saw walk out of a Jerome Avenue beauty salon.

This good-looking mugger, he glances up at the memento from Camp Hiawatha a long time ago and says, “You’re Stanley Katz, aren’t you?”

Then he sticks out a hand that’s smoother than mine and I shake it because what else am I supposed to do.

It takes me a long minute, but I am now recovered. Because now I figure what’s with the golden boy.

“You know my kid out in Los Angeles.” I don’t say this like it’s a question.

“I do indeed. Wendy said I’d find you here. She says your office is nearby.” Lewis nods his expensive haircut in the right direction while he’s saying this. Then he says, “According to Wendy, they call you Consigliere.”

“Nobody named Stanley was ever a consigliere. Except for me,” I tell him. “But that’s mostly for laughs.”

“But not strictly.”

He’s got me there.

“Counselor, I could use your help,” says Lewis.

“For what?”

He tells me.

“You want I should whack Monkey Boy?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

* * *

Later, when I’m home after listening to this disturbing proposition, which I admit has got a certain appeal, I get Wendy on the horn. It’s around midnight in the Bronx, which I know is only 9 o’clock in California.

“Your boy Lewis, he clocked me at the Palomino.”

I inform her of this right in the middle of when she’s answering “Hello” into the phone.

Even though Wendy is my flesh and blood, I can’t help being impatient with her since she’s out there with the phonybaloneys now. Which I know all about from reading the unpleasant memoir of a New York writer who went to Hollywood once. The title of this memoir, it’s Hello, He Lied.

Six months ago—before she started up with her my-own-person business—I gave Wendy the loan of this book, figuring it would disgust her enough to keep her home where she belongs, namely in the Bronx with me. I figured wrong.

We had the knock-down-drag-out.

“How can you bust up Katz & Katz?” I asked her, again in my impatient way. “We got a nice long-standing clientele of decent New York criminals.”

“It’s not like it’s fatal,” she said. “Partners split up all the time.” She was cool, like she had the questions and answers doped out ahead of time. Like I taught her.

“Right here in New York, kiddo, you got a big future.”

“As what? Daughter of the great Stanley Katz who doesn’t paint houses? The consigliere? I’m already Stanley Katz’s kid. It’s not a skill. I have to be my own person, find my own space.”

Oy vey.

“In Los Angeles? What’s out there for a lawyer?”

“Entertainment law. Like I told you a hundred times.”

“A hundred times I still don’t get it. What do they know from murder in Hollywood?”

This could have been the stupidest thing I ever said. So I tried to brighten up the moment with a blast from the past.

“Say, kiddo, what’s the best thing about a murder trial?”

Wendy didn’t give me the setup like years ago when she was a little girl all excited about the game of Papa’s punch line.

So I answered me: “One less witness.”

“That is so ancient, Daddy.”

“You’re breaking my heart. Don’t leave me. I’m lonely.”

“It’s a lonely world, Daddy.”

“Which makes it a shame to be lonely all alone. You look like your mother. I miss your mother.”

“Me too, Daddy. But she’s gone. You know.”

Then Wendy and the blue suitcases her mother and I bought her for college walked out of my life.

“California is not out of your life,” she tells me whenever I call these days and start up with the you-walked-out-of-my-life business. Wendy informs me, “They’ve got airplanes now.”

Okay, I should fly out and visit.

But right now, I need to talk.

“You hear me? Your boy found his way to the Palomino Club.”

“Oh—hi, Daddy.”

“This guy, Lewis, he’s for real?”

What am I saying?

“You can bank on Blake Lewis,” says Wendy. “He’s a legitimate television producer. He’s big-time.”

“For me, all he’ll produce is a visit from the feds.”

“Like they’ve never been to your office.” Wendy says this with a sigh, like when she was a teenager complaining how I embarrassed her in front of her friends. Then she laughs and says, “Don’t you want to be on TV, Daddy?”

Is my own kid in on this proposition I got last night?

“Why me?”

“Blake’s looking for consultants. It’s what he does for his kind of shows.”

“What’s he calling this one?”

“Unofficially, it’s called The Assassination Show. Keep it hush-hush, okay? Blake only told me because he had to ask about—well, technical advisors, let’s say.”

I’m thinking over a number of things I don’t want to say to Wendy until I think them over. This seems to make her nervous.

“Well, so, naturally, I sent Blake to you.” Naturally.

“Ideas get stolen in the television business, Daddy. So hush-hush.”

“Television’s for cabbage-heads.”

“Speaking of cabbage, did you talk money?”

“Money I don’t care about.”

“I do. I’m only just getting off the ground here. I did a couple of five-percent series contracts, but you know how that goes.”

“Yeah, you sent me copies of your work, kiddo.”

“It’s mostly boilerplate according to the unions and the producers’ association. About a hundred ifs in there between a lousy ten grand, which doesn’t even pay the rent, and the sky.”

“But when you get up there, it’s dizzy time. When are you coming home?”

“I kind of want to, Daddy, but what I need right now is a real show-runner client like Blake Lewis. A big fish who can pay me a big commission. I need you to help me reel him in.”

“You should have called me, Wendy.”

“Where would that have got me? You would have blown me off, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

As soon as I say this, I know she’s got her foot in the door. And I know she knows that I know.

“Listen, Daddy, this is a good piece of business. It gets me in solid with the biggest thing going out here.”

“What’s that?”

“Reality TV.”

“There’s an oxymoron for you.”

* * *

I have got many things on my mind this morning in the November drizzle that’s making my shoes squeak. Not only that, I accidentally step on a liverwurst sandwich somebody dropped on the sidewalk. So this is not a good omen.

I am on the way from my place on the Concourse over to the office on 161st Street around the corner from the marble glory of the Bronx State Supreme Court. This is where it’s my calling to help little people through the meat grinder of their lives and take from the big people what the market will bear.

When it looks to me like they can hack the payments, the working stiffs pay me with their little credit cards. Or else I take IOUs, which I almost never collect on. The big people—your old-fashioned wiseguys, your rap music moguls, your disgraced politicians—they pay cash, and lots of it.

In case you hadn’t noticed about the times we are living through, weirdness and rudeness is rampant. And it’s not just up there at the top, either, it’s now trickled down to the bottom of the food chain. Never mind, for me business is brisk.

So here I am running a healthy enterprise for which I could use the help of somebody I can trust, namely my kid. I wrongly thought she was happy being molded into the person who would take over everything her mother and I built up in the Bronx. Which is not a bad little empire.

For instance, I own the building on the Concourse where I have lived since pulling up to the curb in a yellow Cirker’s moving van back when Ike was the president. I’ll never forget that Saturday afternoon.

My old man was delirious with joy about leaving the Lower East Side behind us for a new life in the North End, which is what you called the South Bronx back then.

“Can you believe it, Stanny-boy, I got us a big apartment with sun in the windows where rich people used to live,” he said to me that Saturday. He’d gone to the library to read about the new neighborhood. “Right on the Grand Concourse, copied off the Champs-Élysées in France and built in 1909 in the Bronx—by an immigrant. Imagine that. An immigrant just like me. You know, I was in Paris after the war, Stanny, and I painted. And I don’t mean houses.”

Right across the hallway from our sunny apartment I met a chubby girl my age with blue eyes and red cheeks and frizzy black hair.

Her name was Miriam Smart, which was perfect for her. Some people get named like that. Like Billy Strayhorn just had to be a jazz musician, and Johnny Stompanato had to be a wiseguy.

Anyhow, I called her Mimi. We were married on her nineteenth birthday.

Mimi and I were the first ones in our families to go through all twelve grades. After Morris High School, we graduated City College together in the days before tuition. I went on to law school and wound with a job in the domestic violence bureau at the Bronx D.A.’s office, where mostly I sent up slobs who fell in love with a dimple but couldn’t handle the fact that a whole girl came with it.

Mimi, she was the brains of the Katz family operation. She went to work in the real estate business on account of being sadly inspired by her grandfather, who had a little farm stolen out from under him back in Romania.

“You should never leave your place,” Mimi would say, repeating her grandfather’s stern counsel, “no matter how they try to run you out, which they will try to do over and over in different ways.”

Sometime in ’78 or ’79, when a Hollywood movie actor was running for president—such a gag, everybody thought—he brought a gang of reporters along with him to the South Bronx on a campaign tour. Which didn’t make sense to people in the neighborhood because we don’t vote for actors.

Up until then, I appreciated Hollywood for the movie memories I own, like the first time I held Mimi’s hand in the mezzanine of Loew’s Paradise up at 188th Street. But this mutt running for president, he said right in front of the cameras on the evening news that my own neighborhood was the worst place you could ever be in the United States of America.

Okay, we had problems. In those years, who didn’t? But scaring people so they’ll vote for you?

I was angry at this actor. Being the brains of the operation, Mimi figured something besides an insult was going on. “Aha! Now they send in the scary clowns to run us out,” she said. So we did not leave our place.

But just about everybody we knew did.

As the neighbors on our floor left, Mimi took over their leases one by one—at quite favorable terms, thanks to a landlord dumb enough to be scared by an actor who played second banana in a picture about a chimpanzee.

On our dime, Mimi kept our floor beautifully maintained and sublet to nice people who were just like the old neighbors except their skin was darker. She never worried how the dumb landlord let the other floors go to hell and generally ignored everything for years, including his unpaid property tax bill. By which time we could afford to buy him out at a distress sale.

Then Mimi put up the apartment house as collateral on a loan to acquire a few likewise distressed commercial spaces surrounding the courthouse, which we rented out to lawyers and bail bondsmen in order to pay our mortgage notes.

Plus, we had plenty left over for Wendy’s education, a proper storefront for Mimi’s real estate business, and a nice house on a few acres in the Catskills for summer weekends. Mimi loved the country place because of her grandfather’s stories about his farm in the old country. I thought about maybe buying a cream-colored horse but I never got around to it.

Also, we had money from not being scared so that I could switch teams and hang out a shingle as defense counsel. This was in one of Mimi’s buildings near the courthouse, so I have never had to pay rent. God bless America, as she used to say.

When you have somebody like Mimi Smart behind you, you don’t need to be too smart yourself. Or as she used to say, If law school is so hard, how come there are so many lawyers?

Mimi taught me to pick my clients right so I wouldn’t have to worry about revenues and so I could have a little fun besides—such as when I represented a guy with carnal knowledge of chickens, which is another story. Mimi taught me something every day, until she got sick.

One Sunday morning after a long bad night, I was holding hands with Mimi again. This was in our bedroom in the country. She’d been resting up there for months, lying mostly on her side in order to see her flower garden through the window, and the pond. She was so thin. She said to me, for the last time she said anything, “We did all right, Stanley, you and me.”

Now every morning, no matter what I have going, I think about Mimi while I’m walking to the office. In my line of work, it’s good to have a pleasant thought to begin the day—as opposed to what I had to think about next.

It should impress the hell out of my Rosary Maldonado, my secretary, that Blake Lewis, big-time television producer, is supposed to drop by. Rosary watches television like most people breathe.

“Don’t say a word,” Lewis said to me last night, before he’d take an answer on his proposition. “Sleep on it. We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll be around.”

I didn’t sleep so good.

Just thinking about this guy in my office, I get itchy like I’m coming down with hives on my back. Never do I have such a feeling before talking to some wiseguy who I know from previous experience is hinky as Halloween, and if I displease him he could jump across my desk and bust my face; or some mook with one eyebrow who goes off his nut and picks up a tire iron when he finds out Sweetie-pie’s been playing hide-the-salami with his best friend.

Which is not to mention the celebrity trade of pea-brained rappers and politicians who think with their little heads.

But now here with Lewis, the territory is unfamiliar to me. The pols and the rappers are forever paying the stupid tax. The mook and the wiseguy do what they do for honor, even if their sense of what’s honorable is a little cracked. But Hollywood’s about money, so you never know what’s coming at you.

Speaking of which, half a block away my secretary is flying out the door of Katz & Katz and running up the street at me like a Puerto Rican banshee, waving her hands and hollering n Spanish. Lucky for her she gets to me, because she breaks a heel and almost goes ass-over-teakettle, but I break the fall.

“What’s—?”

“Mr. Katz,” Rosary interrupts, using the name she reserves for important occasions. Otherwise she calls me Poppy. “J’you know who come to see you?”

I take a wild guess. “Blake Lewis?”

Rosary has newfound admiration for me. She says, “J’you know hing?”

I lay a steadying arm around her shoulder and she hobbles back to the office with me.

It’s not just Lewis who’s there. It’s the steak-eaters and a contingent of polyester suits. Also Slattery.

“Consigliere!” Lewis says as I walk in. Slattery writes this down in his notebook.

I cock my head and say, “Let’s go,” and the steak-eaters and Slattery follow me into my private office. Rosary, who is flush in the face, stays outside with the polyester.

“What the—?”

Nutsy Nunzio cuts me off from dropping the f-bomb. “Jeez, Stanley,” he says. Clear from the other side of my desk I smell the breath. Like a doggy bag you bring home in a taxi. “You think it’s okay we do this TV job?”

Nutsy is wide-eyed like an innocent kid. Though knowing of his problems with anger management, it is hard for me to imagine Nutsy ever being a squirt. The Orphan Annie expression also goes for Pete the Pipe and Charlie the Pencil Man.

Lewis is sitting there like the cat that ate the canary. Today he’s in one of those outfits like the TV hair helmets wear in war zones: blue denim shirt, safari jacket, starched dungarees.

I ask him, “What did you tell my clients?”

He shrugs. “I hung around the Palomino after you left. I met some people. I gave them the elevator pitch.” He turns to Slattery and explains, “That’s when you have to put across your big idea to a studio exec before the elevator gets to where he’s going.”

Nutsy and Charlie nod as the Pipe passes judgment: “Sounds like a plan to me.”

Pete does not get his moniker from smoking a meerschaum. It’s from rumors when he started off his career and was seen around leaky gas valves that caused industrial accidents around the city. Nowadays he considers himself a good citizen for being involved in the political life of his country. Meaning he takes bets on elections, sometimes doing things to improve the odds in his favor.

“The putz we got in the White House,” says the Pipe, “we should do everybody a favor and put Charlie on him.”

Which prompts the Pencil Man, alleged to have erased people, to chime in with, “How about I explode his freakin’ mountain bike?”

Everybody enjoys a nice wet laugh, including Slattery, who is no doubt dreaming up a streamer for the cover of tomorrow’s paper, something cute like, CAN A KILLER TV SHOW CANCEL BUSH?

“You’re getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?” I ask Lewis. “For instance, what’s Slattery doing here?”

“He’s my whole advertising budget—zero down for an exclusive on The Assassination Show,” says Lewis. “One story in one New York paper and—whammo!—everybody and his brother are providing us free publicity.”

Nutsy gets excited.

“The dough he don’t spend for ads, it’s that much more for us,” he says. “Jeez, I’d like to see the frat boy meet up with some permanent violence. Know what I’m sayin’?”

“I’m not going there,” I tell Nutsy, who now has a pair of blue veins throbbing on his temples. “And I’m surprised you’re all speaking to me like you are. In the past, you’ve been circumspect. Which I appreciate.”

“If I catch your drift,” says the Pipe, “you shouldn’t worry, because Blake here says free speech is legal under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Charlie says, “We come here this early in the a.m. out of respect for you, Mr. Katz. We don’t want to do nothing without your blessing. Besides which, we’re cutting you in.”

Blake makes like the canary again. With all that’s going for him, he doesn’t need my blessing and he doesn’t need to make an elevator pitch. Hollywood’s going to be showering him with money for the honor of underwriting the minimal costs of The Assassination Show.

I put my head in my hands.

* * *

The deal that’s making my scalp hurt is this: Starting with George W. Bush, a couple of hand-held cameras record the pungent conversations of three alleged hoodlums from the Bronx who are plotting to assassinate the president of the U.S. of A., maybe with advice and counsel from their consigliere, which I haven’t decided yet.

Such a gag, everybody out there in TV Land is going to think. Which it is: a great circular joke starting with the misnomer “reality TV” and winding up right back to the truth of the phrase, which is a lie.

But since we don’t pay attention to the criminal whoppers that Monkey Boy and his crew tell us every day, why get our national panties in a twist over television fibs? Maybe you’ve noticed that from coast to coast, every TV news anchorman and giggly lady has the same sign-off nowadays: “We’ll see you here tomorrow night.” Really?

Some newspaper critic is bound to call Blake Lewis a hip, groundbreaking genius. I suppose he is. A smart person knows what smart people want. A genius knows what stupid people want.

Let’s say my clients don’t advance the plot anywhere near Monkey Boy during the ten weeks Lewis has got by way of network commitment to his groundbreaker. Tension will mount just the same. The Secret Service will go ballistic. The Christers will go as bonkers as Nutsy Nunzio. And you can rely on the members of Congress for their usual discernment and maturity in dealing with public controversy that gets them air time.

And at the end of an unsuccessful ten weeks’ hunt for Monkey Boy, Lewis simply recruits another pack of “technical advisors” to see about snuffing some other annoying potentate someplace else in the world. The tension mounts all over again. Pure genius.

As I mentioned, I have seen the series contracts Wendy has drafted. Five-percent commission on the tens of millions that Lewis stands to accrue for the worldwide premiere, followed by hundreds of millions more on the succeeding ten-week collections, followed by millions more for repeat performances and millions more for spin-off rights…

…Well, doing the math, even on Wendy’s small-fry projects, I just about fainted.

No wonder the kid wants in on the racket. I’m thinking Mimi would be proud. But when she’s got all the dough anybody would ever need, will Wendy come home?

* * *

It’s now late afternoon and it’s a matter of hours before the bulldog edition of the Post is on the streets and the s-bomb hits the fan.

Lewis and his advisors and polyesters have gone to lunch at the Palomino and come back, to where Rosary is entertaining them with the story of chicken man that I mentioned.

“Sometimes I think there’s a very big neon sign floating over this office,” she says, flirting shamelessly with Lewis. “It reads, Strange people—welcome.”

Anyhow, she relates the referred case of a cash-paying client from Westchester who was nabbed in a naughty motel by the Bronx vice squad. The cops found him bare naked under the covers and happy about it. There were no girls in the cheap room with him, or boys. But there were maybe a dozen chickens from La Marquéta under the Queensboro Bridge.

“The live birds are there to boil and pluck,” says Rosary, blushing in Lewis’s gaze. “It’s against the sanitary laws of the city, but there you are.”

“Is your name actually Rosemary?” Lewis asks her.

“Oh, it used to be. I go to mass every day, so I changed to Rosary. J’you like it?”

“It’s charming.”

Rosary continued with the story of the suburban geek, a CEO called Bill Cunningham. What Cunningham did to violate his secret aviary caused the sheets and walls and carpeting to become sticky with chicken blood, tomato-red turning to rust-brown. Little chicken heads were in a heap by the bathroom doorway, where Cunningham’s pinstripes were carefully hung on the knob.

The birds had put up a spirited fight, especially the roosters. There were feathers everywhere.

The D.A. indicted Cunningham for animal cruelty. The geek was sorely embarrassed in front of his golf club buddies, but they rallied around him in support of a sick man. Cunningham kept his mouth shut like I told him.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” I said at the concluding day of trial. Then I said what I always say: “I’ll be short. No—I’m already short, I’ll be brief.”

A laughing jury is not a hanging jury.

I had earlier produced the sole defense witness—Juan Baltasar, proprietor of a chicken stand at La Marquéta. Baltasar testifled that Cunningham had been particular about his purchase, insisting that the chicken heads be severed before paying.

“Thus, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Cunningham had his way with dead chickens—not live chickens. Therefore, he violated no law, because a man cannot commit cruelty against a fowl corpse.” I spun around on my heels to address the assistant D.A. at the prosecution table, a sallow-faced guy with the likeability factor of an IRS auditor. “Case closed,” I said.

Then I addressed the good jurors and the judge.

“I would only add my personal promise, ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Cunningham—with not so much as a speeding ticket heretofore and who is, as you have heard, innocent before the law—will nevertheless enroll in psycho-sexual counseling at a mental hospital in White Plains. He is a deeply disturbed man, my friends. Yet who among us would care to stand before the scales of justice to hear of our own sins of thought—and actions for which we were never ourselves apprehended. For what it is worth, Mr. Cunningham will dwell among his own disturbed kind as he seeks redemption, beyond the reach of the dear hearts and gentle people of the Bronx. This I promise, on the grave of my own sweet wife.” I turn to the bench. “How’s that, judge?”

He raps down his gavel and Cunningham scrams out of court, never to be seen in the Bronx again, right as the judge says, “Whatever.”

Hearing Rosary tell the story again gives me an idea for the limited counsel I suddenly decide to give Nutsy and the Pipe and Pencil Man. I hand one of their polyesters a couple of hundred bucks and tell him, “Buy some groceries, then hit the mattresses. Capice?” Then I give a nod to Lewis to come with me. And before the polyester leaves my office, I tell him, “Send me another button and I’ll return him with Blake here—blindfolded, so he can’t spill the location where he can film. Same goes for me if I decide to show up. I don’t want to know from the mattresses.”

Lewis and I walk around the corner to the Palomino, which is mentioned as the genesis of Slattery’s story that is now all over town. He’s very proud of himself, this Hollywood producer. My friends buy him drinks.

I tell Lewis I need a minute to make a discreet phone call. So I slip out into the street with my cell. But I don’t call right away.

I wait for the cars I know are going to show up. The dark blue, unmarked Chryslers with the no-nonsense guys inside. They get out of the cars with their hands firmly inside of their coats, where they’re wearing shoulder holsters and federal badges.

I dial my kid’s number out in Los Angeles.

She’s on the line right when Lewis is bum-rushed out of the Palomino Club.

“You should come home, kiddo.”

“We’ve been all over that—”

“Your big client, Blake Lewis, he’s been arrested.”

“Where are they taking him?”

“Search me. Maybe Guantánamo.”

I walk back to my building on the Concourse and I slip into bed and sleep like a dead person.

To the women in my life: my beloved wife Rose, without whom this book would still be a thought; and my precious sisters, Maureen and Lillian.

INTRODUCTION

QUEENS HAS ATTITUDE

Queens is New York City’s biggest borough, with the most parks and cemeteries, both major airports, Shea Stadium, the city’s only racetrack, and 150 languages spoken by more foreign-born residents than live anywhere else in the U.S. No wonder Queens has attitude. And plenty of noir to go around. That’s the premise of Queens Noir. I chose these nineteen authors for their solid connections to the borough, not to mention their skewed worldviews. This introduction is organized as a tour of the neighborhoods. It begins at the point where a traveler from Manhattan touches down in Queens.

Leave Manhattan (a.k.a., New York City to Outlanders) and drive over the Queensboro Bridge (a.k.a., the 59th Street Bridge) that spans the East River. Take the outer roadbed; on your descent, mark the Citicorp Building (Queens’ only skyscraper) looming on your right; then, close in, the Silvercup Studios sign big and in your face as you touch down in Long Island City. Overhead is the rotting steel skeleton of beams and girders that support the elevated tracks for the N, W, and 7 subway lines, all converging at the Queensboro Plaza station. The 7 line is sometimes called the Orient Express: Of the 2.2 million souls in Queens, forty-eight percent are foreign-born, the majority Asian.

Look around this commercial hub. Seedy Queens Central. Note City Scapes and the other two “gentlemen’s clubs” within three blocks. At night, the strip joints are lit in neon; prostitutes work the johns on Queens Plaza South and across the roadway on Queens Plaza North; all-night donut shops give sustenance; the bus from the Rikers Island jails disgorges discharged inmates at the bus stop at 3 a.m. every weekday. Yet Queens politicians are talking a bright future for Queensboro Plaza, involving $1.2 billion to be invested in development here and on the Long Island City waterfront across the river from Manhattan. And Silvercup—formerly a baker of bread, now a purveyor of illusions—is leading the pack. Here, in Queens Noir, you can visit the movie lots and TV studios with actress-writer Kim Sykes’s Josephine, a security guard in “Arrivederci, Aldo.”

Continue up Queens Plaza South till it intersects with Queens Plaza, Northern Boulevard, and Jackson Avenue. As you turn right onto Jackson, catch in your rearview mirror the clock-face tower of the Bridge Plaza Tech Center, previously named the Brewster Building—built in 1910 to make horse-drawn carriages—looming above and behind the elevated train tracks (it’s our cover photo). Proceed a ways down the avenue to the core of old Long Island City with its fine Italian-American restaurants, wood-frame aluminumsided homes, and factories chockablock with the ateliers of the arrivistes. Make a left onto the Pulaski drawbridge over the Newtown Creek into Polish Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Take a left at the foot of the bridge onto Greenpoint Avenue, then you’re riding alongside the creek but it’s hidden from view by the huge wastewater treatment plant, which may or may not be making a difference. Note the stink. (Greenpoint has always stunk.) Continue over the Greenpoint Avenue drawbridge—a hop, skip, and a jump—into Blissville, Queens.

Blissville is a four-square-block neighborhood bounded by Van Dam Street to the west, the Long Island Expressway to the north and east, and First Calvary Cemetery to the south. First Calvary was opened by St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1846 to take in the poor Irish who had become too many to be laid down in Manhattan. “There are more dead in Queens than alive.” (This classically noir line is Ellen Freudenheim’s in her fine guidebook, Queens—told me things I didn’t know and reminded me of what I’d forgotten.) Having spent my first forty-four years across the waters in Greenpoint and having worked one summer digging graves in First Calvary (a much sought-after position), I was led to write my story in this volume about the ghosts that can haunt even a very young life, shadowed by the high stone walls of First Calvary.

Take Greenpoint Avenue east through small-town Sunnyside till it becomes Roosevelt Avenue, and continue on, with the 7 train overhead on the elevated tracks. Roosevelt Avenue is a main east-west road that passes through the heart of Woodside, Jackson Heights, and Corona—Queens’ version of the Casbah. Tibetans, Irish, Mexicans, Filipinos, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Koreans, Indians, Bangladeshis hawk food, clothing, jewelry, appliances, phone cards, forged or stolen drivers’ licenses, phony Social Security cards—from storefronts, pushcarts, stalls, alleyways, doorways, street corners. The denizens of the Casbah, and the 100,000 bill-paying customers of Con Edison in Astoria, Woodside, Sunnyside, and Long Island City were left in the dark when the Con Ed generators blew on July 17, 2006 during a heat wave. The blackout lasted ten days. Author Liz Martínez records the terrible consequences for one compulsive shopper in “Lights Out for Frankie.”

Detour to the north on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) to nearby Astoria and Ditmars: the Greek lands. Other settlers include Egyptians, Italians, Bangladeshis, Bosnians, and a mélange of artists and young people fleeing Manhattan rents. The Kaufman Astoria Studios at 36th Street and Thirty-Fourth Avenue have been making movies for ninety years. They were busy in the late 1920s while one block away the Irish were taking over the bars from the Germans who had preceded them. In “Only the Strong Survive,” Mary Byrne spins an old Irish morality tale with more twists and turns than an Irish country road. Moral: Bar owner is a perilous profession.

The neighborhood jewel of Ditmars is Astoria Park and its landmark pool that lets in 3,000 on a summer’s day. The park sits on the shore under the Triborough Bridge and along the Hell Gate channel, the most turbulent and deepest water in the New York Harbor. In “Last Stop, Ditmars,” Tori Carrington has situated the Acropolis Diner at the intersection of Ditmars Boulevard and 31st Street underneath the last stop on the N line. It’s a small domestic Greek tragedy: Think Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge.

Hop back on the BQE at Astoria Boulevard and then get off at Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street. You’re now in Jackson Heights, in the epicenter of Little India. Visit the Jackson Diner for a masala dosa, check out the gold emporiums, pick up the latest Bollywood flick at the video store. In Shailly Agnihotri’s droll tale, “Avoid Agony,” you can walk in the footsteps of Raj Kumar, who runs the only astrological readings/matrimonial investigations agency on the street. Raj, from his office above a sari shop, looks to the heavens for direction while trolling for prey on the Internet.

Continue up Roosevelt to Junction Boulevard and you cross into Corona: Colombians, Argentinians, Brazilians, Koreans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians pack the streets and the stores; the predominant sounds are dialects of Spanish and Portugese. Corona is on the doorstep of Shea Stadium, a stop or two away on the 7. K.j.a.Wishnia’s female P.I., Filomena Buscarsela, is tight with her Ecuadorian neighbors. The neighborhood is awash in Mets fever, as well as diluted antibiotics peddled from local farmacias and botánicas that have caused a boy’s death. Filomena, tracking their source, is on everybody’s case in “Viernes Loco.”

Shea Stadium is located in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, site of the 1939 and 1964 World’s Fairs. Joe Guglielmelli’s protagonist is seemingly just another subway passenger en route to a game, who falls into conversation with a Boston Red Sox fan. You never heard so much baseball talk in your life as in “Buckner’s Error” . . . until the final inning.

Ride the 7 for one more stop and it’s the end of the line at Roosevelt Avenue/Main Street. Main Street is packed all the way up to Kissena Boulevard with peddlers, fish markets, phone stores, fast-food shops—all the signs in Chinese characters. More Chinese live in Flushing than in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Author Victoria Eng, who knows the turf, takes us off-street to Bowne Park, a tiny oasis in a sea of commerce, for a coming-of-age story. A bad move in the park, however, and you might not get any older.

Bayside and College Point are middle- to upper-class neighborhoods in northeast Queens, off the Cross Island Parkway. In “Under the Throgs Neck Bridge,” Denis Hamill’s two jogging characters cover a lot of Bayside landscape. One, however, is unaware that it’s a race to the death.

College Point sits across Flushing Bay from LaGuardia Airport. You know you live in Queens if you are airplaneconscious: There’s always a flight path directly over your house. But that’s not police officer Jill Kelly’s problem; hers is an itchy trigger-finger. In “Crazy Jill Saves the Slinky,” Stephen Solomita spins an Irish domestic drama where family ties run deep—deep as a grave.

Take the Whitestone Expressway to the Grand Central Parkway south, exit at Queens Boulevard. You’re in Kew Gardens, the seat of political power in the borough. On your right is the Queens Criminal Courts building, which appears to have a piece of a flying saucer buried in its face, a silvery metallic canopy over the entrance, reminiscent of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Not a surprise: Both the movie and the building are from the 1950s. Keep heading west on Queens Boulevard—a twelve-laner so hard to cross even with the light that it’s called the “Boulevard of Death”—to Forest Hills and Rego Park, high-income and alike as two peas in a pod. Typical of both these old communities is block after block of high-rise co-op and condo buildings lining both sides of the boulevard. Jews have predominated here for decades. Recent immigration has added Russian, Israeli, Middle Eastern, and Bukharan flavors. Alan Gordon opts for the traditional in “Bottom of the Sixth,” setting a tale of the Hasidim on a Little League baseball field in Rego Park. Batter up! Watch out for flying lead!

Megan Abbott returns to yesteryear, the 1970s, in “Hollywood Lanes,” set in a venerable bowling alley. The building still stands on Queens Boulevard and Sixty-Seventh Avenue—vacant like a haunted house harboring the violent passions that erupted therein on a summer’s night.

Take the Van Wyck Expressway south, exit at Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill. Before World War II, the Hill was middle-class comfortable, and its historic district is still intact with 1,000 Victorian homes. These days, the area is the center of the city’s Guyanese immigration, also home to Hindus, Sikhs, Pakistanis, and West Indians. Jillian Abbott keys us in to the emotional life and ultimate fate of a misfit al-Qaeda mole in “Jihad Sucks; or, The Conversion of the Jews.”

Take Atlantic Avenue east to the Jamaica neighborhood, with the largest African-American community in the city. It’s also the destination-of-choice of Filipinos. West Indians, Chinese, and Salvadorans also abound. Belinda Farley sets her story amidst a law-abiding Haitian family in their modest dwelling on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue in the heart of Jamaica. “The Investigation” has its roots in the “locked room” mystery.

Move south on Guy R. Brewer to Baisley Pond Park in South Jamaica, where playground basketball is king, where Glenville Lovell’s second-generation West Indian gangsta has an out-of-body experience.

Aqueduct Racetrack is due south. You can get there by the A train or drive along Rockaway Parkway. It’s 113 years old, though it has fallen on hard times; attendance is in the toilet. The real estate jackals are salivating while the governor sings that old song: Urban Renewal. But Maggie Estep (the smartest horsewoman on the planet) celebrates the breed in “Alice Fantastic,” a twisty tale of Fatal Attraction among the Usual Suspects in the clubhouse.

Head south on the Van Wyck to the end: John F. Kennedy Airport. It’s huge. Playing against the grain, Patricia King (a globe-trotter herself) takes us into the mind of an ordinary woman as she deplanes and makes her way through the terminal to collect her bags. The unexpected intervenes in “Baggage Claim,” and suddenly you’re in The Twilight Zone.

Last stop: the Rockaways, the southernmost point in Queens, a ten-mile peninsula flush against the Atlantic Ocean. A lot of beach. In 1993, a ship loaded with smuggled Chinese foundered off the coast here. A few made it to shore. “Golden Venture” is the story of one of them—well, not exactly. This is novelist Jill Eisenstadt’s comical riff on what might have happened later.

Queens!—this sprawling Babel—an ethnic stew best sampled by dipping into the stories up ahead. You can almost taste ’em . . .

Robert Knightly

Queens, New York City

November 2007

PART I

QUEENS ON THE FLY: BY SEA, HORSE, TRAIN, PLANE, AND SILVER SCREEN

ALICE FANTASTIC

BY MAGGIE ESTEP

Aqueduct Racetrack

I’d been trying to get rid of the big oaf for seventeen weeks but he just kept coming around. He’d ring the bell and I’d look out the window and see him standing on the stoop looking like a kicked puppy. What I needed with another kicked puppy I couldn’t tell you, since I’d taken in a little white mutt with tan spots that my cousin Jeremy had found knocked up and wandering a trailer park in Kentucky. Cousin Jeremy couldn’t keep the dog so he called me up and somehow got me to take the animal in. After making the vet give her an abortion and a rabies shot, Jeremy found the dog a ride up from Kentucky with some freak friend of his who routinely drives between Kentucky and Queens transporting cheap cigarettes. The freak friend pulled his van up outside my house one night just before midnight and the dog came out of the van reeking of cigarettes and blinking up at me, completely confused and kicked- looking. Not that I think the freak friend of Cousin Jeremy’s actually kicked her. But the point is, I already had a kicked puppy. What did I need with a guy looking like one?

I didn’t need him. But he’d ring the bell and I’d let him in, and, even if I was wearing my dead father’s filthy bathrobe and I hadn’t showered in five days, he’d tell me, You look fantastic, Alice. I knew he actually meant it, that he saw something fantastic in my limp brown hair and puffy face and the zits I’d started getting suddenly at age thirty-six. It was embarrassing. The zits, the fact that I was letting this big oaf come over to nuzzle at my unbathed flesh, the little dog who’d sit at the edge of the bed watching as me and Clayton, the big oaf, went at it.

My life was a shambles. So I vowed to end it with Clayton. I vowed it on a Tuesday at 7 a.m. after waking up with an unusual sense of clarity. I opened my eyes to find thin winter sunlight sifting in the windows of the house my dead father left me. Candy, the trailer trash dog, was sitting at the edge of the bed, politely waiting for me to wake up because that’s the thing with strays, they’re so grateful to have been taken in that they defer to your schedule and needs. So, Candy was at the edge of the bed and sun was coming in the windows of my dead father’s place on 47th Road in the borough of Queens in New York City. And I felt clear-headed. Who knows why. I just did. And I felt I needed to get my act together. Shower more frequently. Stop smoking so much. Get back to yoga and kickboxing. Stop burning through my modest profits as a modest gambler. Revitalize myself. And the first order of business was to get rid of the big oaf, Clayton. Who ever heard of a guy named Clayton who isn’t ninety-seven years old, anyway?

I got into the shower and scrubbed myself raw, then shampooed my disgusting oily head. I took clean clothes out of the closet instead of foraging through the huge pile in the hamper the way I’d been doing for weeks. I put on black jeans and a fuzzy green sweater. I glanced at myself in the mirror. My semidry hair looked okay and my facial puffiness had gone down. Even my zits weren’t so visible. I looked vaguely alive.

I took my coat off the hook, put Candy’s leash on, and headed out for a walk along the East River, near the condo high-rises that look over into Manhattan. My dead father loved Long Island City. He moved here in the 1980s, when it was almost entirely industrial, to shack up with some drunken harlot, right after my mom kicked him out. Long after the harlot had dumped my father—all women dumped him all the time—he’d stayed on in the neighborhood, eventually buying a tiny two-story wood frame house that he left to me, his lone child, when the cancer got him last year at age fifty-nine. I like the neighborhood fine. It’s quiet and there are places to buy tacos.

“Looking good, mami,” said some Spanish guy as Candy and I walked past the gas station.

I never understand that mami thing. It sounds like they’re saying mommy. I know they mean hot mama and, in their minds, it’s a compliment, but it still strikes me as repulsive.

I ignored the guy.

As Candy sniffed and pissed and tried to eat garbage off the pavement, I smoked a few Marlboros and stared across at midtown Manhattan. It looked graceful from this distance.

The air was so cold it almost seemed clean and I started thinking on how I would rid myself of Clayton. I’d tried so many times. Had gotten him to agree not to call me anymore. But then, not two days would go by and he’d ring the bell. And I’d let him in. He’d look at me with those huge stupid brown eyes and tell me how great I looked. Alice, you’re fantastic, he’d told me so many times I started thinking of myself as Alice Fantastic, only there really wouldn’t be anything fantastic about me until I got rid of Clayton. When he would finally shut up about my fantasticness, I’d start in on the This isn’t going to work for me anymore, Clayton refrain I had been trotting out for seventeen weeks. Then he’d look wounded and his arms would hang so long at his sides that I’d have to touch him, and once I touched him, we’d make a beeline for the bed, and the sex was pretty good, the way it can be with someone you are physically attracted to in spite of or because of a lack of anything at all in common. And the sex being good would make me entertain the idea of instating him on some sort of permanent basis, and I guess that was my mistake. He’d see that little idea in my eye and latch onto it and have feelings, and his feelings would make him a prodigious lover, and I’d become so strung out on sex chemicals I would dopily say Sure when he’d ask to spend the night, and then again dopily say Sure the next morning when he’d ask if he could call me later.

But enough is enough. I don’t want Clayton convincing himself we’re going to be an everlasting item growing old together.

Right now Clayton lives in a parking lot. In his van. This I discovered when, that first night, after I picked him up in the taco place and strolled with him near the water, enjoying his simplicity and his long, loping gait, I brought him home and sucked his cock in the entrance hall and asked him to fuck me from behind in the kitchen, and then led him to the bedroom where we lay quiet for a little while until he was hard again, at which point I put on a pair of tights and asked him to rip out the crotch and fuck me through the hole. After all that, just when I was thinking up a polite way of asking him to leave, he propped himself up on his elbow and told me how much he liked me. “I really like you. I mean, I really like you,” looking at me with those eyes big as moons, and even though I just wanted to read a book and go to sleep, I didn’t have the heart to kick him out.

All that night, he babbled at me, telling me his woes, how his mother has Alzheimer’s and his father is in prison for forgery and his wife left him for a plumber and he’s been fired from his job at a cabinet-making shop and is living in his van in a parking lot and showering at the Y.

“I’ve got to get out of Queens soon,” he said.

“And go where?”

“Florida. I don’t like the cold much. Gets in my bones.”

“Yeah. Florida,” I said. I’d been there. To Gulfstream Park, Calder Race Course, and Tampa Bay Downs. I didn’t tell him that though. I just said, Yeah, Florida, like I wasn’t opposed to Florida, though why I would let him think I have any fondness for Florida, this leading him to possibly speculate that I’d want to go live there with him, I don’t know. I guess I wanted to be kind to him.

“Just a trailer is fine. I like trailers,” Clayton said.

“Right,” I said. And then I feigned sleep.

That was seventeen weeks ago. And I still haven’t gotten rid of him.

Candy and I walked for the better part of an hour and then headed home, passing back by the gas station where the moron felt the need to repeat, Looking good, mommy, and I actually stopped walking and stared at him and tried to think of words to explain exactly how repulsive it is to be called mommy and how it makes me picture him fucking his own mother, who is doubtless a matronly Dominican woman with endless folds of ancient flesh, but I couldn’t find the words and the guy was starting to grin, possibly thinking I was actually turned on by him, so I kept walking.

Once back inside my place, I gave Candy the leftovers from my previous night’s dinner and sat down at the kitchen table with my computer, my Daily Racing Form, and my notebooks. I got to work on the next day’s entries at Aqueduct. No matter how much I planned to change my life in the coming weeks, I still had to work. It wasn’t much of a card, even for a Wednesday in February, so I figured I wouldn’t be pushing a lot of money through the windows. But I would watch. I would take notes. I would listen. I would enjoy my work. I always do.

Several hours passed and I felt stirrings of hunger and glanced inside my fridge. Some lifeless lettuce, a few ounces of orange juice, and one egg. I considered boiling the egg, as there are days when there’s nothing I love more than a hard-boiled egg, but I decided this wasn’t one of those days. I would have to go to the taco place for take-out. I attached Candy’s leash to her collar and threw my coat on and was heading to the door when the phone rang. I picked it up.

“Hi, Alice,” came Clayton’s low voice.

I groaned.

“What’s the matter? You in pain?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean? What hurts? I’ll be right there.”

“No, no, Clayton, don’t. My pain is that you won’t take No for an answer.”

“No about what?”

“No about our continuing on like this.”

There was dead silence.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“In the parking lot.”

“Clayton,” I said, “I know you think you’re a nice guy, but there’s nothing nice about coming around when I’ve repeatedly asked you not to. It’s borderline stalking.”

More silence.

“I need my peace and quiet.”

After several moments: “You don’t like the way I touch you anymore?”

“There’s more to life than touching.”

“Uh,” said Clayton. “I wouldn’t know since you won’t ever let me do anything with you other than come over and fuck you.”

Clayton had never said fuck before. Clayton had been raised in some sort of religious household. He wasn’t religious himself, but he was reserved about cursing.

“My life is nothing. Clayton, I go to the racetrack. I make my bets and take my notes. I talk to some of the other horseplayers. I go home and cook dinner or I go to the taco place. I walk my dog. That’s it. There’s nothing to my life, Clayton, nothing to see.”

“So let me come with you.”

“Come with me where?”

“To the racetrack.”

“I’m asking you to never call me again and get out of my life. Why would I want to take you to the racetrack?”

“Just let me see a little piece of your life. I deserve it. Think of it as alimony.”

I couldn’t see why I should do anything for him. But I agreed anyway. At least it got him off the phone.

I took the dog out to the taco place. Came home and ate my dinner, giving half to the dog.

* * *

I’d told Clayton to meet me the next morning at 11:00 and we’d take the subway. He offered to drive but I didn’t trust that monstrous van of his not to break down en route. He rang the bell and I came downstairs to find him looking full of hope. Like seeing each other in daylight hours meant marriage and babies were imminent. Not that he’d asked for anything like that but he was that kind of guy, the kind of guy I seem to attract all too often, the want-to-snuggle-up-and-breed kind of guy. There are allegedly millions of women out there looking for these guys so I’m not sure why they all come knocking on my door. I guess they like a challenge. That’s why they’re men.

“Hi, Alice,” he beamed, “you look fantastic.”

“Thanks,” I said. I had pulled myself together, was wearing a tight black knee-length skirt and a soft black sweater that showed some shoulder—if I ever took my coat off, which I wasn’t planning to do as I figured any glimpsing of my flesh might give Clayton ideas.

“I’m just doing this ’cause you asked,” I said as we started walking to the G train, “but you have to realize this is my job and you can’t interfere or ask a lot of questions.” I was staring straight ahead so I didn’t have to see any indications of hurt in his eyes, because this was one of his ruses, the hurt look, the kicked puppy look, and I was damn well sick of it.

“Right,” said Clayton.

We went down into the station and waited forever, as one invariably does for the G train, and all the while Clayton stared at me so hard I was pretty sure he would turn me to stone.

Eventually, the train came and got us to the Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop in Brooklyn where we switched to the far more efficient A train. I felt relief at being on my way to Aqueduct. Not many people truly love Aqueduct, but I do. Belmont is gorgeous and spacious and Saratoga is grand if you can stand the crowds, but I love Aqueduct. Aqueduct is down-on-their-luck trainers slumping in the benches, degenerates, droolcases, and drunks swapping tips, and a few seasoned pro gamblers quietly going about their business. My kind of place.

Thirty minutes later, the train sighed into the stop at Aqueduct and we got off, us and a bunch of hunched middle-aged white men, a few slightly younger Rasta guys, and one well-dressed suit-type guy who was an owner or wanted to pretend to be one.

“Oh, it’s nice,” Clayton lied as we emerged from the little tunnel under the train tracks.

The structure looks like the set for a 1970s zombie movie, with its faded grim colors and the airplanes headed for JFK flying so low you’re sure they’re going to land on a horse.

“We’ll go up to the restaurant, have some omelettes,” I told him once we were inside the clubhouse. “The coffee sucks but the omelettes are fine.”

“Okay,” said Clayton.

We rode the escalator to the top, and at the big glass doors to the Equestris Restaurant, Manny, the maître d’, greeted me and gave us a table with a great view of the finish line.

Then Clayton started in with the questions. He’d never been a big question guy, wasn’t a very verbal guy period, but suddenly he wanted to know the history of Aqueduct and my history with Aqueduct and what else I’d ever done for a living and what my family thought of my being a professional gambler, etc., etc.

“I told you, I have to work. No twenty questions. Here’s a Racing Form,” I said, handing him the extra copy I’d printed out. “Now study that and let me think.”

The poor guy stared at the Form but obviously had no idea how to read it. Sometimes I forget that people don’t know these things. Seems like I always knew, what with coming here when I was a kid when Cousin Jeremy still lived in Queens and baby-sat me on days when my father was off on a construction job. I’d been betting since the age of nine and had been reasonably crafty about money-management and risk-taking since day one. I had turned a profit that first time when Jeremy had placed bets for me, and though I’d had plenty of painful losing days since, for the most part I scraped by. I’d briefly had a job as a substitute teacher after graduating from Hunter College, but I hated it. So I gambled and supplemented my modest profits with income from the garden apartment in my house. Not many people last more than a few years gambling for a living but, for whatever reason, I have. Mostly because I can’t stand the thought of doing anything else.

I was just about to take pity on Clayton and show him how to read the Form when Big Fred appeared and sat down at one of the extra chairs at our table.

“You see this piece of shit Pletcher’s running in the fifth race?” Fred wanted to know. Big Fred, who weighs 110 pounds tops, isn’t one for pleasantries. He had no interest in being introduced to Clayton, probably hadn’t even noticed I was with someone; he just wanted confirmation that the Todd Pletcher–trained colt in the fifth race was a piece of shit in spite of having cost 2.4 million at the Keeneland yearling sale and having won all three races he’d run in.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding gravely. “He’ll be 1-9.”

“He’s a flea,” said Fred.

“Yeah. Well. I wouldn’t throw him out on a Pick 6 ticket.”

“I’m throwing him out.”

“Okay,” I said.

“He hasn’t faced shit and he’s never gone two turns. And there’s that nice little horse of Nick’s that’s a closer.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’m using Nick’s horse. Singling him.”

“I wouldn’t throw out the Pletcher horse.”

“Fuck him,” said Fred, getting up and storming off to the other end of the place, where I saw him take a seat with some guys from the Daily Racing Form.

“Friend of yours?” asked Clayton.

I nodded. “Big Fred. He’s a good guy.”

“He is?”

“Sure.”

I could tell Clayton wanted to go somewhere with that one. Wanted to ask why I thought some strange little guy who just sat down and started cursing out horses was a good guy. Another reason Clayton had to be gotten rid of.

One of the waiters came and took our omelette order. Since I’d mapped out most of my bets, I took ten minutes and gave Clayton a cursory introduction to reading horses’ past performances. I was leaning in close, my finger tracing one of the horse’s running lines, when Clayton kissed my ear.

“I love you, Alice,” he said.

“Jesus, Clayton,” I said. “What the fuck?”

Clayton looked like a kicked puppy.

“I brought you here because I thought it’d be a nice way to spend our last day together but, fuck me, why do you have to get ridiculous?”

“I don’t want it to end. You’re all I’ve got.”

“You don’t have me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Clayton, there’s no future. No mas,” I said.

“No who?”

“No mas,” I repeated. “No more. Spanish.”

“Are you Spanish?”

“No, Clayton, I’m not Spanish. Shit, will you let me fucking work?”

“Everything okay over here?”

I looked up and saw Vito looming over the table. Vito is a stocky, hairy man who is some kind of low-level mafioso or mafioso-wannabe who owns a few cheap horses and fancies himself a gifted horseplayer.

“Everything’s fine,” I said, scowling at Vito. Much as Clayton was pissing me off, it wasn’t any of Vito’s business. But that’s the thing with these Vito-type guys at the track: What with my being a presentable woman under the age of eighty, a real rarity at Aqueduct, these guys get all protective of me. It might have been vaguely heartwarming if Vito wasn’t so smarmy.

Vito furrowed his monobrow. He was sweating profusely even though it was cool inside the restaurant.

“I’m Vito,” he said, aggressively extending his hand to Clayton, “and you are . . . ?”

“Clayton,” said my soon-to-be-ex paramour, tentatively shaking Vito’s oily paw.

“We all look out for Alice around here,” Vito said.

Go fuck yourself, Vito, I thought, but didn’t say. There might be a time when I needed him for something.

“Oh,” said Clayton, confused, “that’s good. I look out for her too.”

Vito narrowed his already small eyes, looked from me to Clayton and back, then turned on his heels.

“See ya, Vito,” I said as the tubby man headed out of the restaurant, presumably going down to the paddock-viewing area to volubly express his opinions about the contestants in the first race.

A few races passed. I made a nice little score on a mare shipping in from Philadelphia Park. She was trained by some obscure woman trainer, ridden by some obscure apprentice jockey, and had only ever raced at Philadelphia Park, so, in spite of a nice batch of past performances, she was being ignored on the tote board and went off at 14-1. I had $200 on her to win and wheeled her on top of all the logical horses in an exacta. I made out nicely and that put me slightly at ease and reduced some of the Clayton-induced aggravation that had gotten so severe I hadn’t been able to eat my omelette and had started fantasizing about asking Vito to take Clayton out. Not Take Him Out take him out, I didn’t want the guy dead or anything, just put a scare into him. But that would have entailed asking a favor of Vito and I had no interest in establishing that kind of dynamic with that kind of guy.

The fifth race came and I watched with interest to see how the colt Big Fred liked fared. The Todd Pletcher–trained horse Fred hated, who did in fact go off at 1-9, broke alertly from the six hole and tucked nicely just off the pace that was being set by a longshot with early speed. Gang of Seven, the horse Big Fred liked, was at the back of the pack, biding his time. With a quarter of a mile to go, Gang of Seven started making his move four wide, picking off his opponents until he was within spitting distance of the Pletcher horse. Gang of Seven and the Pletcher trainee dueled to the wire and both appeared to get their noses there at the same time.

“Too close to call,” said the track announcer. A few minutes later, the photo was posted and the Pletcher horse had beat Big Fred’s by a whisker.

“I’m a fucking idiot!” I heard Fred cry out from four tables away. I saw him get up and storm out of the restaurant, probably heading to the back patio to chain-smoke and make phone calls to twenty of his closest horseplaying friends, announcing his own idiocy.

“Guy’s got a problem,” Clayton said.

“No he doesn’t,” I replied, aggravated. While it was true that Big Fred had a little trouble with anger management, he was, at heart, a very decent human being.

I got up and walked away, leaving Clayton to stare after me with those dinner plate–sized eyes.

I went down to the paddock, hoping that Clayton wouldn’t follow me. I saw Vito there staring out the big viewing window, his huge belly pressing against the glass. As I went to find a spot as far away as possible from Vito, I craned my neck just to check that Clayton hadn’t followed me. He had. I saw him lumbering around near the betting windows, looking left and right. He’d find me at any minute.

So I did something a little crazy.

“Vito,” I said, coming up behind him.

“Huh?” He turned around.

“Favor?” I asked.

His tiny black eyes glittered. “Anything, baby,” he purred.

I already regretted what I was doing. “Can you scare that guy I was sitting with? Just make him a little nervous? Make him go home?”

Vito’s tiny eyes got bigger, like someone had just dangled a bleeding hunk of filet mignon in front of him.

“You serious?” He stood closer to me.

I had a moment’s hesitation. Then thought of Clayton’s love pronouncements. “Yeah.”

“Sure. Where is he?”

I glanced back and didn’t see Clayton. “Somewhere around here, let’s look.”

Vito lumbered at my side. We searched all around the betting windows of the ground floor, but no Clayton. Then I glanced outside and spotted him standing near an empty bench, hunched and cold and lost-looking under the dovegray sky.

“There,” I said.

“You got it, baby,” said Vito. Without another word, he marched outside. I saw him accost Clayton. I saw Clayton tilt his head left and right like a confused dog would. I thought of Candy. Later this afternoon, I’d go home to her and just maybe, thanks to Vito, I wouldn’t have to worry about the big oaf turning up with his big eyes and his inane declarations. Me and Candy could have some peace and quiet.

Now Clayton and Vito had come back inside and were walking together. They passed not far from where I was standing. Where was Vito taking him? I figured he’d just say a few choice words and that would be that. But they seemed to be going somewhere.

I followed them at a slight distance. I didn’t really care if Clayton saw me at this point. They went down the escalator and out the front door. Vito was only wearing a thin buttondown shirt but he didn’t seem to register the bite of the February air. Clayton pulled his coat up around his ears.

They headed over to the subway platform. I saw Clayton pull out his MetroCard and go through the turnstile. Then he handed his card back to Vito, who went through after him.

What the fuck?

I stopped walking and stayed where I was in the middle of the ramp leading to the turnstiles. The two men were about a hundred yards in front of me but they had their backs to me. There wasn’t anyone else on the platform.

They started raising their voices. I couldn’t hear what was being said. There was wind and a big airplane with its belly low against the sky. Then the sound of an oncoming train and a blur of movement. A body falling down onto the tracks just as the train came. I braced myself for some sort of screeching of brakes. There wasn’t any. The train charged into the station. The doors opened then closed. No one got on or off. The train pulled away. There was just one guy left standing on the platform. He was staring down at the tracks.

My fingers were numb.

I slowly walked up the platform. Found my MetroCard in my coat. Slid it in and went through the turnstile. I walked to the edge and looked down at the tracks. There was an arm separated from the rest of the body. Blood pouring out of the shoulder. The head twisted at an angle you never saw in life. I wasn’t sure how the train conductor had failed to notice. The MTA has been very proud of its new One-Person Train Operation system that requires just one human to run the entire train. Maybe that’s not enough to keep an eye out for falling bodies.

I felt nauseous. I started to black out and then he steadied me, putting his hands at the small of my back.

“He was talking about you,” said Clayton, staring down at Vito’s big mangled body. “Said you were going to blow him in exchange for him getting rid of me. He was just trying to upset me but it was disrespectful to you. I wanted to scare him but he fell onto the tracks.” Clayton spoke so calmly. “He was talking shit about you, Alice,” he added, raising his voice a little.

“Well,” I said, “that wasn’t very nice of him, was it?”

Clayton smiled.

He really wasn’t a bad-looking guy.

NECK BRIDGE

BY DENIS HAMILL

Bayside

Times change, she thought. People don’t.

Nikki reread the last of three diaries written by a dead woman named Eileen Lavin, took a deep breath, and spied Dr. George Sheridan through the Zhumell Spotting Scope mounted on a tripod in front of her sixteenth-floor window in her Bayside condo. He was leaving his luxury shorefront home over in Douglaston.

It was 8:55 a.m. on a sunny Mother’s Day in Queens. Dr. Sheridan was dressed in his blue and white Abercrombie & Fitch tracksuit and Nikki’s zoom lens was so powerful that even clear across the half-mile of Little Neck Bay she could see the double-G imprinted on his $375 dark-blue Gucci sneakers. She knew from watching him since New Year’s that he wore a different tracksuit and rotated his designer sneakers every day.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Nikki whispered, knotting her yellow cotton tank top at her sternum and tying the laces on her New Balance sneakers, sweat socks bunched at the tops. Her white spandex shorts could not have been any tighter, accentuating her twenty-five-year-old ass that she’d slaved to sculpt into bubble perfection on the butt buster, StairMaster, and at the aerobics dance classes in the gym in the Bayview condo complex where she’d rented an apartment for six months.

Two things she’d noticed about all the women Dr. Sheridan chased—all were in their twenties and all had bubble butts.

Several minutes later, Nikki peered through the telescope again. The sun twinkled on the blue eye of Little Neck Bay as Sheridan boarded his forty-two-foot Silverton bearing the name The Dog’s Life at his private dock behind his modernized Queen Anne–style house on a cul-de-sac off Shore Road. He climbed to the fly deck, fired up the twin engines, and aimed straight at Bayside Marina a half-mile across the water. Nikki knew Dr. Sheridan would moor The Dog’s Life there before moving down the marina walkway to the jogging path. He would run south to the end of the asphalt path at Northern Boulevard, then make a U-turn and jog three miles north to Fort Totten, where he’d turn and head back to the marina to complete his daily six-mile route along one of the most idyllic stretches of waterfront in New York City.

“He’s mine,” Nikki whispered, before hurrying out of the apartment and down the sixteen flights of stairs to work up a good sweat before jogging out into the Bayside streets, passing the old colonials, the Queen Annes, the Tudors, and the gruesome McMansions and boxy two-family condo units that looked to her like they had been designed by shoemakers.

She huffed east on Thirty-Fifth Avenue and over to the secret little emerald called Crocheron Park. Nikki ran past a fraternity of dog walkers who let their pets chase taunting squirrels through the underused meadows. She legged past the fields where a father in a Mets jacket towered fly balls to his son who wore a Yankees hat. She nodded to three chunky women joggers who gasped counter-clockwise on the onemile inside roadway and watched a tennis volley between two seventy-something men wearing white designer shorts with indoor winter tans. They stopped the volley to ogle Nikki. Since Viagra, seventy is the new seventeen, she thought. She slowed to a walk as she approached the southern-most of the two gazebos stationed on the steep leafy hill overlooking the jogging/bicycle road parallel to the humming Cross Island Parkway. Through the budding trees she would momentarily clock Dr. Sheridan making the southbound leg of his run.

It was 9:17 a.m. now. She knew his moves better than he did. Glistening with sweat, her red headband securing her long dark hair, she gulped some Poland Spring water, then poured out all but an inch from a twenty-ounce bottle. Through the verdant trees she saw him, running hard, like someone fleeing from his own footprints.

Nikki bounded down the long stone steps from the park to the Cross Island overpass. She leaped from step to step in a graceful ballet, her body taking blurry flight between footfalls. She cut over the six lanes of the Cross Island, busy with Mother’s Day travelers, about half of them on their way to visit Mom now living in some old person’s orphanage, with a name like Shady Acres, after having been abandoned by the very ingrates she had brought into the world. Nikki gazed right and here came Dr. Sheridan hoofing toward her just as she bounced down the final ramp onto the jogging path, her breasts heaving, sweat lashing off her face in a spray of tiny sunlit diamonds.

They exchanged glances. Dr. Sheridan smiled. Nikki didn’t. A lifetime of running had kept his forty-five-year-old body as trim as Nikki imagined it had been when he was twenty. She pivoted, sprung, and ran ahead of him, ham muscles bunching in the damp white Spandex like sins waiting to be committed. Her thigh muscles rippled as she passed fishermen in rubber suits standing hip deep in the tame bay where swans and geese and mallards and ducks looped around the sailboats. A spotted hawk circled and a pair of fat black crows exploded from the wild reeds into the high trees of Crocheron.

A lone whooping crane stood on one leg on a sand spit, bleating like a traffic cop. Nikki watched a pair of young lovers, a pretty Asian girl and a skinny white boy with moussespiked hair, sharing the two earplugs of an iPod and strolling hand-in-hand as if never wanting this song, this walk, this morning to end. The girl gave her companion a gentle bump of her left hip in the first movement of their ephemeral dance of spring. Love him till it hurts, Nikki thought. She knew Dr. Sheridan was behind her undressing her with his eyes.

Up ahead she saw the sun gilding across the long steel bones of the Throgs Neck Bridge. A cabin cruiser grumped beneath it. Nausea rose in Nikki like a dirty tide. She contained it with her sense of mission. She was gonna make a bad thing right.

Nikki knew Dr. Sheridan would shower and change in the luxury salon of his boat before hopping in his two-door silver BMW Z4, with the MEOW1 vanity plate that he kept in one of his two rented parking spots by the marina—the second spot was for babes who spent the night on his boat. Then he’d drive the five minutes to work at his Menagerie Animal Clinic across the street from the Bay Terrace Shopping Mall. There, even on Mother’s Day, he would give comfort to the daily parade of heartsick pet owners, most of them women— divorcées, young and single, widows, unhappily married and happy to cheat—who came whenever Fido or Fluffy so much as sneezed, just to hear the soothing timbre of Dr. Sheridan’s deep voice. Observing him over four months, from winter until spring, Nikki had deduced that Dr. Sheridan didn’t mix business with pleasure. He mixed pleasure with more pleasure, she thought. Never with friends or clients. Only with strangers.

With his handsome and gray-only-at-the-temples good looks, a multimillion-dollar bay-front home, his own luxury boat, a Beemer and a Benz in his driveway, a lucrative veterinarian clinic, and membership in the local community board, Dr. George Sheridan possessed one of the most sought after naked left ring fingers in eastern Queens.

* * *

Fat chance, girls, she thought. For on Thursday night, Ladies’ Nite, when Cosmopolitans were free for babes in most of the crowded bars along Bell Boulevard, Dr. Sheridan could usually be found at the three-deep mahogany bar in the ambient bordello lighting of Uncle Jack’s Steakhouse, dressed in an Armani or Hugo Boss, with open-necked shirt, Botticelli loafers, no socks, sipping Grey Goose and tonic through a swizzle straw.

When he met the right hot chick, never older than the French formula of half-his-age-plus-seven, he’d buy her drinks. After two rounds he’d ask if she was hungry and then treat her to the famous crab cakes, shrimp the size of mandolins, and the porterhouse steak that he insisted was as good if not better than the ones served at Peter Luger’s over in Brooklyn. “Meal whores,” Nikki had overheard Dr. Sheridan call his prey to other middle-aged men on the prowl on Ladies’ Nites.

Dr. Sheridan always paid with cash when he left and usually had one of the Cosmo’d babes plopping her bubble butt in the leather bucket passenger seat of his Beemer on his way home to Douglaston. But Nikki knew—as did he—that those consenting adults in high heels were as much on the make as Dr. Sheridan. He wanted to get in their pants; the ladies wanted to get on his left ring finger. It was a game, though he was the one who stacked the deck.

In the mornings after, through her all-revealing telescope, Nikki had seen many of those young women stagger out of Sheridan’s house, or the salon of his boat, still dazed and woozy. He’d drive them back to the cars they had left on Bell Boulevard the night before.

Of late, however, with spring prickling the air, Dr. Sheridan was fond of taking his lady friends for a nightcap at the elegant, brilliantly lighted Caffè on the Green overlooking the Throgs Neck Bridge, a high-end restaurant that was once home to Rudolph Valentino and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. And then for a moonlight cruise on his $300,000 luxury Silverton, replete with living room, salon, wide-screen satellite TV, quadraphonic sound system, full-service kitchen, elegant dining room, master bedroom with queen-size bed, and smaller guest bedroom. Nikki would watch him drop anchor under the Throgs Neck Bridge, where he and his young dates would spend the night rocking in the tide.

Nikki knew his routine. A month ago, she had positioned herself alone at the bar of Uncle Jack’s so that Dr. Sheridan would spot her wearing her skin-tightest jeans, high spaghettistrap heels, and matching tight red leather waist jacket. He offered to buy her a drink and she asked for a bottle of Heineken, no glass. As she drank the beer, she watched him sip his Grey Goose in careful measures through the swizzle-stick straw.

“Real guys don’t suck straws,” she said, pulling it from his mouth.

He laughed. She clinked her bottle against his glass and he drank from the lip.

“Real guys offer to buy beautiful women like you dinner,” he said.

“Maybe some other time. I just stopped off for a cold one before work.”

“Where do you work?”

“Queens.”

“Queens? Queens what? Queens Hospital? Queens College? Queens Supreme?”

She slugged more beer. “Nah.”

He laughed. “Okay, doing what?”

“My job.”

She wanted him to remember her. Nothing makes a rich man remember you like a little bit of mystery and declining a dinner invitation, she thought. Go to dinner, fuck his brains out, and tell him your life story . . . and you are as memorable as yesterday’s Dow index. Turn him down, keep your pants on, tell him nothing, and he’ll never forget you.

He wrote his cell number and his private e-mail address on the back of his embossed business card and handed it to her. She opened her pocketbook and stuffed the card into her wallet, then discreetly slipped the swizzle stick in a clear plastic bag. She finished the beer, said thanks, and left for work.

The job consisted of sitting in her dark-blue Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows, parked up the block on Bell Boulevard. Three hours later, after bar hopping along the same street, Dr. Sheridan left a place called The First Edition accompanied by a gorgeous wobbly blonde with a bubble butt and pants so tight they looked like they hurt. Nikki figured her fake ID said she had turned twenty-one the day before.

Nikki followed Dr. Sheridan’s BMW to the Bayside Marina, where he and his date boarded The Dog’s Life. Later, Nikki watched them through her telescope from her condo window as he pulled the boat under the Throgs Neck Bridge. After one glass of bubbly, the young woman got up from a deck chair and staggered sideways. Dr. Sheridan helped her into his salon and closed the door.

Hours later, Nikki watched him come up on deck wearing only boxer shorts, gabbing on a cell phone. The second time he came up he was completely naked, spraying Windex and wiping off the railings and deck furniture. Nikki turned away, but then felt compelled to look back with the zoom lens because something seemed odd. A close inspection through the telescope revealed that Dr. Sheridan was a man completely devoid of body hair. Shaved from neck to ankles, like a toy poodle in summer. Nikki could think of nothing less sexy than a completely hairless naked man doing housework. Retch-ro-sexual, she thought, suppressing a wave of nausea.

The girl never reemerged. Not until morning when Dr. Sheridan had to help her off the boat on her wobbly platform shoes. Through the telescope the woman appeared to be dazed, confused. He stroked her hair, shook his head, kissed her, and patted her cheek, as if reassuring her that nothing sexual had happened. Then he tapped his watch and helped her into his Beemer, and drove her back toward Bell Boulevard where she would have left her car the night before. Some hangovers you never recover from, Nikki thought.

* * *

Now, on this sun-filled Mother’s Day, Nikki jogged just ahead of Dr. Sheridan along the wooden planks of the Bayside Marina, knowing he was watching her. She slowed to a sweaty, panting walk. Asian and Latino fishermen crowded the end of the marina, casting their lines into the dark waters. A bride and groom stood posing for pictures that would keep them forever young, even when married life got old before they did. Nikki nodded to a grizzled dock hand running the boat-rental concession and entered the snack shop at the end of the pier, opened the soft drink refrigerator door, grabbed an ice-cold bottle of Poland Spring, and approached the cashier. She patted her hips as if just realizing she didn’t have her jogging pouch with her.

“Damn it,” she said. “Forgot my money.” She turned to return the bottle, counting: One Mississippi, two Mississ— “Let me buy it for you,” she heard Dr. Sheridan say in that soothing, deep voice that sounded like a priest giving absolution.

She looked up. “Nah, thanks anyway.” She opened the refrigerator door.

“C’mon, don’t you remember me?”

“Sorry?”

“Uncle Jack’s? Several months ago. You said I looked gay sipping a straw.”

She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “I didn’t say you looked gay. I said that real guys don’t suck straws.”

“Dr. Sheridan . . . um, George. I’m a veterinarian. I offered to buy you dinner.”

He paid for her water and bought some for himself.

“Yeah, well, thanks for the water, doc.” She turned for the exit.

“You said you’d have dinner with me some other time.”

“I’m positive I said maybe.”

“Touché. Is maybe still an option?”

She smirked. “Look, I don’t date married guys and you look like the married ty—”

He held up his bare left hand. “Never.”

She cracked open the water bottle, took a long gulp, her neck muscles and veins bulging, her face and pronounced clavicle bones gleaming with a patina of fresh sweat. She rolled the cold plastic bottle on the back of her neck. “Italian?”

“Caffè on the Green?”

“Promise not to suck straw?”

He laughed and nodded. “Promise.”

She swigged more water. “When?”

“Tonight? Eight? I’ll pick you up. Where do you—”

“See you then.”

“Hey,” he called out, “I don’t even know your name . . .”

But she was already on the hoof, buns bunching, hair flapping in the wind off Little Neck Bay. Got him, she thought.

* * *

Over dinner at a window table in the spacious Caffè on the Green, decorated with polished Italian marble, Oriental carpeting, lustrous mahogany, looking out on the glittering Throgs Neck Bridge, Dr. Sheridan asked Nikki dozens of questions. “Why won’t you tell me your last name?”

“I only give my last name to people who pay me. Friends call me Nikki.”

“Like Madonna? Or Cher? You a singer? Or fugitive or something?”

“Something.”

“Family?”

Nikki told him that she had no siblings. That her mother had died when she was young. That her father had never really been in her life. That she had fended mostly for herself since moving to New York after college.

“What school?”

“You never heard of it.”

When he asked what she did for a living, she said, “IT.”

“Aha, the IT Girl. Information technology for whom?”

“Freelance,” she said, eating an arugula salad. “I work for online database companies that locate people.”

“Like old sweethearts and schoolmates?”

“Yeah, and for estate lawyers looking for beneficiaries, private investigators looking for abducted kids and dead-beat parents, orphans who want to find their birth parents, bail bondsmen searching for bail jumpers, people who need criminal background checks on potential spouses or prospective employees.”

“Cool. How’d you get into that line of work?”

“Doing my family tree.”

“Fascinating.”

“Can be.”

“How do people find you?” he asked.

“I find them. I choose my own hours. But I’m gonna launch a website soon.”

“Awesome! Need any investors?”

“Nope.”

The more he probed, and the more evasive she got, the more intrigued he became. Everyone loves an enigma, she thought.

“So what brought you to Bayside?”

“Enough about me,” she replied, then asked about his family.

He poked at his branzini filet with lemon, garlic, and capers. “I’m an only child,” he said. “Lost both my parents when I was seventeen. Drowned in a boating accident.” He pointed out the window at the bay, where the lights of the 1800-footlong bridge reflected in the night waters. “Right there, under the Throgs Neck.”

“Sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Some things hurt forever.”

He nodded.

After she declined coffee and dessert, he invited her for a nightcap at his house, where she could see his menagerie of exotic animals.

“Nah.”

He seemed surprised. He asked if she’d like to join him for a midnight cruise through New York Harbor.

“Nah.”

“Cold Heinekens on board. Or Roederer Cristal champagne.”

“Cristal’s tempting but I never put myself in a hump-or-jump situation on first dates.”

He laughed. “Then how about on a second date?”

“Maybe.”

“How will I know?”

“I still have your card.”

Dr. Sheridan paid the bill in cash, like a man who didn’t want to leave a trail. Like a body-shaved man who wipes away fingerprints with Windex.

They left Caffè on the Green and walked across the sprawling lawn toward the parking lot, passing the duck pond that reflected the moon shining through the hundred-year-old willows. An ornate marble fountain burbled, and a thousand tiny white lights dotted the shrubbery like immortal fireflies. A frail breeze sighed off Little Neck Bay and Nikki imagined Rudy Valentino putting the make on some hot flapper here long before the Throgs Neck was even imagined.

Dr. Sheridan offered to drive Nikki home, but she declined. In the well-lit parking lot she thanked him for dinner and said, “Goodnight, doc,” then shook his hand. His palm was damp. He leaned in to kiss her and she backed away, sliding her hand from his, and before the valet could retrieve Dr. Sheridan’s Mercedes 450, she clacked her high heels off into the night, looping home through the dark drowsy side streets of eastern Queens.

* * *

Nikki watched Dr. Sheridan through the telescope for the next two weeks. She watched him jog along the Cross Island Parkway each day, ogling the female joggers, chatting them up, handing them business cards. He took a young woman on a boat ride just before sunset one evening. When he dropped her off at a small weed-shrouded fishing dock halfway between the Bayside Marina and Fort Totten after dark, Nikki saw her stumble up the jogging path to her car in one of Dr. Sheridan’s two parking spots. She collapsed into the driver’s seat and appeared to fall fast asleep.

An hour later, Nikki jogged up to the car, stopped, knocked on the window, and asked if everything was okay. “S’all right,” the glassy-eyed girl slurred. She asked the time while stifling a yawn. Nikki told her it was almost 10 p.m. The girl was astonished. She sat up, shook her head like a wet hound, and started her car. “My fuckin’ husband’ll kill me,” she said. Nikki asked if anything bad had happened to her on the boat. The girl blinked several times and said, “Boat?”

“Were you sexually compromised, hon?”

“Fuckin’ lesbo freak,” the girl shot back, powering up the window and squealing off onto the Cross Island.

At night during this period, Nikki sat in her Jeep Cherokee staking out Dr. Sheridan as he cruised the local bar scene on a mobbed Bell Boulevard. There were a dozen bars in this fourblock strip that brought young people from all over Queens and Nassau County by car or the Long Island Rail Road. She watched Dr. Sheridan, big fish in a small, well-stocked pond, sample Uncle Jack’s, Bourbon Street, Sullivan’s, KC’s Saloon, Dempsey’s, Donovan’s, Monahan’s, Fitzgerald’s, No No’s, and The First Edition. On Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, Dr. Sheridan left with different young women each night. He spent the night aboard The Dog’s Life with each one, anchored under the Throgs Neck Bridge. No one’s that lucky, she thought.

* * *

On a Friday morning in the second week of June, Nikki received the results from Dr. Sheridan’s swizzle straw from the DNA lab. All that she’d suspected was now scientific fact. The DNA on the drinking straw confirmed everything that the woman named Eileen Lavin had contended long ago to her family, friends, church, and the authorities—and in her diaries.

Dressed in her jogging gear, Nikki sat down in front of her telescope with Eileen Lavin’s diaries and went over everything again. Lavin had told police that she went aboard a boat with a guy named George Sheridan who said he had some golden Labrador retriever puppies from which she might choose a mascot for the orphan kids she was working with as a novice in the order of the Sisters of Mercy. Eileen had finished three years at St. John’s University, lived in a convent in the Bronx for eighteen months, and had taken all the temporary vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. She had met George Sheridan when he attended a St. John’s swim team meet against rival Wagner College. That night, beautiful Eileen Lavin, who was on a full athletic scholarship, led the Johnnies to a major victory over the Seahawks. A series of photographs in the St. John’s Torch student newspaper showed young Lavin in a team bathing suit. She was gonna be a nun, thought Nikki. But she had a bubble butt.

George Sheridan was a St. John’s senior majoring in veterinary medicine. Eileen Lavin was studying social work, working toward her BA. She was also preparing for her final vows of sisterhood. Sheridan ate lunch with her at school several times. He cheered at her meets. Then one afternoon after school, Sheridan invited her aboard his boat. He said he would gladly take some of the poor inner-city orphan kids she was working with out for a day of fishing and sightseeing. He also told her about some pedigree puppies he had at home and said that he’d like to donate one to the orphanage. Late that afternoon, Eileen went out on the boat with Sheridan. Her diary said that he was a perfect gentleman at first and took her for a cruise around New York Harbor. On the way back to his home in Douglaston, he dropped anchor under the Throgs Neck Bridge. As the sun went down over Queens, he asked Eileen to pray with him for his parents who’d drowned in those very waters. Then he served popcorn and gave her a glass of lemonade before they were to head back to his home in Douglaston and select a puppy. The last thing she remembered were the lights of the Throgs Neck playing on the night waters of Little Neck Bay.

Then, according to her diary, total blackout. When she awoke in the predawn, she was sitting on a bus stop bench down the road from her Novitiate House. She was groggy and very sore between her legs.

Years later, after an exhaustive Internet search, Nikki had found the old police report and Eileen Lavin’s Family Court records. She had tracked down Eileen’s father, a broken old man who still lived in Bayside. She told him who she was, and he had let her read his daughter’s diaries. Eileen’s mother had since died, never really recovering from the scandal, shame, and sorrow her daughter had brought upon the family with the out-of-wedlock pregnancy, expulsion from the convent, withdrawal from St. John’s, and then her suicide.

The diary entry recounting Nikki’s boat trip with George Sheridan said that she had bled most of the next day. She didn’t want to believe that she had been drugged and raped by the kindly schoolmate. She had no memory of any such monstrous thing happening and she had woken up fully clothed. She was not beaten or bruised. She had no memory of seeing any puppies. She called Sheridan, but he didn’t return her calls. She had no proof that she had ever been with him, in his car, his house, or on his boat. Never mind his bed.

Afraid she would be punished, or asked to leave the Novitiate, she kept her dark fears of having been raped to herself. She did not go to a hospital or to the police right away. Instead, she prayed. She did a Novena and the Stations of the Cross. She lit votive candles. She worked with orphan children who had more problems that she could ever know. She went to confession in Manhattan where no one would recognize her. She kept a diary for her and God’s eyes only.

The diaries revealed that after the night on Sheridan’s boat, Eileen missed a menstrual cycle. Then a second. After three and a half months without a period, she confided in her Mother Superior that she feared she was pregnant. That she’d been raped. The stern, skeptical, no-nonsense head sister who’d seen many a young novice surrender over the years to the weakness of the flesh before taking final vows asked why Eileen hadn’t told anyone till then. Eileen said she’d been afraid.

“You were afraid of going to hell,” Mother Superior said.

“I wasn’t sure I was raped. Or even pregnant. Until now.”

“The alternative being that you are the second coming of the Blessed Virgin?”

“I was afraid! Afraid of you. Afraid of the shame to my parents. Afraid of God.”

“And so now, three months later, you blame a young man, a good Catholic boy from St. John’s studying to be a veterinarian? You aren’t even sure he ever laid a hand on you. You have no memory of any such thing. No evidence. Yet you accuse him and bring shame on him, upon a great Catholic university, to make up for your own weakness? Your own mortal sin?”

“You have it all wrong. I was a virgin when I stepped on his boat!”

“You’ve violated your vows,” Mother Superior said. “You’ve committed the sin of fornication. You are bringing a child out of wedlock into the world. Stop pointing fingers at others. Go home and point the finger at the dirty girl in the mirror.”

When she was four months pregnant, Eileen Lavin was told she could not take her vows of sisterhood. She had not kept her temporary vow of chastity. She’d sinned, covered up that sin, compounded the sin by lying about the original sin, and now she was carrying a bastard child. “There is no room for untruthful, unwed mothers in the sisterhood,” Mother Superior said.

The diaries revealed that when Eileen finally contacted the police, they asked why she’d waited four months to report a rape. They asked why she hadn’t gone to a hospital. Why she hadn’t contacted police right away. They asked why any woman would give birth to a rapist’s baby. She explained that she was a devout Catholic, and could never abort any baby. The skeptical detectives from the 111th Precinct made a cursory call on Sheridan. He denied ever having Eileen Lavin aboard his boat or in his house. He invited them to dust for fingerprints. He said the woman was delusional. That her nickname was Sister Psycho.

The cops believed Sheridan. They apologized for bothering him. “We cannot indict a man on the word of a defrocked nun with no memory of the alleged crime,” said the Queens District Attorney’s office who investigated the case in 1982. “There’s no proof the baby is Sheridan’s. A blood test could only eliminate him, not identify him.” There was no definitive DNA test in 1982.

Eileen’s devout, old-world, immigrant Irish Catholic parents ostracized her. They had been shamed by a whispering campaign in their Bayside parish where they had previously bragged about their pious daughter going into the convent. Eileen had become just another unwed, knocked-up college slut. Gossip swirled. Neighbors snickered. Friends didn’t return her calls. Because of the pregnancy, she lost her swimming scholarship. She was forced to drop out of her last year of St. John’s and had the baby shortly after she turned twenty. Her mother refused to have anything to do with the child. Or Eileen. After the baptism, Eileen reluctantly gave the baby up for adoption.

Then, the diaries showed, Eileen went into a period of deep and prolonged depression. She reapplied for the Novitiate a year later, but Mother Superior said she was psychologically, morally, and spiritually unfit for the sisterhood. She had no family to turn to. Her religious dreams were shattered. She tried in vain to retrieve her baby from the adoption agency. The Queens Family Court refused to restore custody of her child because she was too emotionally and financially unstable. In thorough despair, Eileen ventured out onto the Throgs Neck Bridge one summer night and jumped 120 feet into the inky waters where she had lost her virginity on George Sheridan’s boat.

On a Friday morning in the second week of June, a quarter-century later, Nikki spied Dr. George Sheridan through her telescope as he left his house in Douglaston for his morning run. She timed it so that she ran into him twenty-two minutes later while descending from the Crocheron overpass of the Cross Island. He undressed her with his eyes so blatantly that she feared he’d leave a stain. Then he sidled up and ran alongside her toward the Bayside Marina.

“What are you doing on Sunday night, doc?” she asked.

“I’m free.”

“Thought I might take you up on that moonlight cruise.”

“Fabulous. Want to eat somewhere first?”

“I’ll pack dinner.”

“I’ll pour you champagne. Where do I pick you up?”

She told him she’d be waiting at 8 p.m. sharp at the little fishing dock alongside the Cross Island between Bayside Marina and Fort Totten.

“Date,” he said.

She promptly jogged up the ramp of the next overpass and he headed on toward the Throgs Neck Bridge.

* * *

On Sunday night, Dr. Sheridan showed Nikki how to start, stop, and steer The Dog’s Life as they cruised back to Little Neck Bay from their tour of New York Harbor. Nikki wore black Spandex clam-diggers, a black halter top, a black Mets jacket, and a black Mets cap, which she tilted up when they sailed under the chilly shadow of the Throgs Neck. Sheridan cut the engines and suggested they go down on deck to “eat, drink, and be silly.”

“Okay,” Nikki said.

He dropped anchor under the bridge as Nikki opened the picnic basket and served chicken and broccoli tossed in a cold penne with olive oil and thinly sliced red bell peppers, seeded Italian bread, and a tomato and basil salad. He walked into the salon and she watched as he poured a flute of champagne from an already opened bottle of Roederer Cristal chilling in a silver ice bucket. He made himself a Grey Goose and tonic. They headed back out of the salon and he handed her the champagne as The Dog’s Life lolled on the night tide.

“You aren’t having champagne?”

“Real guys drink Grey Goose,” he said. “From the glass.”

She smiled and they sat down and started to eat. She watched champagne bubbles rise in the flute glass, each one like a long buried corpse popping to the surface.

“You like it out here?” he asked.

“Nah.”

“Why?”

She stood and carried her glass to the railing. She leaned over it and swept her free left hand across the Throgs Neck as she carefully poured her champagne into the bay with her right hand, out of Dr. Sheridan’s view.

“Too beautiful a place to die,” she said, her back to him, lifting her empty glass and pretending to guzzle her champagne. She turned to him and forced a belch into her fist.

He said, “Die?”

“You told me your parents drowned here under the Throgs Neck.”

He ate a bite of pasta, took a sip of his Grey Goose, and leaned back in his deck chair. “You have a very good memory.”

“Yeah.” She waved the empty champagne flute as she took a sideways step across the deck. She knew it took most date-rape drugs about fifteen minutes to kick in. She excused herself and tottered into the luxurious salon that was bigger than some Manhattan apartments. She spent about ten minutes in the bathroom, then staggered out, tripping over the step at the threshold to the deck.

“You okay?” he asked.

She grabbed her head and lurched across the deck. He looped his right arm around her waist.

“Easy,” he said.

“Feel funny.”

“Maybe you should come inside and lie down.”

“Tryin’ to ’memba . . . something I gotta tell ya . . .”

He led her inside, slammed the salon door closed, and shoved Nikki onto her back on his couch. He pulled off his shirt in a single flourish. “Now the fucking fun starts, mama.”

Nikki lay motionless on the couch, hands in her jacket pockets. “Whajoo give me?”

“Ketamine,” he said, unbuckling his pants. “Horse tranquilizer. When it wears off you’ll remember nothing. But tonight you’re mine, for any fucking thing I please.” He stripped to his boxer shorts, turned his back to hang up his pants. Then he kneeled before Nikki and slid his two index fingers under the waistband of her Spandex pants. “Now, let’s see what you have here for the ass master.”

Nikki pulled her right hand out of her jacket pocket and rammed a .25 caliber Colt automatic to his left temple. “What I have here is the end of your miserable life, motherfucker,” she said.

Sheridan froze, still kneeling in front of Nikki. “Please . . . It’s a joke.”

“Real side splitter,” she said. “Let’s see if you remember the same old joke you pulled on a girl named Eileen Lavin.”

His face collapsed into a spasm of tics, coming apart in pieces like a mosaic held together by a lifetime of lies. “Who?”

“Maybe a little champagne will improve your memory.”

Nikki stood up, pointing the gun, grabbed the bottle of champagne, and poured.

“Drink,” she commanded. He looked at the bubbling flute, his eyes skittery. He licked his dry lips. “Drink the fucking champagne, Dr. Sheridan.”

“No, please—”

She shoved the pistol into his left ear again and yanked back the metal slide. “Then I will blow your sick fucking brains across your boat and leave you for the gulls.”

He drank the entire glassful.

She poured another. “Drink, motherfucker.”

He downed it.

She said, “Eileen Lavin was going to be a nun.”

“Her? She was a nut. Everyone called her Sister Psycho.”

“You took her on your father’s boat. Out here where you take all the young girls, because this is the spot where your parents died all right. But they didn’t drown. No, this is the spot where your father discovered your mother screwing his best friend on his boat. The place where he killed them, in a jealous rage. And then shot himself. When you were seventeen. I found all this with a few keyboard strokes. Jilted Hubby Kills Wife, Lover, Self. Nice. And so what was it, doc? When you wanted to get even with Mom, you took poor Eileen Lavin out here to the same spot? On the same boat? Here, under the Throgs Neck Bridge, you drugged and raped her. Over and over and over again. All night.”

“No girl gets on a boat with a man unless she wants to go with the flow.”

“Like your mother? Your father found out she was going with the flow on his boat while he was busting his ass at work to pay for it. He heard talk, slipped out here in a dingy, snuck aboard, and made her pay. And you’re still making her pay, aren’t you, you sick fuck? Every time you take another young girl out on your boat, you’re getting even with Mom. Am I right? But you got careless with Eileen Lavin. You didn’t use protection. Or maybe the rubber broke because she was a virgin. Something went wrong. And you knocked her up. But it was 1982. Before DNA testing was refined. She couldn’t prove it was you.”

“You’re as nuts as Sister Psycho,” he said, yawning.

“She was a fucking virgin! You took her out here, you drugged her, you raped her, you knocked her up. She had to give the baby up for adoption. Then she tried to get her baby back. Everyone abandoned her. You destroyed her life. You destroyed her soul. You destroyed her mind. Until she went up on that bridge and jumped. And died right about here, right where we’re anchored.”

“You can’t blame that on me. And why the hell do you care? What’s it to you?”

“That baby she put in the orphanage? That baby was adopted by a good family, a nice elderly Greek family in Astoria. They called her Nicola. They died when the kid was twelve. Then that baby was bounced around the foster system like a meal ticket. Treated like, well, a bastard. Scroungy orphan. Second-class citizen. She was beaten, abused, neglected. The only time anyone paid any attention to her was when she grew a pair of tits. Then she couldn’t get the filthy bastards off her! Then she became a party favor.”

“Fuck . . . you . . . talking ’bout?” His voice was becoming disjointed.

“I’m talking about your own daughter, asshole! The one you made when you raped Eileen Lavin. The rape-baby that caused her to jump off that bridge.” She pulled the diaries out of her jacket pockets and read wrenching portions of Eileen’s words to Dr. George Sheridan.

“She . . . wush . . . fucking nuts!” he said, his voice slurry and his jaw slack. “Jush . . . like . . . joooo.” His eyes were bloodshot and glazed, like stained glass. He stood and staggered sideways, a straw man, his body devoid of muscle control. Nikki pulled a pair of driving gloves from a jacket pocket, wiggled them on, and led him back onto the rear deck of The Dog’s Life, rocking in the bay under the Throgs Neck.

“You started using the horse drug as a veterinary student. You used it on Eileen Lavin. You literally fucked her out of a life.” Nikki paused and looked up at the bridge, crowded with cars under the crescent moon. “You also fucked me out of a mother. And you gave me a fucking monster for a father. When I was old enough, I went into computers just so I could trace my biological parents. I found out who my real mother was from the old baptismal records. My first adoptive mother told me the name of the church where I was baptized. I was the only girl baptized there the year I was born without a father’s name on the certificate. Once I had my mother’s name, Eileen Lavin’s father—my grandfather, that piece of sanctimonious dogshit—gave me her diaries. From them I found marvelous you. Times change. People don’t. Your hardwiring is the same. Crisscrossed, short-circuited. You’re fucking e-vil, doc. Twenty-five years later, you’re still taking girls my mother’s age out on your boat. Drugging them. Date raping them. Only now you’re more careful. You use a rubber. You shave your body. You pay for meals in cash. You wipe away all fingerprints. You leave no trace of anything. But you are still getting even with your mother, aren’t you? Before you tried to rape me, you even called me mama!”

“I never . . . hurt anybody,” he said. “I just fucked ’em, thass all.”

Nikki shoved him into a deck chair, pressed the button for the mechanical winch, and the anchor rose. She climbed to the fly deck and started the twin engines. When she was done here, she would simply steer the boat to the small fishing dock, hop off, and let the tide take The Dog’s Life back out into the dark bay. But first Nikki descended to the deck and packed up the picnic basket which she’d take with her, then washed the flute glass, filled the champagne bottle with water, and threw them into the bay. She used the Windex to wipe her fingerprints from everything she’d touched on board. She’d get rid of her sneakers before she got home, in case they left footprints.

Nikki led Dr. Sheridan, who was barely able to walk, to the edge of the aft deck. She opened the entry gate and looked him in his bleary eyes. “Do you know what today is?” she asked.

His head flopped like a bobble doll’s. “Shuuunday.”

“It’s the third Shuuunday of Juuuuune, assbag,” she said, mocking him. “That’s the day my mother, Eileen Lavin, jumped from this bridge twenty-five years ago.”

“Fuckin’ nutjob.” His voice sounded like it was coming out of a deep well.

She opened the gate. “Fuck you.”

“How . . . can joo do thish . . . to me?”

“Easy,” Nikki Lavin Sheridan replied, shrugging. “I have your blood in my veins.”

“Please . . .”

“Happy Father’s Day, Dad,” she said, and pushed him into the black water. She watched him flail and kick. The ketamine was paralyzing him. He tried to scream but his mouth filled with water, and Nikki watched Dr. George Sheridan slip into the same grave that had swallowed her mother under the Throgs Neck Bridge.

GOLDEN VENTURE

BY JILL EISENSTADT

The Rockaways

He’s waiting for her to die, Rose knows. She’s no dummy. It’s June and her son, Paulie, is once again thinking about inheriting her house on Rockaway Beach.

“You’re getting up there,” is this year’s phraseology, as if turning eighty-five begins her ascent. Up and up, she’ll levitate a little higher each birthday, while Paul, Maureen, and the kids line up on the sand waving bye bye. Paulie’s latest brainstorm is to just move in now—this weekend. “We’ll take care of you,” he insists, somehow oblivious to the way this sounds.

“Maureen’s a doctor, after all. You’ll get to play with your grandkids. All the time!”

* * *

“Oh, they’d sure love the free baby-sitting . . .” Rose is telling her new Chinese friend, Li. “But at fourteen and ten? Those kids think I’m boring and smell weird. And I am. And I do! I’m no dummy!”

This strikes Rose as so hysterically funny that soon she’s collapsed in a stained dining room chair, cradling her arthritic elbow. Harboring an illegal alien is one of her first ever crimes (give or take a little parking on her late husband Vincent’s handicapped permit). She feels Sambuca giddy, puffy with pride. If Vin, may he rest in peace, could see Li lying here in his favorite shirt—the ivory one with black piping and breast pocket snaps—he’d surely be impressed. Donning their cowboy best, Vin and his buddies from the social club used to spend each Sunday morning riding around Belle Harbor on their mopeds. “The Good Guys” they called themselves, and went looking for good deeds to do. But Vin had never risen to this Robin Hood level: A good deed and a crime too!

“It was mostly his excuse to get out of church,” Rose adds and crosses herself; a reflex.

“Yesu Jidu!” Li suddenly claps from his spot beneath the dining room table, an awkward choice of seating conversation-wise but okay; maybe it’s cultural.

“Yesu Jidu? . . . Parla Inglese?” Maybe he’s dreaming with his eyes open. So weak and emaciated, it’s like taking care of a child again. Like Vin in the end. But this fellow can’t be much older than thirty. A large bruised head on a skeletal frame and wet-looking hair even now that it’s dried. In one hand he clutches a Ziploc bag containing a small roll of bills and a phone number written on a scrap of newsprint. With the other, he points a shaky finger at the iron crucifix from Calabria hung over Rose’s marble sideboard.

“Yesu Jidu,” he repeats. “Me!”

At last, Rose gets it. “You’re Jesus Christ! Well, no wonder we’re hitting it off!”

And not an hour ago, he was on his knees, in his undies, puking up the Atlantic Ocean all over her shower house.

For some reason, this cracks her up all over again.

When the helicopters whirred her awake, the phone was ringing too. Rose fumbled for her bifocals. Three a.m.

* * *

“Are all the doors locked?” Paulie panted. “Turn on the TV! There’s a boatload of illegal chinks out—!”

“Who taught you to talk like that?”

“I’m comin’ over.”

“Who said?”

“Don’t you get it? They’re washin’ up by—what?”

“What?”

“I heard something.”

“Helicopters?”

“Oh, Christ, Ma! Get up! Turn on the TV!”

It was easier to just push aside the window curtain. Yes, the giant metal insects were out there hovering. But that was not so unusual here on the shore where they’re often called in for drownings, drug traffickers, and big-wig airport transport. And what with that 120,000-pound dead whale that just washed up in Arverne Friday, the sky had been pocked with press copters all week. But this new swarm buzzed the other end of the beach, up near Riis Park, and seemed to be composed of police and Coast Guard choppers.

“Get Dad’s gun; I’ll feel better.”

“Paulie . . .”

“Get it, Ma, or they’ll be stormin’ our fuckin’ house.”

“Who taught you that language?” Our house.

“If you don’t get it, I’m comin’.”

So what choice did Rose have but to slowly unload herself from the bed? She’d never get back to sleep now anyhow. Instead of a robe, she preferred one of Paul’s old red surf-shop sweatshirts. Instead of slippers, flip-flops. Better to accommodate a hammer toe or two.

The gun, still loaded and ready to guard Vincent’s Bootery on 116th Street was hidden, appropriately, in one of Vin’s old cowboy boots. It was painful, physically and every which way, for Rose to crouch in the closet and extract it. Yet she lingered, running her hand along the familiar broken-in black leather and fancy white boot stitching, letting herself miss the husband she mostly despised. The revolver sagged heavily in her big front sweatshirt pocket but the feeling was not altogether unpleasant, a little like a baby there. Vincent’s Bootery was now a cell phone store.

* * *

The backdoor sticks. To open it, you have to lean with your whole weight, wham, shoulder-first. Each time Rose does this, she imagines falling onto the brick patio where she’ll lay in crumpled agony until 8:30 a.m. when, obligated, Paulie comes to check she’s not drinking, and forevermore forces her to wear that medical leash with the button to press in case of emergencies.

“I know you would have come and rescued me,” Rose says, as she shuffles toward Li with a breakfast tray. “If I were out there wailing in pain, I know you would.”

Li just bows (or has a cramp). He reaches clumsily for the tray and a bowl skids off, smashing. Together, the two wrestle the food down to the scratched-up dining room tile. Can he hear all her joints popping? she wonders. His smooth black eyes both avoid and study her as if she’s a phantom or royalty, the Queen of Queens maybe.

“The Queen of Queens and Yesu Jidu will commence to dine. Choice of Fiberall, orange juice, Sambuca.”

It’s a far swim from the meals she used to make, for her daddy, then her husband, then her son, for the endless stream of relatives from Italy and Bensonhurst, for Good Guys and Bad Guys, their loud wives, sandy children, pets! On a Sunday like this, she’d be expected to serve the antipasti and the pasta, two meats, a vegetable side, dessert, espresso, and mints. She prayed for a daughter to help her. When that didn’t work, she prayed for an air conditioner. Finally, “I just prayed they’d leave me the fuck alone, excuse my Italian. And here I am. Until Paulie gets his way. Or the whale saves me.”

“A bacterial time bomb,” the papers are calling the washed-up finback. If the city doesn’t get rid of her before the next high tide, she could infect the whole waterfront. Rockaway’s summer of ’93 would be an environmental disaster, a PR nightmare! A blessing for Rose. No one will bother coming near her house if the beach is closed. Rose will live happily ever after for one more summer. Rose and Li—

Sadly, no one’s ever seen a Chinese person in Rockaway besides the delivery boy for Wok and Roll. People would definitely notice. Li’s dark hair and busy eyebrows are actually a lot like young Vin’s were, but there are those nearly lidless eyes to give Li away, high cheekbones, a nose like some kind of exotic sliced mushroom. He sniffs with what might be disgust at the box of Fiberall cereal.

“If Paulie hadn’t had my gas turned off, I’d make you my famous cutlets and escarole,” Rose apologizes. “Or some soup—I know your people like soup. The nerve of that kid after forty-five years of scarfing my rigatoni. On a Sunday like this, I’d serve an antipasti and a pasta, two meats—

Eyes closed, Li begins quickly eating the cereal, with his hands, from the box, no milk. He’s got a way of chewing with his whole head that Rose has never seen before. And Rose has seen a whole lot of people eating.

“I’d go easy on that Fiberall,” she warns.

* * *

He streaked across her lawn just as she made it out the backdoor, without falling. There goes the neighbor’s huge black lab, Blacky, off its leash again, she’d assumed. And though she’d noticed his bark sounded odd, like a croup, she was too distracted, thinking how the wretch had gone to pee in his favorite spot against her shower house. No point reasoning with the owners, people so deeply unoriginal that they’d name a black dog Blacky. Didn’t they also want her property? Eager to buy and tear down the place Paulie was born in to build something they called a solarium. Owning things others covet might make some feel powerful, but it just filled Rose with fear.

In the distance, Ambrose lighthouse pulsed on, off, on, but its usual soothing rhythm was jangled by searchlights roaming the dark, chaotic waves. She could hear sirens. Screams? The helicopter din made it hard to make out. Then that lumpy policeman appeared, bouncing around the side of the house.

“What!” Rose snapped, clutching her sweatshirt closed. She’d been hassled by the law once before, after starting a fire on the beach. Had she really fallen, this officer would have been the one to find her. Quite by accident, while coveting the ivy climbing up her façade, the decorative inlaid tile, flowering shrubbery, large picture windows, his flashlight would have suddenly illuminated what was left of her, Rose Camille Maria Impoliteri. A shriveled, bloodied human carcass. An ugly, used-up thing requiring removal. A nuisance.

“We were ringin’ but you were out here, I guess,” the policeman said, and only then remembered to flash a badge. “O’Donnell.”

Behind him, a second, trimmer uniform materialized. This one trailing a nightstick along the beach wall and whacking now and then at Rose’s ornamental grasses. He looked so much like an old classmate of Paulie’s. Kevin? Kieran? But then they all did. Those fair-haired Rockaway lifeguards and rangers, cops, firefighters, Coast Guard; they could all pass for larger versions of the St. Francis High School bullies who tagged her son “Guido” and “Greaseball Wop,” “Guinnie Rat” and “Zipperhead.”

“Stop!” her frail voice failed to yell. “Why’s he doin’ that?”

“Just checkin’ around.” O’Donnell smiled, still bouncing, in place now. “You see anything unusual?

“Yeah. Over there, your partner beatin’ on my plants.”

“Any Chinese, I mean. Boat ran aground on a sandbar off a Breezy,” he explained. “The Golden Venture. Full of Chinese illegals. They’re drownin’ and runnin’ so we’re s’posed to check around.” With a couple more bounces for punctuation.

“I know about that,” Rose said. “You need to use the men’s room?”

A genuine offer but O’Donnell ignored it. “Anyone else wit ya here? Husband? Kids? Some kinda companion?”

Rose snapped. “What makes ya think that? I can take care a myself! I am—”

Which is when Blacky started up barking again, barking from inside the house next door, the same old bark she was used to. So Blacky wasn’t actually out there, Rose got around to understanding. So it hadn’t even been a dog that ran past her just—

“Wait,” she called uselessly. By the time her mind had gotten here, the two officers had set off to search the garage. “Wait. You can’t do that.”

Her elbow throbbed and flamed from opening the door, but still she followed.

“You can’t do that! Wait!” Kicking off her flip-flops to try and move faster. “No, I think you’re not allowed to do that. Without a warrant.” Was this true? She hadn’t the faintest idea. All she knew for sure was, “This is my house!”

The backdoor sticks, the tile is scratched; the basement floods every time someone cries, Vin used to joke. But according to the brokers who periodically call, the brick rectangle is now worth two million easy. Ten thousand was what Rose’s daddy paid for it brand new, back in the ’40s.

“Germans came ashore then, did you know that? German spies in Rockaway!”

Now total strangers regularly stroll up and make offers on the house over the beach wall.

“But I’m gonna fool them all, Li,” Rose all of a sudden decides. “I’m gonna leave the place to you.”

The Good Guys didn’t help anyone that much. Other than a lady who let them load up her car with groceries in the Waldbaum’s parking lot, the Good Guys never really helped anyone at all. Vin said they tried but no one was interested. Even the lady with the groceries, Vin said, probably she just felt sorry for them. So the Good Guys took to drinking instead. Then they’d drag race their mopeds up and down Beach Channel Drive. Vin would stagger into Sunday dinner to alternately love up and criticize Rose. My favorite flower. You call this turd a meatball? My soft, fragrant Rose. Lazy bitch can’t go to Bensonhurst for some decent bread!

“It was that and more, and I took it until the day he says, Rose, he says, do me a favor. Don’t serve this grease when my cousins come from Calabria. In front of our Jewish friends, he says this in front of the Friedmans. He calls my sauce grease.”

Li can’t possibly understand the story, yet he tilts his head at its tone of hurt and even stops eating while she speaks. If Paulie and his atheist wife ever showed her half the deference, she might have invited them to live here already. If.

“That night, I burned the table leaves,” Rose continues. “This table here. I dragged those two heavy planks one by one across the floor—see here these long scratches?—that’s from draggin’ them, and mind you, by myself, since Paulie’s too busy upstairs with Vin watchin’ detectives chase each other or professional wrestlin’ . . . But I know you would have helped me, Li.” At that, he tries to give Rose the wad of bills from his Ziploc bag and she pretends not to notice.

* * *

Once she finally got to the garage, all the chairs and cushions she’d paid the grandkids to stack at the end of the summer had been tossed across the dirty floor, and still the officers were going at it, knocking over beach umbrellas, tossing paint cans. What would they do if they actually found a person? Her father had come over just like this, on a boat from Sicily. And Vin had arrived in an Armani suit on a plane. But the ways they’d been harassed would be nothing compared to what they’d do to a poor Asian soul stuffed on a freighter, for months it had to be, now half-drowned and frozen from kicking for his life in the frosty June chop. Just thinking about it made her sure she heard the croup again, that someone was there.

“Someone’s here,” Kevin or Kieran said, but he meant Rose. “Hey. Hi. Ma’am. Ya really shouldn’t be out.”

“At my age?”

“At this hour. With that cough.” One of his green eyes was lazy, drifting. Rose thought to cough again to cover for the stranger. She wondered if the wok she’d long ago ruined had wound up here in the garage. She’d cleaned it wrong and it had rusted or—

“Let me take you back inside,” Kevin or Kieran insisted, grasping her elbow. Ow. “Mrs.—”

“Don’t you even remember me?” The way it came out sounded like begging. “Paulie’s mom?” Of course, it had been years since she was even that in any meaningful way. She touched the bulge in her sweatshirt. It had been years since she’d been in her own garage, let alone had a car, driven a car, ridden a bike, fired a gun. The beachy gas smell pulled her back to all those sticky cousins of Vin’s, of endlessly boiling pots, gritty towels, crumbs, bones, and water rings that slowly led her down to the sand dragging those two heavy planks that signified: Company. Two leaves, two meats, the vegetable side—

Kevin or Kieran claimed to not have grown up around here. But too bad, he’d kill for a house like this, on the beach. At the door, he gave her a card. In case she saw anything unusual. Then O’Donnell was beckoning him away, to the neighbor’s, setting Blacky off all over again.

“Fires on the beach are illegal; you should know that,” said the policemen when they arrived, that first time. “We could give you a ticket. Burnin’ some good wood there too, looks like oak. We could haul your crazy ass in.” When they’d finally gone, it took Rose a long time to bury the rest of the charred leaves beneath the sand. And still, a dog had it partially dug up by daylight. Vin saw it and said, “So?” If Rose wanted a buffet, well, he’d just invite more company. Then he drag raced his moped into a Green Line bus.

* * *

The kids on the beach used to always say they were digging a hole all the way to China. And once, for a few months somewhere in the ’70s, she’d fashioned a hair ornament out of chopsticks like she’d seen on that actress, what’s her name, in that film, whatsitcalled?

“Other than that, I gotta admit, when it comes to things Oriental, I’m one big dummy.”

Li starts to nod but an involuntary shiver overtakes him. His eyes close. He slumps against the table’s pedestal. Rose imagines his mother teaching him to swim. A river it must have been, not a curly, raging ocean. A nice, manageable river.

* * *

At first, he looked like some kind of sea monster soaked through and wrapped in the moldy shower curtain. You could see his chest go in and out, but close up that rusty, tentative sound it made scared her. Every now and then he’d erupt with the cough. The shower house itself was a dank lair, reeking of vomit and adorned with wet leaves, cobwebs, and the butts of cigarettes she’d long suspected her teenage grandson of smoking.

“I can help you,” Rose said. “My daughter-in-law is a doctor.”

The stranger bowed, moaning himself up onto his hands and knees, but then he heaved up saltwater and collapsed again.

“You come into my house,” she insisted. “I have a nice house.”

* * *

“Ma! Ma! You okay? Did ya trip? What are you doin’ down here under the table? The traffic, ohmygod. That Golden Adven— Why don’t you have the TV on?”

“I’m sleeping?” Rose opens her sticky eyes to see a short, wide man with a graying goatee wheeling several bulging Samsonites. “What are those for?” She pushes up on to her forearms, blinking.

“Thought I’d start the process. Since I was comin’ anyways.” Paulie crosses his furry arms.

According to the window it’s now morning. Low tide. Soon enough he’s eying the empty bottle of Sambuca near her foot and swearing.

“You know you’re not allowed—”

“I thought she was decaying. I thought they were closing the beach!”

“You’re still talking about a damn whale? MA! A dozen or two people drowned right out there last night—”

Her confusion clears, leaving panic. “Where is he? What did you— Oh!” Li’s beside her, his chest moving up and down, kind of. “Call Maureen!”

But Paulie’s too busy hating her to notice. “They got some cement trucks to bury the big ugly fish, all right? The beach is safe. NOW CALM THE FUCK— Oh god, not again!”

Now he’s spotted his father’s shirt—the ivory cowboy number.

“You keep tellin’ me you don’t need takin’ care of, so how come every time you get blicked, you gotta carry this shit around?” Grabbing for the sleeve, he—“Aah!”—discovers there’s an arm inside it, and there’s a man under the dining room table attached to the arm.

Rose can’t help but giggle. She was waiting for that. “You should see your face, Paulie!”

“What the hell—”

And it just keeps getting funnier. “SHHHH,” Rose has to gasp between laugh spurts. “This is Li. He’s not well.”

“Have you gone fuckin’ nuts? Where did you—why—”

“I was hoping Maureen—”

“What? You can’t ask her to do that.”

“Why not?” With effort, Rose pulls Li’s dented too-still skull onto her lap. “He’s a Christian.”

“You mean criminal!” Paul yells, patting his khakis. “And she’s a vet.”

“Then call a priest.”

“I’m callin’ the cops is who I’m callin’!” Paul starts rifling through his suitcases. “If you’d please shut your trap.” Sounding exactly like Vin.

“When you find your weapon, let me know,” Rose says, reaching into her sweatshirt pocket to cock the gun. “Then you can just kill me and get my house.”

“What? Where’s my phone. I just had—”

The kick of the gun knocks Rose down where Paulie is also heading with a sashay–low twist combination that leaves him slumped right over his bulbous luggage. The movements seem so foreign that she actually finds herself wondering, Did he just get a bad haircut or something? Then she remembers to thrust the gun into Li’s dead-cold hands, their life about drained from them. Fingerprints, right? Rose didn’t endure years of Columbo for nothing.

She is waiting for Li to die before crossing herself, a reflex, and calling the number on the detective’s card. Not Kevin or Kieran but Andrew—her new friend. He’ll be the one to do her the favor. Andrew Volishskya. Not from around here.

BUCKNER’S ERROR

BY JOSEPH GUGLIELMELLI

Shea Stadium

I followed him to the platform for the 7 train at Grand Central, a place so far down below the street that I expected to meet devils with pitchforks on their way up from Hell. The tail was easy. After a couple of days on the job, I saw that he always wore the same kind of clothes, like a uniform or that crazy detective on cable. White Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, beige khaki pants, and brown loafers. But today he added a cap—navy-blue with an antique capital B on the front and little red socks at the back. A brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

I noticed more people in the city wearing Boston caps after the team had won the World Series. Always brand new, never faded from the sun or stained with sweat. It was like they were previously ashamed to walk the city’s streets broadcasting their loyalty or were afraid that crazy Yankees fans would chant “1918” at them when they went for a quart of milk or to pick up their dry cleaning. I say, your team is your team no matter what and no matter what anyone says. I wore a Mets cap that wasn’t new when they won the Series in 1986, and carried a copy of today’s Post in my back pocket. The two of us waited, on this warm June night, for the 7 train to take us to Shea Stadium where the Mets and Red Sox would play the first of three interleague games.

He stood quietly on the platform, leaning against the elevator with his hands in his pockets. He stared off into space with no paper or book to read. The stale, sticky air did not seem to bother him. Next to him, a fat guy in a crappy suit with his polyester tie at half-mast, tired and heading home to Queens, mopped his face with a rumpled handkerchief. Three Korean women who could have been anywhere from forty to seventy years old stood silent and still, holding shopping bags filled with vegetables and other groceries. I disregarded them. Further down the platform, college kids wearing black awayjerseys with the name and number of their favorite Mets players on the back were obviously going to the game. The kids were playful and laughing but I knew they wouldn’t get in my way when the train pulled in. I didn’t expect the subway car to be sardine-can crowded until we got to the Queens stations.

A blast of cooler air signaled the arrival of a 7 express, which meant fewer stops and fewer chances for screw-ups. When the train stopped, we stood in front of the last car. He didn’t move to rush the doors like so many subway riders do. He followed the tinny, distorted message over the car’s loudspeakers and let the passengers off the train before getting on. I maneuvered my way into the car so that I was standing in front of him and holding the same pole in the middle of the car. A little guy wearing blue mechanic’s overalls and reading El Diario had grabbed a piece of the pole to my left. A teenaged black girl on my right was lost in the music playing from her iPod, swaying in time to the song. I was lucky that it was ’70s Philly soul leaking from her headphones, not some rap shit.

I knew that I had to make my play before Queensboro Plaza, the first stop on the ride to Shea with connections to other subway lines. The express rattled through the first two underground stations, making so much noise that I couldn’t even talk to myself, forget about talking to anybody else. When the train left the Hunters Point station and emerged into the evening sunlight five or six stories above the Queens streets, the clatter lessened to a normal din.

He was humming along with a Delfonics song from the girl’s iPod and staring out of the windows at abandoned buildings covered from rooftop to ground floor in graffiti that appeared to be carefully designed and painted, rather than the work of random punks with spray cans. He held onto the pole with both hands. He seemed not to be in the subway car but in a private place with a look of contentment on his face. It was the same expression that my second ex-wife had when she did yoga in the morning.

I startled him when I told him that he was a brave man. I saw in his eyes that he was confused and did not know whether to ignore me, to ask me what I wanted, or, like any true New Yorker, to tell me to fuck off. I continued to make eye contact and said, “You’re a brave man to be wearing a Red Sox cap to Shea.”

He relaxed and smiled, never questioning how I knew where he was going. “Oh, I don’t think so. It’s not like going to Yankee Stadium when the Sox play. The crowds there can get rowdy. Besides, we Red Sox fans have a lot in common with you Mets fans,” he said, taking one hand off the pole long enough to point to the cap on my head. “We both hate the Yankees.”

I smiled back at him. “Good point, good point. But I don’t know, man. We snatched Pedro from under your nose. And if Manny stands at home plate admiring a home run ball to show off for all his Washington Heights homeboys, it could get ugly.”

Still smiling, he shook his head but was fading back to his own personal place with his own thoughts, not the thoughts of some joker on the subway. He turned away from me to look at the midtown Manhattan skyline that now dominated the view from the left side of the train after it had pulled away from the Courthouse Square stop. I needed to keep this conversation going.

“I’m sitting up in nosebleed country. I’m gonna need one of those guides that mountain climbers use to find my seat. But what do you expect when you decide to go at the last minute? Where are you sitting?”

He still didn’t know what to make of me but was polite. “My friend’s family has season tickets. Field level behind first base.” I knew all about the friend. I was standing in front of him because of the friend.

“Nice. I’ve sat around there a couple of times. I’ve been going to Mets games since my dad first took me when I was six. Most of the guys I know follow the teams that their dads followed. It is like an inheritance, to my mind. He was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I mean, a huge fan. My mother says that when O’Malley took his team to California, my father said words that he never said before or would ever say again in all the years they were married. So growing up in a National League house it was only natural that we would follow the Mets. But if the Dodgers were in the World Series or in the playoffs, my dad, until the day he died, would root for the other team. Even if it meant rooting for the Yankees.” I whispered the last part as if I were sharing a shameful family secret.

I had hooked him just in time. The subway car was beginning to get crowded as more people going to Shea got on at Queensboro Plaza. He could have easily moved away from me to grab one of the metal railings in front of the benches of filled seats. Despite the crush of Mets fans and homebound workers boarding the car, we were still standing together like two buddies having a night out at the ballpark.

“So, your dad take you to Fenway during the glory days of Yaz?”

He flinched at the question. I thought I’d overplayed my hand and lost him. I hoped that the look on his face was just the result of a sudden burst of sunshine hitting his eyes. “No. My father never took me to a ballgame. I don’t think I ever saw a baseball game when I was growing up. My college roommate freshman year dragged me to Fenway with some of his friends because he thought I studied too much. It was love at first sight, the minute I stepped into the ballpark. After the first pitch I knew that I belonged right there. I never liked the taste of beer but must have had five that day. I loved the cheering and yelling of the crowd. I loved the hustle and grace of the players on the field. When we left and the Sox had beat Baltimore 5 to 4, I was hoarse and my hands were sore from clapping. I went to dozens of games before I graduated. I read the Globe and Herald sports pages religiously and any baseball history or biography voraciously. All these years I’ve been true to the Boston Red Sox. I never get to see the team live enough, working here. Now I have one of those cable packages that allows me to see almost every game, but it’s not the same as being in Fenway.”

I gave him a name and told him that I worked on Wall Street selling mutual funds to retail brokers. I knew enough details about this kind of job that I could BS my way through a conversation if he wanted to talk about work. I know a little about a lot of things so that I can talk to almost anybody about anything, a talent I find useful in my line of work. It would have given us something else in common, though I was certain we wouldn’t be talking shop for the rest of the ride. Only baseball.

“I’m Jack Buckner,” he said, mentioning he worked for an elite, privately held Wall Street firm that only handled oldmoney clients whose net worth was a minimum eight figures. He did not mention that it was his friend’s family firm.

“Any relation to Bill? A cousin maybe, returning to the scene of the crime after so many years? Bill Buckner . . . letting the world championship roll between his legs during the legendary Game 6 of the ’86 World Series.”

“Billy. Buck. Did. Not. Lose. The. World. Series.” Jack emphasized each word. I’m certain that he would have poked me in the chest on the beat of each syllable if the train had not roared past a local station with enough speed to cause him to keep both hands on the pole.

I have seen criminal defense attorneys sum up before juries in high-stakes trials with flair and with eloquence. Imagine Darrow in his heyday. Think Cutler and Gotti. Remember Cochran arguing on behalf of that piece of crap? None of them showed the passion that Jack did defending Bill Buckner. Hell, years later, all I remembered was the tenth inning. Jack could practically tell you the entire game pitch by pitch.

“First of all, McNamara should never have taken Clemens out in the seventh with a one-run lead,” he began. “He claimed Clemens asked to be taken out because he had a blister on his finger. This man will be the AL Cy Young winner and the league’s MVP. You keep him in unless he needs immediate surgery on his pitching arm in the dugout. Besides, Clemens said that he never asked to be taken out, but only after McNamara was fired. In my opinion, Clemens was very honorable because he didn’t undermine McNamara’s authority in the clubhouse by contradicting him. When I look at how he has pitched since leaving Boston, the awards and the rings, I cannot believe that he quit. However, I confess that I have a soft spot for the Rocket. The Sox quit on him. He did not quit on Boston.”

He went on about some Italian relief pitcher named Calvin letting the tying run score in the eighth. Never met too many guys from Mulberry Street named Calvin. But then again, I thought Rudolph was a name for only Nazis and reindeers before Giuliani came along.

Jack was analyzing and dissecting the plays in the tenth inning when the 7 passed Fisk Avenue. So intent on making his points, he didn’t see the joke of talking about the 1986 Series above a street that shared the name of the great Sox catcher. “Bob Stanley had already tied the game on a wild pitch, so the damage was done before Wilson ever hit the ball toward Billy. At that point, Buckner should never have been in the game. Because his ankles were bad, McNamara had taken him out of every other post-season game in the late innings and put in Dave Stapleton for defense. What was he thinking? It was not as if Billy’s bat would be missed. He went 0-for-5 in Game 6. Nevertheless, I firmly believe that even if Billy makes that play, Wilson beats him to the bag. Billy was too beat up and Wilson was too fast . . . And, of course,” Jack added as we were about to leave the Woodside stop, “there was still Game 7. You can’t blame Billy Buck for what happened in Game 7. They would have been the champions if they’d won that game.” He paused for a breath and checked his watch when the conductor announced that the train was being held in the station.

While Jack had been commandeering facts and stats to make his point, I noticed that each platform for the local stops along this stretch of the 7 line had stained-glass windows. I could not make out the designs as the train raced by, but I was sure that they were not pictures of the Stations of the Cross. We even passed a giant red neon cross on top of a Korean church of some Protestant denomination. With each word out of Jack’s mouth, I kept thinking about that movie with Susan Sarandon and how she belonged to the Church of Baseball. Jack was certainly a member of that congregation.

When the train finally left the station, Jack said, “Buckner was the butt of a lot of jokes afterwards. But my sympathies were later with Donnie Moore.”

The name rang a bell but I couldn’t place it.

“He was the other goat of 1986. He was the relief pitcher for the Angels, who were one strike away from winning the American League pennant when Moore gave up a home run to Dave Henderson that tied the game. The Angels lost that game in the eleventh inning. They lost the next two games and the pennant. At the time I was, of course, very happy that Boston was going to the World Series. However, Moore was never the same pitcher due to physical ailments. He was hounded out of Anaheim by boorish fans and a mean-spirited front office in the middle of the 1988 season. About a year later, he shoots his wife in front of his own children and kills himself with a bullet to the head.”

With a sigh, Jack continued, “Anyway, I couldn’t believe that when Moore’s suicide became public, a reporter called Buckner to ask whether he considered killing himself after the 1986 Series. Billy said, ‘Of course not. It’s only a game.’ I can never decide whether that’s a cheery or depressing thought.”

“Depends on the day, my friend,” I said. He went quiet as the train pulled into Junction Boulevard and 103rd Street.

I tried to keep the conversation casual for the rest of the ride, just bar talk between strangers, but I could tell that Jack’s thoughts were drifting away again. He agreed with a curt “yes” that the Zambrano-for-Kazmir trade was the biggest heist since Lufthansa. I asked him who he was going to the game with, when the windows of the subway suddenly darkened. Trees densely filled with leaves surrounded the car, blocking the sunlight. It was as if, for a minute or two, the subway had left the trestles above Roosevelt Avenue and plunged into a forest. Just as suddenly, the train emerged from the tree cover and Shea, all blue, gray, and orange, appeared in front of a slowly setting sun, a stunning joyful sight. I never got an answer to the question, only a curious stare.

Even before the subway came to a full stop at the Willets Point station, the chants of “Let’s Go Mets!” could be heard. When the doors opened, everyone in the car poured out onto the elevated platform and made their way to one of the metal stairways, freshly painted a puke-green color. I was right behind Jack as we left the car. As distant and formal as when I first addressed him, he turned and said, “Nice speaking with you. Enjoy the game.” He headed off toward the stairs and began to blend into the crowd, anxious to meet his friend.

I yelled at him over the head of a father holding the hand of his young son: “Jack, wait up! Let me give you my card and I definitely want to get yours.”

He reluctantly stopped, letting people pass him to get to the staircase. We stood by a large green garbage can so we would be out of the way. He pulled a thin gold case out of his pocket to take out a crème-colored business card. I fumbled with a frayed leather case that dropped between my feet. I squatted down to pick it up, watching Jack stare at the diminishing crowd on the platform and impatiently tapping the business card against his thigh. I also removed the ice pick that was taped to the inside of my right calf and concealed it under my sleeve. The platform was now empty except for the stragglers at the top of the staircases. A quick glance across the tracks at the Manhattan-bound platform found only a teenaged couple too busy making out to notice a pair of middle-aged guys exchanging business cards.

Jack again said goodbye and turned to walk away. But he stopped beside one of the black wooden benches on the platform when he saw that the name of his boss, the name of his friend’s father, was printed on the business card I had given him.

I could imagine the confused look on his face as the handle of the ice pick slipped down into my hand. I focused on my target. There is a small indentation at the base of the skull, just below the Velcro strap of a baseball cap and aligned, in this case, with a cartoon pair of red socks. A blade thrust into this depression will sever the spinal cord from the brain. Your muscles go limp so you cannot run away. You cannot breathe so you cannot cry for help. You go into shock as your blood pressure drops to nothing. You become unconscious with barely another thought. Death is almost immediate if an expert wields the ice pick. I am an expert.

I caught him as he began to fall like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I placed him on the black bench, arranging the body so that the Mets fans exiting the next trains would think that he was just waiting to board. I took his wallet, card case, and BlackBerry so that the cops would have the always popular and distracting motive of robbery to think about. I put the Post from my back pocket in his lap so that Jack appeared to be reading the sports page with Pedro on the cover. I left the ice pick there with no prints and no trail back to me. I was halfway down the stairs before the next train pulled in.

When I came up on the Manhattan side of the platform, the young couple were still at it hot and heavy and wouldn’t have noticed me if I had shot Jack with a .45. Standing in the evening breeze, I could see the body on the bench. The latest trainload of fans was hurrying down the puke-green stairs to get to the game. No one was giving him a second look. The starting lineups were about to be announced.

Jack’s mistake was thinking with the head between his legs, not the one on his shoulders. People with assets worth in excess of eight figures don’t care who or what you fuck so long as you are discreet. When the details of your sex life appear on the disapproving lips of some dried-up matron whose name is in the Social Register, or in a blind item in a sordid tabloid gossip page, those people might take their assets to another investment boutique. But that’s just money. There is always more money to be made somewhere.

It becomes trouble when whispers and innuendos reach the ears of your boss. It becomes real trouble when, after a little snooping and a little window peeping, he learns you are screwing his college freshman son. It becomes big trouble when you tell your boss that you are the only thing that keeps his firm from being a comical relic on The Street and that, if he continues to interfere in your personal life, you will take his business and his son. Blood and money are very personal. That’s when, through a middleman or a cutout or a guy who knows a guy, I get a call.

But who knows? Maybe it wasn’t a mistake to fall for the kid. If they had baseball in common, that would have been plenty for Jack. His error was not how he used his mouth with the kid, but opening his mouth to the father. It was the blow-up, not the blowjobs. My mother often said: Be careful because a big mouth will always get you in trouble.

A Manhattan-bound local pulled in and I got on. Below me, a young man waited outside of Shea Stadium with two tickets for tonight’s game that wouldn’t be used. Probably wearing a brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

Jenny put a Guinness in front of me while NY1 played on the plasma screen over the wooden bar at my local Woodside pub. I could see some reporter standing with Shea in the background, but with the sound low and the jukebox blaring Bono, I couldn’t hear anything. Because it was the top of the hour, I figured he was not reporting on the outcome of the game.

“Can you believe it?” Jenny said. “They had this story on before. Some poor guy is going to a ballgame and gets stabbed to death. You can’t ride the subway anymore without some wacko trying to kill you with a knife. First that kid from Texas gets stabbed in the chest. And I get the creeps just thinking about that poor guy and the handsaw. I’m taking buses everywhere from now on.”

“More importantly, love, did the Mets win?”

She slapped my hand playfully. “You’re bad.” She walked to the other end of the bar where a couple was signaling for a refill.

Yes, tonight I think I am.

BAGGAGE CLAIM

BY PATRICIA KING

JFK Airport

Read. Just keep reading. She had to try to lose herself in the story. Let it block out the shaking and shuttering. She gripped the book with sweating hands. She rubbed her knee. There was no way in this cramped space to ease the throbbing.

The man in the seat next to her was sleeping. He had changed places with a Hasid who had refused to sit next to a woman. When this new guy first sat down, he had scared her. He looked like an Arab. His pockmarked skin gave him a sinister appearance, and she had tried not to think of him in such a prejudiced way. He had a nice smile. But hijackers could smile.

“Are you going home or do you live in the UK?” She had worked up her courage to question him while she waited behind him in line for the loo. She kept saying “loo” now, after a week with the people in the London office.

“Home,” he had said. That smile again. It did look kind of threatening. “I’m from the Bronx, and I can’t wait to get back.”

The accent was unmistakable. Bronx, for sure. He was probably Puerto Rican. “Me too. Riverdale.” She tried to smile back at him. The last word came out sounding apologetic. People from the real Bronx hated Riverdale; she was sure of that. It shamed her to have suspected him. He seemed so benign now. He could be a victim, not a terrorist.

The plane touched down with a jolt that woke him.

She wiped her palms on the rough fabric of the seat. Rivulets of rain ran over the window glass.

“Welcome to JFK,” an intimate and humorous voice began over the loudspeaker. “If I hadn’t just spent nearly eight hours cavorting with all of you on this plane, I would think we were still in London, given this gloomy weather.”

Friday. The traffic would be awful. And she had her car in long-term parking. The Triboro Bridge would be backed up. And the rain would make it worse.

She got her black rolly down from the overhead bin and waited in the aisle to get off the plane.

“Thank you for flying Virgin Atlantic,” they said by way of goodbye.

The walk to Passport Control went on forever. The specter of having to drive over the bridge haunted her. Suppose she got stuck in traffic in the middle of the bridge with her heart beating out of control. She would have to get off. She would have to. This started back in October of 2001, returning from Washington on a Sunday night—at dusk on a misty evening, driving along, sipping the latte she had picked up at the rest stop. The bottoms of her feet had gotten sweaty when suddenly there was the Delaware Memorial Bridge— the double span sticking up above some light fog. It would have looked pretty, if it hadn’t frozen her heart. She couldn’t drive up there.

She had moved behind a blue Volkswagen Passat in the middle lane and hung onto the steering wheel for dear life. She had stayed behind that car and couldn’t look left or right until they got through the toll on the other side. Heart still pounding, she had pulled over at the first opportunity. It was almost an hour before she could get back on the road.

A few months later, she had gotten lost trying to get back to Manhattan from Newark without driving on the Pulaski Skyway. Worse and worse. Two weeks ago, she had driven down through New Jersey and gone through the Lincoln Tunnel and back up to the Bronx, just to avoid the George Washington Bridge. So ashamed, she hadn’t even told her sister. But when she finally mentioned it to Roger, who was hardly a close friend, he immediately asked, “Did this start after 9/11?” The idea had shocked her.

“Go to line twenty-seven.” The short, sharp-faced African-American woman at Passport Control jabbed a finger in the direction of a booth.

The officer’s face was round and kind, but he looked at her with hard, searching eyes. She handed him her passport. He scanned it and watched the screen, then handed it back with a perfunctory, “Welcome home.”

The baggage was slow. The rain, she guessed. The Hasidic guy stood near her, waiting. The rainy weather made her knee worse. She tried to keep her weight off it.

On 9/11 she had been down in Soho, getting physical therapy. She hadn’t gone to the office that morning. A lot of people weren’t at work for odd reasons. They were late. They called in sick. She had heard a lot of stories like this. A woman who went to pick up her new eyeglasses and never got up there. A guy from Jersey whose little girl had cried and said, “Daddy, don’t go.” The father had stopped so long comforting his kid, he missed his train. The kid had saved her father.

Her knee had saved her. By rights she should have been on the ninety-seventh floor.

After her therapy appointment, while icing her knee, she felt the gym go quiet. They were all staring at the burning skyscraper on the TV, asking each other, “Which building?” “What kind of plane?”

Her office would be flooded with light. On such a sunny day, the intensity of the light always made her giddy. Working up there made you feel important, even if all you did was put numbers into spreadsheets all day. Gerry and Margaret, sitting at their desks, would be silhouetted against the windows on a day like this. Like ghosts. Only black. Only they couldn’t be sitting. Not with this going on in the other tower.

She stood, gazing at the burning building, completely silent, feeling guilty that she was thinking about how much it would hurt her knee to be walking down all those stairs with them. The second plane hit. “Terrorists,” was all she said. She went and put on her clothes.

She had a portable radio in her gym bag. Only one station was broadcasting. One tense male voice.

On her way out, she glanced over at the knot of people gathered in front of the big TV near the treadmills and Stair-Masters. Radio to her ear, she left without looking at the screen.

Out on Broadway, the air was acrid with smoke and stung her throat. People streamed up the sidewalks. Ambulances and firetrucks careened south toward the towers. An EMT vehicle with the words Valley Stream Rescue Squad on its side went screaming by. How the hell could they have gotten here so fast?

A crowd gathered around her. “What are they saying?” A short guy in a snug gray suit pointed to the radio. She held it out to him. The battery was weak and the street so noisy that he had to put his finger in his opposite ear to hear it. Two big African-American women with tears streaming down their faces stopped and asked for news. She just shrugged and gestured to the guy holding her radio.

One of them was sobbing uncontrollably. “They are jumping out of the top floors.”

They couldn’t be. No one would do that. Gerry wouldn’t do that. Harry Ardini wouldn’t do that. She looked at the other woman, who just nodded and pulled her friend away, up Broadway.

She pictured the wide expanse of her office. The fichus tree next to her chair burning. The light from it shining in the frame on her desk. Her sister’s picture smiling through the bright red reflected flames.

The guy handed the radio back to her. She put it to her ear and started walking north with the herd.

The voice on the radio was suddenly hysterical. “We’re losing it! We’re losing it! OMIGOD!”

She turned and looked down Broadway. Her building was collapsing. Boom! Boom! Boom! Like one of those structures in a demolition movie. A huge cloud of thick gray dust rushed toward them up the street. She turned again and ran. Past the church with the pealing bells. The sexton had thought to do that. As if he were in some medieval village that had the plague.

She had walked all the way to Riverdale that day. Over the Henry Hudson Bridge. Her knee never recovered, had not stopped hurting since. She never returned to physical therapy. Just the thought of physical therapy brought back that picture in the papers the next day. The guy falling though the air. Head down. The familiar building behind him. She had looked and looked at that picture. Sometimes she was sure it was Harry. Other days, it didn’t look like his hair.

The buzzer on the luggage carousel sounded and the metal belt started to move. Bags moved down the slope onto the belt in front of her. The Hasidic guy peered at a huge black one, frowned, and then let it pass. It came around again. Blood dripped from a small opening where the zippers met at the top. Bright and shining, it pooled onto the metal of the conveyor. She breathed in to scream as it went by. She held her breath. People would call her a hysteric. Seeing blood all the time, knowing that if she had jumped that day her body would have liquefied. That’s what they said. That a body hitting the ground from such a height just liquefies. The bottoms of her feet were sweating. Just like driving over a bridge.

Her bag came tumbling down the slope. She saw the green ribbons on the zipper. Not red. Not blood. She grabbed her bag, turned in her card at Customs, and dragged it to the nearest restroom. She couldn’t drive over the bridge. She just couldn’t.

In the handicapped stall, she sat on the toilet and laid the big bag down. Inside was her toiletries kit, with all that stuff you can’t carry with you on a plane anymore.

She unzipped it and pulled out a pink disposable razor. She wedged it under the toilet paper dispenser and pressed hard. It bent but would not break. She put her foot against it too and finally it popped with a loud metallic crack.

“Are you okay in there?” a voice from another stall called.

“Fine,” she said.

She retrieved the razor blade from the floor and held it carefully between her thumb and forefinger. This is better, she thought. She could stop the pictures in her head of Harry liquefying on the sidewalk. She could finally do what she was supposed to have done. She cut along the blue veins on her wrists. She held out her arms and let the blood drip on the green ribbons, running them red, like the blood in baggage claim.

ARRIVEDERCI, ALDO

BY KIM SYKES

Long Island City

I love my job. How many people can say that?

I could be working security in a department store over in Manhattan, where they make you follow old ladies with large purses and mothers with baby strollers. Or in an office tower doing Homeland Security detail, looking at photo IDs all day and pretending I care whether you belong in a building full of uninteresting lawyers and accountants, most of whom come to work hoping I’d find a reason to stop them from going in. Or guarding a bank where you’re so bored that you consider robbing it yourself or kicking one of those lousy machines that charge two dollars to do what a bank is supposed to do for free.

My friends tell me I got it pretty good because I work security at Silvercup Studios where they shoot television shows, movies, and commercials. Not to mention the fact that it’s not far from my walkup in Long Island City. My neighbors treat me like I’m a celebrity. Which is pretty funny since my mother worked at Silvercup in the ’50s baking bread and nobody ever treated her like she was somebody, except me and my father.

Yeah, okay, I see lots of good-looking men and pretty girls, famous singers and movie stars. No big deal. They’re just like you and me. Especially without the makeup and the fancy clothes. They all come in with uncombed hair, comfortable shoes, and sunglasses. Some of them got egos to match the size of the cars they drive up in. They arrive with their assistants and their entourages carrying everything from little dogs to adopted babies. Some of them pride themselves as just folks and come in on the subway. The one thing they all got in common is that I make them sign in. It’s my job. They might be celebrities, but I treat them all the same.

There are exceptions, like the directors and the producers. They don’t bother to sign in. Every day they walk past my security desk and one of their “people” will whisper to me who they are. You’d think they were royalty or something. I check their names off a special list the office gives me. The boss says that they pay the bills and we should make them happy no matter what. I guess when you’re in charge of making multimillion-dollar movies, it’s the little things that matter, like not having to write down your own name.

Then there’s everybody in between, the ones who are not movie stars—the supporting and background actors, backup singers, and the hoochie girls in the music videos. When they come in, all eager and excited, they usually put their names in the wrong places and walk through the wrong doors. Especially the first-timers. They don’t pay much attention to anything except the hopes and dreams in their heads.

Last, but not least, there’s the crew. Most of these guys I know by sight. They come in when it’s still dark outside and that’s usually when they leave too. They walk past me half asleep. It’s hard work getting up before dawn every day, unloading, setting up and breaking down and loading up again— not to mention looking after all those people. So sometimes I try to make their days a little easier. If I’ve never seen them before, they sign in. If I know them, I let them go through, but you didn’t hear that from me. You see, we got thirteen studios and they’re in a constant state of shooting something. So sometimes I have to bend the rules.

* * *

The phone at my security desk rings and I almost fall backwards in my chair. It’s probably the boss’s office telling me about an unexpected delivery or adding a name to the list. You see, they got it under control up there. The next day’s schedule and sign-in sheets are usually done at midnight and placed on my desk for the following morning. We run a tight ship around here, so when the phone rings it’s pretty important. I answer it on the second ring.

“Yes, sir?” I straighten up in my seat. It’s the boss himself.

“Listen, Josephine, we got an intruder walking around the premises.”

I can hardly believe my ears. The news makes me stand up and grab hold of my nightstick, my only weapon.

“I’m sorry, sir,” comes tumbling out of my mouth. I feel as if I’ve let him down. Being the only woman in security here at Silvercup, I know I have to work harder than everybody else.

“He’s walking in on sets, Jo. He’s ruined a shot in Studio 7, for Christ’s sake. See who the hell this guy is, will you? Probably some damn background actor looking to be discovered.”

It happens occasionally that extra players, bored with waiting around, go exploring the place in hopes of finding the next job. Sooner or later a production assistant spots them and sends the poor thing back to where he or she belongs. The fact is, Silvercup is the last place you’ll be discovered. By the time actors get here, they’re just numbers in a producer’s budget. If you’re not in the budget, you’re not in the shot. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but I can count them on one hand.

“Anybody say what he looks like?” I ask my boss.

“White, around thirty. Wearing clogs.”

“Clogs?”

“That’s what they tell me. Just take care of it, Jo.”

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

There are thirteen studios here at Silvercup, and at least two sign-in sheets for each one. We’re talking hundreds of people. It’s barely 10 o’clock and the place is packed. This is not going to be easy. On one of the sheets, a couple of wise-asses signed in as Mick Jagger and Flavor Flav. They came in early. I can tell by the names before and after them. That means these comedians are with the crew. I take a moment to remember who came by my desk just before dawn. There was nobody I didn’t know. And I would have remembered a guy wearing clogs.

The new guard, Kenneth, is checking out the Daily News and eating his second meal of the morning. His plate is piled high. He is reading his horoscope and is oblivious to my panic. I watch him dunk a powdered donut into milky coffee and drip the muddy mess on his blue vest. I hand him a paper napkin and look past him at the tiny security screens mounted on the wall. Like I said, there are thirteen studios here, with at least three times that many bathrooms, not to mention dressing rooms, storage rooms, production offices. These little screens are useless to me. You’d think we’d have better video equipment here, but we don’t.

Still, nobody-but-nobody gets past me. I pride myself on that. I’m famous, if you will, for keeping the place tight and secure. Okay, I’m not going to make it seem like I’m guarding the U.S. Mint, but we get a lot of people trying to come in here, like rag reporters or crazed fans or desperate actors. They don’t have weapons but they have things that are far more lethal to us like pens, cameras, and unrealistic expectations. It’s my job to protect Silvercup and everybody inside from all that. My job and reputation are at stake, and I’m not going to let some clog-wearing twerp or donut-eating knucklehead ruin it.

Just my luck, my other two colleagues are at lunch. That leaves me and the munching machine, who since he got here has been visiting the different sets and mooching free meals. I watch him fold the News and start the Post. He reminds me of myself when I started on the job years ago. After the rush of the morning, it slows down to a crawl. Keeping yourself awake is a chore. Thanks to plenty of coffee, newspapers and magazines, and hopefully some good conversation, you can remain alert most of your shift.

Then there’s the food. Each production has it’s own catered breakfast, lunch, and if they’re here long enough, dinner. My first six months I gained twenty pounds and it’s been with me ever since. One day it’s fresh lobsters from a restaurant chain shooting commercials, then it’s a week of birthday cakes from a television show. Here, at any given time, someone somewhere is eating something. Makes you wonder where the term “starving actor” came from.

I’m not too confident in this boy’s abilities, especially after I see him bite into his breakfast burrito and squirt half of it on his lap. But he’s the only guy I got on the desk right now, since the other two have gone off on a break. So I tell him to keep an eye out for a white guy wearing clogs and to call me on the walkie if he sees anything suspicious. He doesn’t bother to ask me what’s going on or about the clogs even, and I don’t bother to fill him in. I give him two weeks, if that.

I take today’s schedule with me. I have to be careful not to excite or disturb the productions going on. Today we’ve got four commercials, two cop shows, three sitcoms, one movie, and two music videos shooting, not to mention the Home Shopping Network, which has it’s permanent home here. That means hundreds of actors and crew roaming the place. I decide to go up and work my way down. I don’t bother with the top floor where the boss’s office is. I figure a guy in clogs is not interested in that. A guy in clogs wants attention. He wants to be discovered. And that means I got to go where the directors and the actors are. I take the freight elevator to the second floor.

When the doors open, I see a herd of suits, some eating bagels, others reading or having intense conversations. It’s like I just walked in on a business conference at some firm on Wall Street, only the men are wearing makeup and the women have rollers in their hair. I move past them to Frank, a production assistant I know pretty well. He’s worked here at Silvercup almost as long as I have.

“Yo, Frank, all your people accounted for?” I ask him.

Frank silently counts the actors.

“Yeah. Why?”

“We got somebody walking around the place. He screwed up a shot in 7.”

“Moron.”

“Yeah. You see anyone who doesn’t belong, call me.”

“You got it, Jo.

“Oh, and he’s wearing clogs.”

Frank raises an eyebrow.

“Don’t ask,” I tell him.

I walk to the other side of the building. Past storage rooms that have complicated lock systems installed. You have to have a combination or a special key. On some of them you need both. I try the doors anyway. Better to be sure.

My schedule says they’re setting up a music video in the next studio. Whether they want to or not, they usually start shooting later in the day. Pop and rap singers don’t like to get up in the morning. They can afford not to. The crew was there, however, installing stripper poles for a rap video.

“What’s shaking, Jo?” says Dimples, a pot-bellied Irishman carrying heavy cables. I cross the studio floor toward him.

“You won’t believe it,” I say as I approach. “I’ve got some guy walking around the place messing up shots.”

His cheeks flushed, betraying his nickname. “Was he wearing clogs?”

I nearly choke on the chocolate-covered peanuts I just snatched from the Kraft table. “Yeah, you seen him?”

“About ten minutes ago. He walked in here asking for Tony Soprano. I thought he was joking.” Dimples takes off one of his thick gloves and scratches his bulbous nose. “He had an accent. Italian, or maybe Spanish. It’s hard to tell. Tiny guy, though. No bigger than my leg. Kept stuffing bagels into his pants, like he was saving them for later. He creeped me, so I chased him out of here.”

“Which way did he go?” I ask, licking chocolate from my fingers.

“I followed him out to the hall and watched him take the stairs down. That’s the last I saw of him.”

“Thanks.”

I run toward the exit and take the steps two at a time. I figure if I move quickly enough, I can catch up with him. Besides, how fast can a guy in clogs go? But when I get to the bottom landing, I have to sit down. They say, if you don’t use it you lose it. And after all these years, I have definitely lost it. When I was younger, if somebody had said to me I would be tired after running down a flight of stairs, I would have kicked his ass. Now the very thought of lifting my foot to carry out my threat exhausts me. Not counting vacations and holidays, I have mostly spent my time sitting behind the security desk watching others come and go. The last time I chased anyone was awhile back when a mother-daughter team tried to get an autographed picture of Sarah Jessica Parker. They would have succeeded if they hadn’t been as out of shape as I was.

I look down at my ankles. They’re swollen. It makes me think of my mother, who would come home from work, worn out, same swollen feet as mine, in the days when this place supplied bread for schools in Queens and the Bronx and parts of Manhattan. Now, instead of filling their stomachs with dough, we fill their heads with it.

The mayor keeps telling us that New York City has grown safer now that violent crimes are at the lowest rates they’ve been in a decade. That’s true everywhere except on television and in the movies. It’s as if Hollywood didn’t get the memo. Production companies spit out cop show after cop show, movies full of mobsters and gang-bangers who kill and rape, rob and shoot one another—in the name of entertainment. It’s not Silvercup’s fault. We don’t write the scripts. We just provide the space to film them in.

I push myself up from the steps and enter the first floor. First thing, down the hall, I see two guys about to come to blows. Any moment the fists are going to fly. I stand quietly off to the side and watch. I know that when the time comes for one of them to throw the first punch, they’ll calm down and probably laugh or pat each other on the back. This time they do both.

“Hey, Jo, what’s up?” Edward, the one with the perfect teeth, calls me over. I shake his manicured hand. He plays a serial killer on one of the cop shows. He’s on for the whole season. Nice guy, great family man, good kids.

“Same ole, same ole,” I answer. “You seen a guy running around here in clogs?”

The actors laugh, thinking I am about to tell a joke.

“I’m not kidding.” I say this with my best poker face.

Ed drops his grin. “No, just us up here running lines before our scene. Why?”

“Nothing serious. Sorry I interrupted you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the new guy chirps. He has a shaved head, which from a distance made him look thuggish, but now that I’m closer to him, I can see that he’s a kid barely out of school. Must be his first big part. This morning when he signed in he was a little anxious around the eyes; polite though. Probably right out of college and here he is playing a street thug, the kind his mother and father sent him to university so as not to become. If this script is like all the others, his character’s going to be shot or killed and sent off to prison by the afternoon. That’s show business.

I stick my hands in my pockets. It’s cold in here, I want to get back to my desk where I keep a space heater tucked down below. The boss has the thermostat in the low sixties, even in winter. He says it keeps everybody on their toes.

The next studio is dark except for the set, which looks like a doctor’s office. They’re rehearsing a scene for a pharmaceutical commercial. A very nervous actor in a doctor’s coat is having trouble with his lines. When he gets to the part about the side effects, he starts to laugh. But no one else thinks it’s funny. Time is money and everyone is frustrated, including the director, who makes the actor even more uncomfortable by sighing loudly and storming off between takes.

After my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I glance around the room. The crew, producers, and other actors are standing around, quietly waiting for the next take, hoping this day will come to an end so they can all go home. Everyone except what I will later describe to the press as a deranged imp—no more than five feet tall. He’s standing off to the side, eating a bagel that he has just pulled out of his tights.

He has on a billowy white shirt that looks like it’s from one of those Shakespearean movies—it’s hanging over his wiry shoulders and flared out past his nonexistent hips. On his small feet are a pair of genuine wooden clogs.

We make eye contact and he quickly figures out why I’m here. The actor and the director head back to the set. I search around for a couple of guys who I can recruit to help me. When I turn back, the little guy is standing right next to me.

“Have you seen Tony Soprano?” he whispers in an Italian accent. His eyes are bright, even in the dark, and his breath smells of cheese.

“Quiet on the set!” The alarm bell rings, signaling that the camera’s about to roll. I grab his skinny arm but he twists around and frees himself from my grip.

“Action!” The director cues the actor, who begins his lines.

“I’m a doctor, so people are surprised when I tell them that I suffer from irritable bowel syndrome.”

No one is watching me or the imp as he makes his way behind several clients from the pharmaceutical industry who are engrossed in the actor’s performance. Imagine spending a good part of your career having meetings and conference calls about irritable bowels. I squeeze past them and follow my quarry who is creeping closer to the set.

“If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, do like I did. Call your doctor. Side effects include stomachache, fever, bloody stool, and on rare occasions, death.”

This time the actor does not laugh, but the imp does, as he dashes right in front of the camera.

“Cut!” What the . . . ?” The director is about to have a nervous breakdown.

I know better than to follow the imp in front of the camera. I figure there will be enough people waiting to kill him for messing up this shot. Someone switches on the overhead lights just in time to see him open the door and scurry out.

The first year The Sopranos shot here were my hardest as a security guard. We had the press, fans, everybody coming by asking to speak to the fictional mob boss, Tony Soprano. We even had real gangsters come around. It wasn’t easy turning these kinds of fans away. We had to hire two extra security guards to handle the crush. But now the show is winding down. The actors are bored. The reporters have moved on. Things were getting back to normal until this clog-footed fruitcake came along.

I go out into the hall but there is no sign of him. I call Kenneth on the walkie but he doesn’t answer. He’s probably in the john, making room for another meal. Did I say he’d last two weeks? Make that one.

As I struggle to put my walkie back in its cradle, the imp exits a john and sprints into the stairwell. By this time I’m joined by the actor/doctor, the director, and several guys from the crew.

We follow him up one flight. My heart is thumping. He better hope I catch him before the director does. I can see the tabloid headline: IMP MAIMED AT SILVERCUP. We chase him down the narrow hall toward the Wall Street herd waiting to go on set. Because he’s limber and small, the imp cuts through the crowd barely touching anybody.

“Stop him!” I yell out.

A few of the actors look at me like I’m a 300-pound woman who just walked into a gym. Let’s face it. In a place where there are actors and little guys in clogs, I’m the odd one. Thankfully, a banker type catches on and grabs the imp from behind, lifting him off the ground. An actress who looks like an H&R Block agent screams. Everyone panics.

Coffee and bagels splatter and fly into the air. This is the imp’s second big mistake. You don’t mess up a director’s shot and you don’t spill coffee on an actor’s wardrobe before he goes on. I start to feel sorry for the little guy, until he reaches back and grabs his captor by his private parts and gives them a yank.

“Aaaah, Christ!” groans the actor, who lets go. The imp lands on his feet and darts toward the east end of the building.

Now this is where it gets interesting. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to. It’s the kind of stuff that Hollywood pays big bucks for. I got to remember to put that in the screenplay I’m writing. Did I mention that I’m writing a screenplay?

The light outside of the Home Shopping Network set is flashing red. This means only one thing: No one can enter. They’re shooting. I’ve seen movie stars stop in their tracks when they see it. Directors, producers, even the boss. But the imp ignores it and, once again, goes in without hesitation.

I move to stop the others from following him, but then I realize I don’t have to. The consequences of entering a set when the red light is flashing differs from set to set. It can be anything from a stern talking-to, to getting punched out by a Teamster, to having the cops called in to haul you away. Home Shopping has a full-time bodyguard and ex-cop named Zack, who carries a .38. Whatever happens, it’s going to be the last set the imp crashes.

I wonder how long it will take for Zack to spot him. As soon as I finish the thought, the doors burst open and Zack emerges with the imp tightly pinned under his arm and a meaty hand clamped over his mouth. None of us say anything.

Ready for revenge, we all silently followed Zack down the hall to the bathroom. It’s like watching David and Goliath. Man, the little guy is strong. His arms bulge like small cantaloupes and his legs are like iron rods. Every time Zack tries to go through the door, the imp’s arms and legs stop him. This goes on for a while until the imp bites down on Zack’s hand. The ex-cop screams like a eunuch and drops him to the ground.

We don’t waste time. We all dive on top of him, arms and legs grabbing and pulling at other arms and legs. I swear I have him until I find myself pinned to the ground by a sweaty stockbroker. A Teamster has to be stopped from strangling the director. By the time we realize what’s going on, the imp has wiggled out from under us.

“Ciao!” he calls over to us before entering the stairwell a couple of feet away.

I watch Zack and the others follow him up. The next floor is administrative and is rigged with an alarm. His only option is the rooftop, and from there he’ll be trapped. So I save myself the climb and take the freight elevator to the roof.

A couple of years ago, the boss had a series of solar panels and plants installed to help generate electricity for the building. I thought it was a crock myself, but apparently it works. At least it’s gotten the boss off our backs about portable heaters and keeping the doors open for too long, and in August I can take home all the tomatoes I can eat.

On three sides of the building, Silvercup Studios is encircled by two exit ramps to the Queensboro Bridge and the elevated subway tracks of the 7 train. Four flights down is the street. Unless the imp can do like Spiderman and climb brick, he’s mine.

Row after row of raised square planting beds lie next to solar panels angled to the east. Large generators, the size of trucks, stand off to the west side harvesting the energy. Above me is the towering S of the famous SILVERCUP sign that lights up the entrance to Queens from the bridge at night. The sign stretches from one end of the building to the other, above the elevated tracks of the subway.

I walk to the west to get a better view of the roof and spot the imp standing under the P, waving at me like I’m his long-lost sister.

I don’t like coming up here when it’s not warm, especially on days like today when there’s nothing but gray clouds and a damp wind that cuts through my thin uniform right to my bones. I can’t wait to get my frozen hands on this little creep. But before I start after him, Zack and the others come bursting out of the rooftop door like the Canadian Mounties, only without the horses.

We spread out and begin walking slowly toward him, just like in the movies, but the closer we get, the further he backs away, until finally he reaches the far edge of the building. Listen, I don’t want the imp to jump. His death is the last thing I need on my conscience, so I motion for everyone else to hold back while I try and talk to him, even though the traffic from the bridge and the trucks unloading below make that impossible.

I wish I could tell you that I get him to move from the edge or that he drops that stupid grin and runs sobbing into my arms, but things like that only happen on television. Real life is much more complicated. Instead, he rubs his hands along his thighs and then, with an operatic flourish, he calls out to us, “Arrivederci!” Then he turns around and jumps.

I must’ve looked like the wide-mouth bass in the window of the fish store on Queens Plaza South. At least that’s what I felt like: a cold dead fish. I ran with the others to the edge, expecting to see Italian sauce splattered all over the pavement below. Just one story down, however, there’s the imp, rubbing his hands on his thighs again and grabbing hold of a rope hanging from the 25A exit ramp of the Queensboro Bridge.

I forgot that this end of the building has an extension to it: a freight garage that’s only three stories high, connected to the main Silvercup building. It looks like he got into the building by lowering himself from the exit ramp to the garage and then climbed up the emergency fire ladder to the main building. When I tell the boss about this, he’s going to lose it.

I decide not to follow him, especially since he’s scurrying up that rope faster than an Olympic gymnast. Besides, now that this jerk’s off the premises, he’s no longer my problem. If this were a television show, it would be a good time to cut to commercial. I could use a donut and a hot cup of coffee, only my curiosity is getting the better of me.

We all stand there and watch as he scurries up the rope jammed between the crack of the concrete barrier and onto the exit ramp to 25A. He loses one of his clogs but it doesn’t faze him. Like a tight-rope walker, he steps along the ledge, against traffic, to exit 25, which runs parallel to 25A, but then veers off and under the elevated subway tracks of the 7 train. Once he’s on exit 25, he crosses the lane and hops up on the ledge again and reaches for another rope. This one is tied to the iron gridwork that holds up the track, and instead of going up, he goes down. We lose sight of him behind the Silvercup parking lot, so we all rush to the west end of the roof just in time to see him running, with one clog, up Queens Plaza South toward the subway entrance a block away.

The End.

Or so I think.

* * *

A week later, I’m sitting with Kenneth at the desk (yes, he’s still here and he’s five pounds heavier) and we’re reading the News. A headline screams, ALIEN ACTOR NABBED BY HOMELAND SECURITY, and there’s a picture of the imp, smiling for his close-up.

His name is Aldo Phillippe and he’s a street performer from Naples who overstayed his visa. He came to the United States to do three things: meet Tony Soprano, get discovered for the movies, find a wife.

According to the paper, Aldo decided that a good way to get publicity was to climb to the top of the Statue of Liberty, crawl through the window of her crown, and sit on her head. You probably think they caught him because they have better security over at the Liberty, but it wasn’t that. According to the article, they had to close the visitors’ center and chase him around for over an hour. The only way they caught him was by cornering him at the tip of the island, and evidently Aldo can’t swim. If he’s lucky, they won’t send him to Guantánamo Bay.

I keep Aldo’s clog on my desk filled with pens for people to use when they sign in. No one notices it except when the director and actors who were with me that day come back to work. Everybody else is too busy making entertainment.

PART II

OLD QUEENS

HOLLYWOOD LANES

BY MEGAN ABBOTT

Forest Hills

The way their banner-blue uniforms pressed up against each other—the wilting collar corners, her twitchy cocktail apron and his regulation pinman trousers—I was only a kid, but I knew it was something and it made my head go hot, my stomach pinch. Eddie worked the alley, made the lanes shine with that burring rotary machine. Carol slung beer at the cocktail lounge, heels digging in the heavy carpet, studded each night with peanut skins, cigarette ashes, cherry stems.

They were there every day, at 3:30, in the dark, narrow alley behind the pinsetting machines. And I saw them, saw them plain as day while I sat just outside the machine room on a metal stool, picking summer scabs off my knee. First time by accident, just hiding out back there, where it was quiet and no one came around.

Eddie’d been there a month, he and his wife Sherry, who ran concessions with my mother over by the shoe station. He had blue-black hair, slick like those olives in the jar at the Italian grocery store. When he walked through the joint, coming on his shift, everyone—the waitresses, even old Jimmy, the sweaty-faced manager—lit up like a row of sparklers because he was a friendly guy with a lot of smiles and his uniform always finely pressed and the strong smell of limey cologne coming off him like a movie star or something.

No one could figure him and Sherry. Sherry with the damp, faded-blond features, eyes empty as the rubber dish tub she was always resting her dusty elbows on. Cracking gum, staring open-mouthed at the crowds, the families, the amateur baseball team, the VFW fellas, the beery young marrieds swinging their arms around, skidding down the lanes, collapsing into each other’s laps after each crash of the pins, Sherry never moved, except to shift her weight from one spindly leg to the other.

Just shy of thirteen, I was at Hollywood Lanes every day that summer. Husband three months gone, my mother was working double shifts to keep me in shoes, to hear her tell it. I helped the dishwashers, loading racks of cloudy glasses into the steaming machine, the only girl they ever let do it. Some days, I helped Georgie spray out the shoes or use Clean Strike on the balls.

But I always beat tracks at 3:30 so I could be behind the pin racks. Eddie and Carol, his hands spread across her waist, leaning into her, saying things to her. What was he saying? What was he telling her?

* * *

Sherry’s face looked tired in the yellow haze of the fluorescent pretzel carousel. “Kid,” she said, “you’re here all the time.”

I didn’t say anything. My mother was stacking cups in the corner, squirming in her uniform, too tight across her chest.

“You know Eddie? You know him?” Sherry gestured over to the lanes.

I nodded. My mother spun one of the waxy cups on her finger, watching.

“I know what’s what,” Sherry said, looking over at my mother. I felt something ring in my chest, like a buzzer or school bell.

“You don’t know,” my mother responded, looking at the rotating hot dogs, thick and glossy.

“I got eyes,” Sherry said, gaze fixed on the lanes, on Eddie running the floor waxer over them jauntily. He liked using the machine. He kind of danced with it, not in a showy way, but there was a rhythm to the way he moved it, twirled around on it like he was ice-skating. Billy, the last guy, twice Eddie’s age, looked like he would fall asleep as he did it, weaving down each lane, hung over from a long night at Marshall’s Tavern. His hands always shook when he handed out shoes. Then he threw up all over the men’s room during Family Night and Jimmy fired him.

“Don’t tell me I don’t got eyes,” Sherry was saying.

“We all got eyes,” my mother said. “But there’s nothing to see.” Her brow wet with grease from the grill, her eye shadow smeared. “There’s not a goddamned thing to see.”

I didn’t say anything. I rarely said anything. But something was funny in the way Sherry was looking at Eddie. She always had that blank look, but it used to seem like a little girl, a doll, limbs soft and loose, black buttons for eyes. Now, though, it was different. It was different, but I wasn’t sure how.

* * *

Back there in that space behind the pins, it was like backstage and no one could see even though all eyes were facing it. As soon as you walked in a bowling alley, that was where your eyes went. You couldn’t help it. But you never imagined what could be going on behind the pins, so tidy and white.

And each day I’d watch. It was a hundred degrees or more back there. It was filled with noise, all the sharp cracks echoing through the place. But I was watching the way Carol trembled. Because she always seemed so cool and easy, with her long pane of dark hair, her thick fringe of dark lashes pasted on in the ladies’ room one by one. (“They get her tips, batting those babies like a raccoon in heat,” Myrna, the old lady who worked dayshift concessions, said. “Those and the pushup brassiere.”)

* * *

Carol was talking to Diane, the other cocktail waitress. Diane used to work at the Stratton, but to hear her tell it, the minute her tits dropped a half-inch, they put her out on her can. She hated the Lanes. “How much tips can I get from these Knights of Columbus types?” she always groaned. She worked at Whitestone Lanes too and had plenty to say about the customers there.

I was sitting at a table in the cocktail lounge, looking at pictures of Princess Grace in someone’s leftover Life magazine. I wasn’t supposed to be in there, but no one ever bothered me until happy hour.

“She can jaw all she wants,” Carol said, eating green cherries from the dish on the bar. “It’s all noise to me.” She was talking about Sherry.

“She should take it up with her man, she has something to say about things,” Diane said.

“I don’t care what she does.”

“What I hear, she can’t show her face in Ozone Park. They all remember her family. Trash from trash.”

“I’m going to haul bills tonight, I can tell. Look at ’em,” Carol said, surveying the softball team swarming in like bright bumblebees.

“Yeah, good luck,” Diane added, then nodded at Carol’s neckline. “Bend, bend, bend.”

* * *

In the bathroom once, right after, I pretended to be fixing my hair, snapping and resnapping a rubber band around my slack ponytail. I knew Carol would be in there, she always went in there after. When she came out of the stall, I looked at her in the mirror. Her face steaming pink, she brushed her shiny hair in long strokes, swooping her arm up and down and swiveling a little like she was dancing or something. She was watching her own face in the mirror. I wondered what she was watching for.

I saw the dust on her back, between her shoulder blades. I wanted to reach my hand out and brush it away.

* * *

Eddie was oiling the lanes and saw me watching, eating french fries off a paper plate at the head of lane 3. “And there’s my girl.” He said it like we talked all the time, but it was the first time he’d ever said anything to me. “Stuck inside every day. Don’t you like to go to the Y or something? Go to the city pool?”

“I don’t like to swim,” I answered. Which was true, but my mother didn’t want me to go there by myself. When summer started, she let me go once to a pool day with the kids at school, but when I got home, she was sitting on the front steps of our building like she’d been waiting for me for hours. Her face was red and puffy and I never saw her so glad to see me. That was the only time I went. Besides, she’d never liked it. Mr. Upton, before he left, was always telling her I’d get diseases at the public pool.

“All kids like to swim, don’t they?” Eddie was saying. He tilted his head and smiled. “Don’t girls like to show off their swimming suits?”

I ate another fry, even though it was too hot and made my mouth burn, lips stinging with salt.

“I always liked to go, just splash around and stuff,” he said. “You got no one to take you, huh?”

“I don’t really swim much,” I said.

He nodded with a grin, like he was figuring something out. “I get it. Well, I’d take you, but I guess your daddy wouldn’t like it.”

I felt my thigh slide on the plastic seat. I looked at the far end of the lanes. I felt my leg come unstuck and slide off the edge of the seat and it was shaking. “He’s gone,” I said.

Eddie paused for a flickering second before he smiled. “Then I guess I got a chance.”

* * *

Fred Upton was my mother’s husband. My real old man died when I was a baby. He had some kind of infection that went to his brain.

There were some guys in between, but two years ago it was all about Mr. Upton. We moved from Kew Gardens when she got tangled up with him and quit her job at Leona Pick selling dresses. She’d met Mr. Upton working there, sold him a billowy nightgown for his fiancée, and he took her out for spaghetti with clams at LaStella on Queens Boulevard that very night. They got hitched at City Hall three weeks later.

Before he left, times were pretty good. It was always trips to Austin Street to buy new shoes with t-straps and lunch at the Hamburger Train and going in the women’s clothing store with the soft carpet, running our hands through the linen and seersucker dresses—with names like buttercup yellow, grasshopper green, goldenrod, strawberry punch. One day he bought her three dresses, soft summer sheaths with boatneck collars like a woman you’d see on TV or the movies. The sales lady wrapped them in tissue for her even when my mother told her they weren’t a gift.

“They’re a gift for you, aren’t they?” the lady had said, her pink–cake-icing lips doing something like a smile.

Those dresses were sitting in the closet now, unworn for months, yellowing, smelling like stale perfume, old smoke. Never saw my mother out of one of her two uniforms these days, except when she slept in the foldout couch, usually in her slip. Some days I tugged off her pantyhose while she slept.

“He said he was going to Aqueduct,” I heard my mother say on the telephone to a girlfriend soon after he left. “But his sister tells me he’s in Miami Beach.”

It had been three months now, and wherever Mr. Upton went, he wasn’t in Queens. Someone my mother met in a bar told her he’d heard Mr. Upton was dead, killed in a hotel fire in Atlantic City the same night he’d left. That was the last I knew. I didn’t ask. I could tell she didn’t want me to. I hoped she’d forget about Mr. Upton and marry a mailman or a guy who worked in an office. As it was, I figured us for six more weeks of this and we’d be moving in with my grandmother in Flushing.

* * *

“She’s got ants in her pants, that one,” Myrna was saying to Sherry. Myrna had a big birthmark on her cheek that twitched whenever she disapproved of something, which was a lot. She was talking about Carol, who she called “Lane 30,” because that was where the cocktail lounge was. “Thinks she’s got it coming and going.”

“Don’t I know. She better watch where she shakes that,” Sherry said, face tight and sallow under the fluorescent light. She looked like a sickly yellow bird, a pinched lemon.

“You got ideas.”

“Sure I got ideas. And I’m no rabbit. Maybe she needs to hear that.”

“I’ll see she does.”

Sherry nodded. Those flat eyes were jumping. That slack lip now drawn tight. Her face all moving, all jigsawing around. She looked different, more interesting. Not pretty. It was all too much for pretty. But you couldn’t take your eyes off it.

* * *

I wasn’t supposed to be back there at all. Once, years before, some kid, not even fifteen years old, was working at the Lanes. He got stuck in the pinsetter machine and died. There were a million different stories of how it happened, and ever since, no one under twenty one was supposed to be back there. But I never got near the clanging machine. I stayed in the alcove where they kept the cleaning equipment.

From there, I could see them and they never saw me. They never even looked around.

Sometimes, Eddie would be whispering to Carol, but I couldn’t hear.

They were just pressed together, and when the machine wasn’t going, when no one was bowling, you could hear the rustle of their uniforms brushing against each other.

The more he moved, the more she did, and I could hear her breathing faster and faster. He covered her and I couldn’t see her except her long hair and her long legs wound round. I was too far to see her eyes. I wanted to see her eyes. It was like he was shaking her into life.

* * *

“Things are getting interesting,” Mrs. Schwartz said to my mother, who was resting against the counter, slapping a rag around tiredly. You can lean, you can clean, Jimmy always said.

“Don’t count on it,” my mother replied.

“Sherry might try harder, wants to keep a man like that,” Mrs. Schwartz said. She was the head of one of the women’s leagues. She was always there early to gossip with Diane. I think she knew Diane from the Stratton, where Mrs. Schwartz met her second husband. They liked to talk about everybody they knew and the terrible things they were doing. “Looks like a singer or something,” she added, twisting in her capris. “A television personality. Even his teeth. He’s got fine teeth.”

“I never noticed his teeth,” my mother said.

“Take note.” Mrs. Schwartz nodded gravely.

Diane walked up, clipping her name tag on her uniform. No one said anything for a minute. They were watching Sherry walk into the ladies’ room, cigarette pack in hand.

“She can’t even be bothered to put on lipstick,” Mrs. Schwartz said, shaking her head. “Comb her hair more than twice a day.”

“Her skin smells like grill,” Diane commented under her breath. The two women laughed without making any noise, hands passing in front of their faces.

Mrs. Schwartz left to meet her teammates surging into the place with their shocks of bright hair and matching shirts the color of creamsicles.

Diane was watching Sherry come out of the bathroom. “Trash,” she said to my mother. Then, in a lower voice, “They used to live upstate. Her father’s doing a hitch in Auburn. Got in a fight at a stoplight, beat a man with a tire iron. Man lost an eye.”

“How do you know?” my mother asked.

“Jimmy told me. He gave her hell for making a call to State Corrections on his dime.” Diane shook her head again. “Mark my words, she’s trouble. Trash from trash.”

I looked over at Sherry, leaning against a ball return to tie her apron. She had her eyes on them, on all of us. She couldn’t hear, but it was like she did.

“Mark my words,” Diane said. “Blood will tell.”

* * *

That whole summer, I’d lie in bed at night waiting for my mother to come home from her shift waiting tables at the tavern. I’d lie in bed and think about Eddie and Carol. It was like how I used to think about Alice Crimmins, the Kew Gardens lady who killed her kids so she could be with her boyfriend. I couldn’t get her face from the newspaper out of my head. Two, three times a night, I’d run around testing all the window latches, the window gates.

Now, though, it was all about Eddie and Carol. I’d stay under my sheets—cool from sitting in the refrigerator for hours while I watched television and ate Chef Boyardee—and think about how they looked, all flushed and pulsing, how you could feel it coming off them. You could feel it burning in them. It made my throat go dry. It made something ripple in me, like the time I rode the rollercoaster at Fairyland and thought I just might die.

Then I’d start thinking of Sherry standing behind that counter all day. When she’d first started she cracked gum and looked bored, went in the bathroom twice a day to wash hot dog sweat off her hands and spit out her gum in the sink.

But lately she didn’t look bored. And nights, she’d get into my head. Standing there like that, her head dropping, eyes lowered, watching. I wondered when she was going to make her move. Was she waiting to see it for herself? Hadn’t she figured out yet when and where it was happening, right behind the wall of pin trestles that she—we all—stared at every day all day?

Each day it seemed closer and closer. Each day you could feel it in the place, even as the clean and fresh-faced Forest Hills kids pounded their bright white tennis shoes down the alleys; even as the shiny-haired teenagers hunched over the pinball machines, shoving their hips, twisting their bodies, like they wanted to squirm out of their skin; even as the customers at the bar, steeled behind smoked glass by lane 30, cocooned from the pitch of the squealing kids and mooning double dates, cool in their adult hideaway of tonic and beer, crushed ice and lemon rinds and low jazz and soft-toned waitresses with long, snapping sheets of hair and warm smiles, and a bartender who understood them and would know just what to do to make them happy . . . even with all that going on at the Lanes, it was going to happen.

* * *

“I don’t like the way they talk about her,” Diane was whispering to my mother, leaning over my mother’s counter, tangerine nails tapping anxiously. “Sherry and Myrna and Myrna’s friends from the Tuesday league.”

“Talk’s just talk,” my mother answered, loosening her apron.

“Listen,” Diane said, leaning closer. Looking over at me, trying to get me not to listen. “Listen, she deserves something. Carol does.” Her voice even lower, husky and suddenly soft. “Her mom’s at Creedmore. She’s been there awhile. Took a hot iron to Carol when she was a kid. She was sound asleep when it happened. Still a scar the shape of a shield on her stomach.”

Diane was looking at my mother, looking at her like she was asking her something. Asking her to understand something.

My mother nodded, eyes flickering as the fluorescent light made a pop. “You got a customer, Diane,” she said, pointing toward the bar.

* * *

I was thinking they might stop. Might take a few days off, let things cool off. But they didn’t. They only changed it up a little. From what I could tell, Carol came in the back way for her shift and met Eddie first. Met him back there before anyone even saw her. But they didn’t stop. And one day Eddie came out with a streak of Carol’s lilac lipstick on his bleach-white collar, just like in a story in a women’s magazine.

I watched him walk across the place, lane by lane, with the stain on him. I glanced over at Sherry, who was leaning against the pinball machine and watching him. I thought: This is it. She’s too far to see it, I thought to myself. But if he moves closer. If she moves closer.

Yet neither of them did.

When I saw him later, the lipstick was gone, collar slightly damp. I pictured him in the men’s room scrubbing it off, scrubbing her off. Looking in the mirror and thinking about what he’d done and what he couldn’t help but keep doing.

* * *

The kids from Forest Hills High School were all over the place that afternoon, all in their summer clothes, girls with tan legs and boys freshly showered and gleaming. The rain had sent them, some straight from lounge chairs at the club, others from lifeguarding or the tennis courts. I always noticed the fuzzy edges of my summer Keds around them. I always wondered how the girls got their hair so shiny, their clothes so crisp, their eyes so bright.

I had a feeling it was going to happen that day. I couldn’t say why. Before Sherry even got there. But when she did, I knew for sure.

She looked like she’d been running a fever. There was this gritty film all over her skin and red blotches at her temples. Her uniform was unwashed from the day before, a ring of grease circling her belly.

She was late and I’d just left my post, just left the two of them. They never took their clothes off, ever, but sometimes he’d lift her skirt so high I could see flashes of her skin. I was searching for the scar, but I never saw it.

Her fingers pinched around his neck, the rushed pitch to her voice . . . it felt different this time. It felt like something was turning. Maybe it was something in the way his hands moved, more quiet, more careful. Maybe something in her that made her move looser, almost still.

I got it then. And I knew for sure when I saw them break apart and each look the other way. She dropped her skirt down with a snap of one wrist. He was already walking away.

I flicked off the last piece of the strawberried scar on my knee. The skin underneath was still tender, puckered.

And now there was Sherry. I was coming from the back and she was right in front of me, talking at me, her voice funny, toneless.

“I saw you sitting over there yesterday. By the machine room.”

“No one’s at concessions,” I said, wondering where my mother had gone.

“It was the same time. I saw you come out from there at the same time yesterday.”

“I guess,” I said.

It was ten minutes later, no more, when we all heard the shouting. Jimmy, Myrna, Eddie, two guys putting on their bowling shoes—we all followed the sounds to the ladies’ room.

Carol was hunched over, hair hanging in long panels in front of her. She seemed surprised, her mouth a small “o.” It looked like Sherry’d just punched her in the stomach.

But then I saw it in her hand. The blade was short and Sherry held it so close to her, elbows at her waist. The blade was short enough that it couldn’t have gone deep.

Jimmy backhanded Sherry. She cracked her head on the stall door and slid slowly to the floor, one hand reaching out for Jimmy’s shirt.

The knife fell and I saw it was one of those plastic-handled ones they used to open the hot dog packages at concessions.

Eddie pushed past Jimmy and knelt down beside Sherry. She had a surprised look on her face. He was whispering to her, “Sherry, Sherry . . .”

Carol was watching Eddie. Then she looked down at her stomach and a tiny blotch of red against the banner-blue.

“That ain’t nothing,” Myrna said, birthmark twitching. “That ain’t nothing at all.”

Myrna taped up Carol with the first-aid kit. Then Jimmy took all three of them to his office. I walked over to concessions, but no one was there.

That was when Diane came running in, shouting for someone to call an ambulance.

“We don’t need no ambulance,” Myrna said. “I hurt myself worse getting out of bed.”

But Diane was already on the phone at the shoe rental desk.

We all ran down the long hallway and up the stairs to the boulevard. Someone must have already called because the ambulance was there.

At first, it was like my mother had just lain down on the street. But the way her neck was turned looked funny. Like her head had been put on wrong.

Diane grabbed me from behind and pulled me back.

That was when I saw a middle-aged man in a gray suit sitting on the curb, his face in his hands. His car door was open like he’d stumbled out to the sidewalk. He was crying loudly, his whole body shaking. I’d never heard a man cry like that.

Diane was telling everyone who would listen, “She said she saw him. She said she saw Fred Upton pass by on the 4:08 yesterday. But he’d never take a bus, would he? That’s what she said. So she wanted to watch for it at the same time today. See if it was him. You know how she always thought she was seeing him somewhere. No one must’ve hit the bell because the bus didn’t stop. And she just ran out onto the street after it. That car didn’t have time to stop.”

She looked over at the man, who started sobbing even louder.

“Hit her like a paper doll,” Diane continued. “Nothing but a paper doll going up in the wind and then coming down.”

* * *

Later, I would figure it out. My mother, nights spent looking out diner windows, uniform steeped in smoke, thinking of the stretch of her thirty years filled with glazy-eyed men stumbling into her life— all with the promise of four decades of union wages like her old man, repairing refrigerators, freezers in private homes, restaurants, country clubs, office buildings—for her whole life never stopping for more than one Rheingold at the corner bar before coming home for pot roast at the table with the kids.

Those men came but never for long, or they came and then turned, during the first or second night in her bed, into something else altogether, something that needed her, sure, but also needed the countergirl at Peter Pan bakery, or four nights a week betting horses at the parking garage on Austin Street, or a night watching the fights at Sunnyside Garden even when it was her birthday, and, yeah, maybe he needed the roundcard girl he met there too.

There was a dream of something and maybe it wasn’t even a guy like her old man or the one in the Arrow Shirt ad or the doctor she met at the diner, the one with the big apartment in the new high-rises, the view from the bedroom so great that she’d have to see it to believe it, he’d said. Maybe it wasn’t a man dream at all. But it was something. It was something and it was there and then it was gone.

ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE

BY MARY BYRNE

Astoria

It wasn’t the boys from Carrickmacross

Or the boys from Ballybay

But the dealin’ men from Crossmaglen

Put whiskey in me tae

My father announced this from a comfortable armchair by a window. Clad in good pajamas, he had “showered, shat, and shaved,” as he put it himself. In fact, this had been engineered and executed by an obese but energetic Polish lady of some thirty-eight years who was now about to leave after the graveyard shift. An old phonograph exuded Johnny Mathis or Andy Williams, I don’t know which. Or care. Schmaltzy music kept my dad quiet. It was almost as important as the nurses.

The Pole bustled back into the room, sweating already, and hung about with bags and baskets.

“A proper scavenger,” said Dad.

“You can talk,” the Pole shot back.

“Live where you’d die. Build a nest in your ear.” He eyed me crossly. We exchanged stares.

“I weel not take much more of thees,” said the Pole. “He’s gotta be put in a home. Those opiates are bedd for his hedd. Hallucinations again last night, squirrels climbing the bedroom vall and someone up a ladder—”

“She’s cleaning the house out little by little,” said my dad, “hence the multifarious bags.”

“—not to mention the insults and the smell of his excreta,” she went on.

I stood up, hoping she’d get the hint. I had no desire to discuss Dad’s excreta—or anyone else’s—with a sweaty and exhausted Pole.

“Get someone to relieve me a few nights,” she ordered, heading for the door. “I gotta lotta werk on.”

She was mixed up in illegal sweatshops, and perhaps even illegal aliens. A true wart on the heel of humanity, she even had her own off-off-illegal sweatshop, in which the most desperate of Eastern Europeans put together for her benefit little trinkets and zippered bags made from the offcuts of the real thing.

“When you kill a pig, nothing goes to loss but the squeal,” Dad pronounced as she flounced out the door.

We were alone. My son Sean hadn’t come home last night, an increasingly frequent occurrence. The big house was silent but for the ticking of old clocks, Dad’s only hobby and luxury. Every room had several of them. “Are them things gonna be bongin’ all night?” my wife had said the first night we slept there after the honeymoon.

* * *

Naïma, the day-shift nurse, was late. Normally my wife dealt with any kind of overlap problem before going off to her museum job. But she was absent at the moment, as she was more and more these days.

“Where’s the Swamp Rat?” asked Dad, as if reading my thoughts.

Nulty Jr. eyed Nulty Sr. I wondered just how senile the old man really was.

“Some art shindig in St. Petersburg,” I replied. I wondered why I bothered.

“Home to the swamps,” said Dad.

“No, the other St. Petersburg, the Russian one.”

That seemed to silence him, or else his thoughts wandered off to something else. He dubbed my wife the Swamp Rat as soon as he heard she came from Tampa, Florida. At the time, I was offended for her. I was in love with this dark little hustler—she reminded me of Edith Piaf. I called her La Piaf. Then. But little by little the very things that pleased me at first made me hate her later: her bustling ass, the way she crimped her thin frizzy hair, a moue thing she did with her mouth as if to strengthen up facial muscles. I soon saw her thrifty housekeeping as meanness. She was prepared to spend money on no one but herself. She even squeezed enough for little facelifts and gold wire here and there over the years. This was on top of sports clubs, gyms, dance classes, and trainers. The house was feng shui–compliant, another recent source of trouble and expense.

By now, I approved the nickname. She’d been in it for the money from the start, and I had been reeled in, hook, line, and sinker. I suspect the facelifts and staying in shape were preparation for getting away from me in the best possible circumstances. Women always went away—my mother took off without a by-your-leave.

I left the old man alone for a minute and went down to collect the mail. Although I received my business mail in the bar we owned on Broadway, The Two Way Inn (because there are two ways in), the family’s private mail arrived here. Sometimes Naïma or Old Jessica left personal mail lying around for days. I disapproved of such a risk. Dad trained me to structure my day around things like that: “Get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first. Leave nothing lying to fester.”

There was a postcard from the Swamp Rat singing the praises of St. Petersburg. I knew she was there with the big Armenian, her latest conquest, but I could prove nothing and was waiting for something to come to a head. There was junk mail for my son Sean and more for my daughter Maureen, who had just moved out for the second time with a second man. Rectitude hadn’t made it to the third generation.

At the bottom there was a letter with a Canadian postmark from a lawyer’s office in Québec. My heart gave a lurch. Suddenly Naïma was behind me. I smelled her perfume before I turned to face her. She was flushed.

“Musing again?” She had a light, assured voice. I envied her calm contentment. In another life I would have loved her and this would have done me good.

I looked at the letter then looked at her.

“Come on, I’ll make you a decent coffee before you go.” She took my elbow.

* * *

I walked to the bar each morning as Dad once did. This always cleared my head. There was no spring in New York this year. There never is. I left the house huddling against a cold wind blowing off the river, but by the time I reached Mt. Carmel Cemetery, the summer had arrived. Here it was, late, when we’d almost given up hope.

I paused for a moment to look at the broken, half-buried headstones of Irish-born immigrants from famine times, people who’d worked in the factories, greenhouses, and homes of the nearby rich. Every dog has his day, I could hear Dad say, although I knew the old man always felt a bit of a fraud in the mansion on 12th Street. It was the house which had so impressed La Piaf at first. I heard my father again: Not a house for a humble tiller of the soil. Somehow it was bearable because it wasn’t ours. It belonged to Dad’s brother, Uncle Eddie, Canadian millionaire. The Two Way Inn belonged to him as well. No one knew exactly how Eddie Nulty had made his money. Fact is, he was the eldest of ten, had come out around the time of the Irish Civil War, worked in bars at first, then got on the ladder and sent for his little brother.

The further I walked, the more my step steadied and took on a rhythm independent of my thoughts. I could hear the reassuring rattle of the El.

“And that’s when the difference between the two brothers showed,” my mother told me, way back. “Eddie went to get your father off the boat. He was crumpled, dirty, and sick after all that time at sea. But Eddie pounced! On what? Your dad’s boots. They weren’t polished, and were laced with binder twine.”

“So Eddie was pissed?”

“Watch your language. Eddie was mixed up in something,” said Mom. “I heard talk of guns. Your father told me a story about when he was a boy, going to the market with their father in the early morning. They came across Eddie doing lookout on the road. ‘What’s up?’ your grandfather asked. ‘Court martial,’ Eddie said. ‘They’re in the field, decidin’ whether they’ll kill himself or not.’ ‘Have nothing to do with all this,’ the father told the young boy.”

She was convinced Eddie was still mixed up in something. Nobody could get that rich by legal means. Yet occasionally, when Dad was on a bender, he got so out of hand that Mom called Eddie, regretting it afterwards. Somehow Eddie knew how to whip Dad into line. And things would continue for another while. When it was over, Mom banged on about conversations she’d heard, money she’d seen handed over in cabs, and about a bar being the best place to launder money. “What do you know about laundering?” I often replied. “You got Jessica to do it for you!”

I regretted such remarks now, and wondered where she was.

* * *

In no time at all I reached Broadway, with its crowds and traffic and fruit displays. I liked it better here. This was home. Men on the sidewalk spoke Chinese and Slav and Arabic into cell phones. Visit Queens and see the world. Here was where the Nultys started out, in a small apartment over a busy junction. Young parents, two small children, plenty of stress, and plenty of fun. Dad drove a bus and binge-drank. One day he parked the bus full of passengers and went into The Beer Garten (there was no garten) and got drunk. There was hell at home and Eddie was sent for.

It was an icy winter’s day when Eddie came up the steep narrow stairs wearing a black coat with some kind of fur collar, like a rich man in the movies. Mom wrung her hands. Dad was strangely obeisant as if to his own father, and it was all settled. The German wanted to sell up The Beer Garten. Eddie would buy and Dad would run it. He had to make it work and live on the proceeds. The word autonomous was bandied about.

From there on, Dad appeared to play the game, fitting in quite well with the bar routine and keeping our little family from the poor house. For years we lived over the bar. Later on, Eddie bought us the mansion and persuaded Dad to move. I never knew exactly how the accounts were handled, but Eddie engaged a hot-shit accountant from Manhattan and even a tax accountant in case Dad messed that up as well. For a long time Dad was strict as a sergeant major, rising before dawn, polishing his shoes himself, eating a raw egg before breakfast: all stuff Uncle Eddie favored or advised. Even then, I knew there was no way Eddie was shining his own shoes. But I said nothing, knowing The Importance of Shoe Shining in the Family. Back in Monaghan, nobody shined their shoes, if they had any. A school photo of Dad showed most of the kids had no shoes at all—only Dad in the front row had a good pair of black boots, black socks, short pants, and a black turtleneck. I reckoned he was taken out of school shortly after that to work in the fields, until Eddie sent him the ticket for Canada.

On certain sections of the streets there were signs of the usual fracas of the previous night: bottles and cans and overturned garbage. In recent times, crowds of young local men gathered at night to drink and carouse, as if they belonged to a different species, married to the night. Sometimes they didn’t even bother going to a bar. Sometimes bar owners use the tobacco ban to keep them out. Visitors slumming the bars at night made a helluva noise while they were there, then again as they revved up to leave. Residents complained about them as much as they did about the youngsters, who sold and smoked weed and giggled a lot, then kicked the garbage out of the cans and around the street. I had known most of them since they were kids—they were Sean’s age. I wondered if Sean spent time with them, but didn’t dare ask. So far they’d left me and the bar alone, and although there was increasing talk of hate crimes and savage attacks in the night, I couldn’t see them being the perps. For the moment, anyone kicked down subway steps had been openly gay or Muslim—or even black—but I knew that could change.

* * *

“So you rich fucks get up for a little while every day?” My friend George was standing in the doorway of his restaurant.

“Gid adda here,” I grinned.

“Whadaya like, I gad it,” said George, waving me in.

“Check the shop and be right back.”

* * *

I entered the dark interior of The Two Way Inn. It was quiet but for an Abba song coming at low volume from the jukebox: I don’t wanna talk . . . about things we been through . . . The usual lineup of men drinking silently in the late morning never failed to remind me of a scene from an O’Neill play. There was no green, no shamrocks, no Irish beers, no black-and-white pictures of small villages, whiskey mirrors, leprechauns, shillelaghs, no objects made of bog turf, nothing Irish visible. The occasional token of a German past remained undisturbed, for here the Swamp Rat had no influence and didn’t like the atmosphere. No fucking compliance here, feng shui or otherwise. For a long time a German firm continued to provide German songs for the old jukebox until we updated. One of these songs survived: “Oh Mein Papa,” due to popular demand, had been remastered and now kept company with the Carpenters, Abba, Maureen McGovern, Roberta Flack, the O’Jays, John Denver, and—as they say—much, much more. The bar had remained untouched for so long that it was becoming popular with the yuppie crowd out from Manhattan. It was mentioned in one or two hip magazines in search of “awthennic” places to spend their money. The barmen were instructed to charge more in the evenings. I invested in chairs and tables for the sidewalk, and after being fined twice for putting them out, eventually paid for a licence. These days I pay smoking fines, although we try to stop ’em smoking till the cops have gone to bed. Because what interests the yuppies is the interior, and the music. If it’s like a stage set for me, how much more must it be for them?

I waved through the open kitchen door to our Mexican factotum (Dad’s title for him). He navigated between the kitchen here, the corridors of the apartments above, and the garden on 12th Street.

“Buenos dias, Pepe,” I said. “Que pasa?”

“Land of the free and the brave,” replied Pepe.

I nodded to the young man behind the bar, an ex-seminarian from the old country, solid as an Aran Island, robbing only exactly enough so as not to make it obvious and rock the boat for the other bartenders doing the same.

“Gimme a shot from the real bottle you keep under the bar,” said one of the O’Neill characters. “The curate isn’t cooperating.”

I nodded again at the young man. “Go ahead,” I said, “what they have there wouldn’t fill a hole in their tooth.”

The young man ran a round down the bar: He had instructions to give them every third drink free, but to go easy on the non-fiddled bottle.

“Come on, lads, put yer hearts into it.” This was another of Dad’s goads. “Ye’ll never get cirrhosis the way ye’re drinkin’.”

The young man handed me the morning mail, which reminded me of the letter from Canada. I reached into a pocket, fished it out, and sat at a table. No one sat at a table except in the evenings.

The letter was typed. This didn’t look good. It was from a lawyer. My eyes shot to the bottom paragraph: It is with regret that we must inform you of the intention of Mr. Edward Nulty to dispose of his properties in Astoria.

Alerted, no doubt, by press references to a property boom, I thought. More warehouse conversions and hoardings bearing the legend, Jesus hates this building.

Do not hesitate to contact us should you have any questions, the letter finished. It gave the coordinates of some fancy broker in Manhattan who would contact me instanter.

I hated the British tone of it all. I even hated their tight vowels up there. I wondered what had stung Eddie into action. I folded the letter and put it in my pocket. The O’Neill characters who had been studying me turned back to their drinks again.

I got up, nodded to the company, and made my way next door to George, who had lunch ready.

“You donna looka good.”

“No.”

“You dyin’?”

“No.”

“Yo’ family die?”

“No.”

“So then!” George handed me a glass of his special heavy aperitif wine.

“Ya mass,” he said. I said nothing. “You looza all yor money?” George had been imitating his father’s accent for so long and spending three months a year in Greece that it was second nature. He looked anxious. Money was serious.

“Maybe.”

George was all attention. “Money is not love,” he said slowly.

“I got neither.”

“First, you eat.”

It seemed to me there were more of the little white plates than usual. I told George my woes, as I often do. What had once been a place serving hero sandwiches had become a high-class restaurant. Through the kitchen door I could see two Indians hard at work. And I’m not talking about Native Americans. Behind a little desk sat George’s brother Lazarus, once short-order cook and pea soup expert, and his sister Hermione. They were all getting on in years.

The phone in the kitchen rang. One of the Indians answered it. “007!” he said, and giggled. “Bond, James Bond!” He was laughing so hard the other Indian had to take the phone from him.

Above our heads hung photos of George’s parents and grandparents on the whitewashed terrace of a modest house in Cyprus. The men were dressed as popes, the women in black. They’d heard that the house had long since made way for a pink Turkish villa. None of them had ever tried to go back, even when it became possible.

“Eat.”

George forced food on me like I remembered my mother doing before she vanished. He raised his glass and said, “Eleftheria i thanatos.”

I nodded, repeated the words, and drank deeply.

Freedom or death.

* * *

Me and George took a stroll in Astoria Park to walk off the wine. We stopped to lean on the rail and look at the garbage floating in the water below. I wanted to drop into the Noguchi Garden Museum. I loved the smooth control and order of the marble and granite pieces. It reassured me.

George refused. “The fuck? All that cold stone giva me the creeps.”

“Some Greek you are,” I said.

“Malaka. Irish fucks only let gays and lesbians into their parade this year, for the foist time! St. Pat’s for all, my ass!”

“Greeks’d know all about gays.”

“We’re all getting old,” said George.

We picked divine olives from tubs in about three emporia, then stopped off at Noureddine’s for mint tea before the evening crowd arrived to smoke hookahs loaded up with honey-dipped sheesha. I’d heard the Pole say Noureddine’s place ran women behind closed steel shutters in the afternoon. I supposed it was possible. I supposed she’d know.

Noureddine was talking about an old lady who’d been robbed on her own stairs as she returned from the bank. The robbers were said to be local.

“You don’t do that on your own turf,” Noureddine said. He looked like he knew what he was talking about. Then he told us about a younger brother he was educating, who’d managed to get a job teaching Spanish in Texas.

“Sounds like sand to the Arabs to me,” I said.

“We’re from northern Morocco,” he explained. “Spanish is like a mother tongue to us. We go where it pays.”

* * *

We left Noureddine and headed off, George to Danny McGrory (my dad’s name for Nana Mouskouri and now our code name for George’s wife, also known as La Callas or La Diva) and me to the Swamp Rat, due back that evening.

“Bet you’re sorry now you didn’t finish your doctorate and get a chair of philosophy,” George said. “Never get off your ass at all.” His phony accent had disappeared. My problems were affecting him even more than me.

“Hit me now with the child in me arms,” I replied.

“Till the white rose blooms again,” he said as we parted.

* * *

Back on 12th Street, I surveyed the signs of Old Jessica’s daily visit—more spray-on polish, more quick-fix polluting solutions. Jessica was a failed Irish immigrant ten years older than myself. She needed the money, I couldn’t in all conscience fire her. The shine in the house was getting higher, but everything else was going downhill, except for the feng shui compliance.

Old Jessica appeared from the kitchen quarters. “You’d want to straighten up,” she said. “Yer gettin’ a dowager’s hump.”

“Don’t shit a man who’s already down,” said Sean, skipping down the stairs and out the front door before either of us could react.

Jessica shook her head indulgently. “I’da made two pairs a pants outta his one,” she said.

We mounted the stairs to Dad’s room, where Naïma was bedding him down for the evening. Mitch Miller was playing.

“I’m goin’ plantin’ spuds tomorrow, will ye help me?” Jessica asked Dad.

“I will,” he said.

“Have ye the tools?”

“I have.” He counted on his fingers: “I have two spades, two graips, and a shovel.”

“Right so,” said Jessica. “Be ready at dawn.”

I wasn’t sure I liked this kind of fooling with a man’s already fucked-up mind.

“Once a man, twice a boy,” Jessica said as she went by me.

“I want to be taken to the Astoria Sanatorium,” Dad said distinctly as soon as Jessica left.

Naïma smiled down at him. “They gave it a new name now. Mt. Sinai.”

“You should never paint bricks,” said Dad. “They do it all the time here.” Then: “The sanatorium must’ve laid an egg.” Then he spotted me. “Priest or minister? You’re doing everything wrong today.”

“What did I do now?”

“You sailed up the broad expanse of Killala Bay. Give me me box.”

This was a tin box containing mementos that he pored over from time to time. He pulled a collection of objects out of it and spread them over the bed: a silver dollar wrapped in tissue paper, a Rockaway Playland token, postcards, beaded Indian leather (Native American). He indicated the display to me:

Eoin Roe O’Neill

Treads once more our land

The sword in his hand is of Spanish steel

But the hand is an Irish hand

“Wanna take a leak before I go?” Naïma asked.

“You only want to see my dick, that’s what you’re after.”

I told her to go ahead and lifted Dad back into bed. He was light as a feather.

“Ain’t you the big heavy lad,” I said.

“What good is it to you when you’re gone?”

We sat in silence. Then he said, without opening his eyes, “When did Da die?” I never heard Dad use that word before, and realized he thought he was talking to his brother Eddie.

“Long ago,” I said.

“What’d ya kill her for?” he asked, opening his eyes, now noticing me. “I think I’ll go to bed now,” he said, then seemed to doze.

The Pole arrived, still threatening to quit. The weather had already turned heavy.

“A storm is brassing,” she said. Sometimes I wasn’t sure what language she was massacring.

Dad said, with his eyes closed, “You’re a bitch and you never were anything else.”

After that, the house settled for a while. I tend to sit in front of the TV when I want to think. People leave me alone. I haven’t read a book in years, once my favorite occupation. My attention was drawn by an item on the World Cup about to be played out in Germany. Several players from the winning 1974 German team were paraded out, one a smart older business-exec version of his younger self with a name like Baking Powder, which is what me and George had dubbed him at the time. The other was a thicker-set man who left football in 1974 and opened a newspaper kiosk. “I wasn’t cut out for all that,” the man explained.

Perhaps this was what Dad should have done, long ago: something simple, no overreaching. There were horses for courses and that was all. It would have meant no Irish education for me and my sister, but what did that change? And perhaps Mom would still be with us. I recalled vacations from university when Mom seemed to be having an early “change of life,” as she called it to her friends (nurses with real problems and families to deal with). She talked of going into a convent, where she would have peace and quiet from them all. By then, Dad had settled down to controlled drinking, a cup with milk and whiskey under the bar at all times. As if trying to numb himself. At times I think she might be with some Little Sisters, atoning in peace and quiet, not far away. Unless she’s dead. Who was the woman Uncle Eddie killed? Was this a reference to the Civil War, or something more recent?

* * *

At 9 p.m. the Swamp Rat was poured out of a cab, laughing. The Armenian gallery owner helped her out, laughing also, wearing a beige cashmere coat that was too warm for the weather. Then he took himself off in the cab.

I lit the lights and poured us a drink. The storm was beginning to crackle outside. A door opened upstairs, releasing a few bars of Al Martino, then closed again.

My wife’s breath smelled of olives and feta and all kinds of Balkan fare, something she complained of in others in the past. She was excited, smoking. She’d clearly been fucking the Armenian satisfactorily all week. It was Setrak this, and Setrak that.

“The Matisses were breathtaking. I never realized they were so big.” She pulled out a notebook with names written in Cyrillic in a baby hand, pronouncing them as if she spoke Russian fluently. They’d obviously discovered plenty of new, cheap talent to flog for their new gallery project.

I found myself getting angry, but this was nothing compared to what I felt when I discovered that the Armenian’s parents had gone with them.

“He’s a hotelier, he got a special deal, why not take advantage?”

I felt a pang for the demented man upstairs in the bed, and my lost mom. I was spoiling for a fight.

“It’s a long way from coffin ships,” I said.

“What does that mean?”

“That was your sales pitch when you met me, wasn’t it?”

She said nothing.

“Your stock-in-trade. Up from Florida with a Scots name, you quickly got the hang of things here and decided you were Irish. Only the strong survive, you used to say.”

“So?” She was icily still.

There was silence. I wanted to bring something to a head. I got up to get another bottle from the fridge. I was still in the kitchen when the question jumped out like a genie from a lamp. “Am I getting a hump?”

“You always had one,” I heard her laugh out from the next room. “I thought it was from all the reading and thinking you used to do. Big thinker.”

I came back, the cold bottle in my hand.

“Didn’t you know that?” she laughed again, throwing her head back.

I wanted to shove the laugh down her throat. Both of us had taken plenty of drink but I felt stone-cold sober as I swung the bottle. It caught her on the side of the head.

She slumped down on the sofa slowly and quietly.

In a panic, I felt her pulse, almost afraid to touch her skin. There was no sound from upstairs.

She was alive, breathing clearly, inclined to snore. Nat King Cole sang, “I thought you loved me, you said you loved me . . .” as I sucked air into my lungs and ran out of the house, forgetting to code in the alarm. It was raining to beat the band.

* * *

Old rancors and memories boiled up as I walked. Cars hissed by in the wet. My father’s first car was an old Falcon, whereas even the shabbiest Two Way Inn customer could surprise by turning out in something decent like an ageing Cadillac for the odd expedition to Far Rockaway. My Dad loved those words, Far Rockaway. “Goddamnit!” The Falcon stalled at every red light, and before it did I went into an agony of apprehension feeling a giggle build up inside, knowing there was no way to stop it rumbling up and out to hurt Dad’s feelings and make him swear even more, or even lash out and hit me. Saving Face for Ireland.

That was the “up-and-up” era. “We’re on the up-and-up,” Dad often said. That same year we went “home” to Ireland as a family, to thatched cottages and women in aprons and cardigans with anxious looks. I was put to sleep in a room full of bunk beds for students of Irish.

The males of the family laughed at jokes they didn’t share and at Dad’s hat. Nobody wore hats over there, at most they pushed a cap or beret around their heads when answering a question, as if it helped them think. I heard one of them say, “See any dollars fall outta the hat, boys?” We were overcharged everywhere we went. A vendor refused to tell Dad the price of an ice cream until he admitted we were “Yanks.” Dad was oblivious, delighted with everything.

I could still feel this anger somewhere inside now, untreated. I walked and walked.

There’d been a trip to Nevada as well, to another relative. Mom and Dad took us to shows of people I couldn’t stand, like Carol Channing and Buck Owens and Fats Domino. They watched these shows with the half-attention of people waiting for something more important to arrive, who expected better things of life and had the impression the real action was happening elsewhere. Me and Sis sniggered as Carol Channing threw imitation diamond rings into the audience, and Dad hissed, “Will you cut that out?”

* * *

A while later I found myself near the river, somewhere between the two big bridges. My clothes were sodden and the earth was muddy and smelled fresh. The world was washed down.

I heard my own voice quote A.E. Houseman aloud: “Yonder lies the gate of hell.”

“What’s that, Daddyo?” a voice said, and I saw the outlines of eight young men in hoodies against the evening sky. “Didn’t we see yo’ down hea’ the other day with yo’ friend?”

I realized the urgency of the situation, slid and lurched onto the street, dropping my cell phone. I ran until I reached a late-opening grocery store but was stopped at the door.

“Sorry,” the man said, “no can do.”

“There’s eight of them. I need to phone for help.”

“If we let you in, they’ll smash the place up.” He shut the door.

They soon caught me again, forced me to the ground, then kicked me as I lay. They broke my eyeglasses and took my wallet. They’d already smashed my phone.

I heard a saxophone peal out clearly, cutting the air like a knife, before I eventually lost consciousness.

* * *

I woke up in Mt. Sinai with stitches on my face. “Those kids feel threatened,” the nurse said. “They feel they’re being forced out by neighborhood change. They’re afraid of losing it to people from Manhattan, from anywhere.”

“We’re all going to lose it,” I said to George when he arrived to take me home. I gave no info to the cop who came, refused to file a complaint.

* * *

At the house, all was quiet. The front door lay open as I’d left it.

George refused to come in because I’d told him I socked one to the Swamp Rat.

When I went in, she was nowhere to be seen, although I knew there’d be trouble tomorrow. I looked in on Dad. The Pole was dozing in an armchair in his room.

“Someone rattled your cage,” he said, his eyes open. “I never saw a more miserable creature.”

The Pole opened her eyes or woke, depending on what she’d been doing. “All quiet,” she said too quickly, not mentioning my face. She stood up. “I’m going to get something to drink.”

“See the ass on that one—it’s far too big,” Dad sighed.

I knocked lightly on my wife’s bedroom door. We’d had separate rooms for years. There was no reply. I opened it as quietly as I could.

She lay on the white bed. The duvet (as she always liked to call it) had soaked up a lot of the blood, although I knew there was positively none when I’d left her downstairs. I approached, calling her name softly. She looked as youthful as the young Piaf I once loved.

This time there was no pulse.

* * *

I headed for the phone. As I shouted for an ambulance, I heard the Pole on the stairs and my father asking, “Am I dying?”

* * *

The police weren’t as sympathetic as I might have expected. This was perhaps due to my face, which was beginning to bruise up nicely. My story was disjointed, with periods that I couldn’t account for. They refused to let me call George, then changed their minds and called him themselves. He came, white-faced, but was of little help, as he hadn’t entered the house with me. He was escorted out, promising me that he’d send someone straight away.

“Bail or bond?” he tried to crack wise as he left. It didn’t work.

* * *

The Pole was bossy and informative, giving remarkably precise times and details of my comings and goings.

Naïma was hurried out of bed for questioning and arrived looking worried and hollow-eyed.

They even visited Dad’s room, where Tony Bennett was warbling, “If we never meet again . . .”

“What are yis havin’?” Dad asked the cops. Then: “Have you a light on that bicycle?”

They went away and left him alone.

They took me with them.

* * *

Two days later I was home again. George went bail, with nothing proved or decided either way. The eight hoodies couldn’t be found, obviously, although George and Noureddine were working on it. If those guys were from Astoria, they were dead meat. If they were from elsewhere, I was.

I was just thinking about lots of fresh coffee when I heard the door chimes and saw Jessica hobbling toward the door. I could see Pepe pretending to trim something with shears in the garden. Sean was slumped in a sofa, not sure whether he was more angry with me than he was sorry for himself. I spoke to him little. I didn’t know how.

Jessica ushered four people into the hall, all looking like Jehovah’s Witnesses on the way to a ball. They said they were real estate brokers, sent by Eddie to visit the house, swore blue that someone had given them an appointment.

It was certainly beginning to look like a plot. I felt more like Hamlet by the minute.

They checked out the house, came back to the hall again, and asked to see the cellar. I said there was no cellar. They informed me there was an extensive cellar. I changed my tune and asked Jessica to get the key. She shuffled off to the kitchen and returned after a while looking purple and perplexed. There was no sign of the key.

“Surely you have a second key,” said one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I hate people who use the word surely.

“No surely about it,” I answered. “The door is reinforced, for the wine, and Dad lost the key before he lost his mind, or shortly after. There was one key left, in the kitchen, always in the same place. Nobody’s been down there for a long time, the wine was my father’s baby.”

I didn’t tell them about my own (poor) taste in wine, or the fact that Pepe thought the marquis on the bottles was my father.

* * *

>George arrived just then, got the measure of the scene, and hooshed them out the door to their fancy car, saying, “It’ll take a locksmith, it’s reinforced. We’ll call you already.”

Jessica joined in then, and Sean. “This house is in mourning!” they shouted. “Get outta here!”

The suits were so astonished, they just left, saying they’d need an appointment to visit The Two Way Inn.

“Visit it,” said George. “Anyone can. It’s open from dawn to dusk.” Then to me, he said, “What harm can it do? You’re not married to ’em. Yet.”

George spent the rest of the day calling the locksmith, calling Noureddine, keeping me on the wagon, and driving me to my bank, where a young man in a bad suit and eyeglasses told me the Swamp Rat had cleared out all of our accounts. I thought I caught a glimpse of the bank manager observing me through sanded glass somewhere, but George said I was paranoid. “Ye goin’ perrenawd on me,” was what he said.

The young man looked at me as if to say, Ya ain’t the first and ya won’t be the last.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said George, which wasn’t how I’d describe it.

Back home Jessica fed us, then I tried to reach Eddie in Vancouver. It took me awhile to hunt up the number, and it cost me a great deal to dial it. Sean sat and watched. I’d never have managed it if George hadn’t been there. Now I knew how my mother used to feel.

There was no reply. I didn’t think it funny he wouldn’t even have a servant, or an answering service.

We contacted several retirement homes for my dad. I thought there might be a problem with proof of income and all that, but George said it was best to have a place ready in case the worst happened.

“So what’s the worst can happen?” I asked.

“You in the clink,” said George. “The rest of the family can manage for themselves, your dad can’t.” Sean didn’t look like he agreed much.

A locksmith friend of George’s was due to turn up after work the following day and tackle the cellar door. I was all for cancelling him and forgetting about the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but George thought we should go through the motions, at least till we contacted Eddie.

A lady came out from a home to check Dad out. I thought this untimely haste. She went up and explained to him exactly what she was doing there.

“No bother at all. Work away,” he replied, as if he’d understood everything. Then he said, “What time is the tea? I’d eat a scabby child off the floor.” He leaned over and put on Richard Harris singing “MacArthur Park.”

The retirement home lady and George had gone when I went up to spend ten minutes with Naïma before she left.

“He’s very restless,” she said. “Something’s upset him. He’s been through his box three times already.”

We agreed he might have understood about the retirement home.

As we settled him and fluffed his pillows, I noticed something odd on the white sheet, under his ass. It was a warm key.

“The ship’s name was Murphy and the boat’s goin’ up a hill,” he said, looking at me and giggling.

It turned out to be the key to the cellar, of course.

* * *

The Pole was in place and a thick fog had crept in from the river when George came by for a nightcap, later. I was sitting in my TV seat, as usual, watching nothing.

“Is The Two Way Inn running itself these days?” he asked.

“They’ll rob no more and no less, they know the score.”

I told him about the key. He was enthusiastic.

“Let’s do it,” he said, “before those assholes in the suits come back.”

Armed with flashlights and warm pullovers, we headed down there. I thought we might bring up a few bottles of real wine as well.

The cellar had more rooms than the ground floor, since some of them had been made into smaller spaces for storage. I reckoned nothing down there but the wine would be usable after years in dust and damp. Even the central heating and air-conditioning had been installed in a building off to the side of the ground floor, so nothing varied the conditions down here. You could feel the fog oozing in from the street and garden. I noticed a half-dozen shed snakeskins.

George was going through the wine and I was giving a last check to each corner, when I almost stumbled on something soft that gave with my foot. It stank.

There were two bodies, one lying flung over the other. By their clothes, I could tell that the one underneath was a woman, the one on top a man. I gagged. George came running.

Before I even got a proper look at them, he waved me upstairs to call the cops.

I didn’t think they’d believe me this time.

We all waited for them in Dad’s room. I was still coughing stuff out of my throat.

“Throw it up,” said Dad, “the chickens’ll ate it.”

“I quit,” said the Pole.

“So do I,” I replied.

I tried calling Eddie one more time. There was still no reply. I was beginning to think I knew where he was.

* * *

The cops took me with them again. It was more complicated, although they probably reckoned that even if I’d killed the Swamp Rat, it was still manslaughter and not first-degree murder. Much as I disliked her and wondered what she’d done with my money, I wished it was neither.

George and the Pole stood and watched me leave. They looked as if they were beginning to believe I’d done something bad. I felt I might be better behind bars for a while. I’d have time to think. It would force Sean to get serious, and reassure him that I was being punished for killing his mother, although I was still sure I hadn’t.

* * *

I got back again some hours later. The house was crawling with forensics people, plugging the causal breach. I wondered if they’d sort this one out. Why was the cellar locked, and how come Dad had the key? What if Dad was the killer?

Soon they announced that the bodies had been down there for six months.

I did a quick calculation. “That’s when Mom skipped out and Dad lost the plot.”

“One of the bodies is your mother, Mr. Nulty, the other appears to be your Uncle Eddie, from Vancouver. Your mother was shot. We haven’t found the weapon, but the bullet is an old-fashioned one.”

“Sunuvabitch!” said George. “And the uncle?”

The cop ignored him and continued to address me. “Your uncle had his head smashed in by a blunt weapon.”

* * *

There was a lot of legal stuff to handle after that. Eddie’s estate was protected by some Canadian legal thing. It looked like no one would get at it for a while, least of all the inheritance-hunters who had set the ball rolling. It also looked as if his remaining brothers and sisters would inherit. The Irish legend of the Canadian uncle would become a reality. The real estate people were slapped down by my lawyer. House and bar were declared private for the receptions and funerals. (I did wonder if the Armenian would consider himself in or out, and then I wondered why he hadn’t showed up lately.)

Sean began to throw his weight in and help with the arrangements.

* * *

Noureddine and George got a private investigator to come up with some loose threads: “An out-of-work Yugoslav brute called Niko is throwing money around. Turns out he got it from the Armenian. We’re trying to find out why.”

They got Niko up a dark alley one night. He admitted he’d found the door open and gone for it. He refused to admit anything else.

They called the cops, who found out the Armenian was in some kind of smuggling thing with Russia. The Swamp Rat was either in, or else she never knew about it. No one could figure out what had happened to the money. The Pole had disappeared and was suspected of working for the Armenian, among other things.

* * *

It didn’t stop there. George and his pals found someone Niko’d boasted to about knifing my wife. It could never be proved that he’d done it for the Armenian, although the cops suspected this. They also suspected that Eddie had killed my mother, but couldn’t prove that either. Nobody knew why, although she might have had something on him that she tried to use, or threatened to use. No gun was found. They reckoned my father had then killed Eddie, but couldn’t prove that either. He might’ve hid the gun, but then why didn’t he try to hide the bodies too?

“He lawst his mind, remember?” said George.

Naïma slept in the house until I found someone to replace the Pole. We got a clinic to take Dad for a week while the funerals were happening. The heat soared to over 100, and we mopped our brows and showered a lot and drank too much alcohol.

When all the bodies were buried—we did it the same day, same time, three hearses and three coffins had never been seen before except after an accident—Naïma and I went to see my father in the clinic.

“How are things at home?” he asked me. “How is everyone? How’s She?”

I presumed he was talking about the Eternal Feminine, his mother, his wife, his daughter-in-law. Whatever.

“What kind of work are they doin’ on the farm?” he asked.

“That’s a great man for his age,” said an Irish voice from the next bed. They keep ’em in twos so one keeps an eye on the other. Cuts down on staff.

I couldn’t see its owner due to a screen, but recognized it as a Monaghan accent. I wondered if this was an accident, or if someone had actually tried to group them.

“Pray to Saint Theresa, she’ll help you,” the Monaghan voice said.

“She cured Patsy Gibney,” said my father.

“It’s 7 o’clock. Ye’d be doing the milkin’ now,” the voice continued.

“What?”

He repeated it four times before Dad got it.

“Indeed, an’ I wouldn’t,” Dad replied. “I’m finished with all that now. I’m a suckler.”

I tried to explain to Naïma my ideas about the agricultural metaphor outliving its context. She looked at me funny.

As we left, the two men thought they were preparing to dose an uncooperative beast from a bottle.

“Fuck him,” muttered my dad. “Throw it all over him and let it soak in.”

“We’re off now, Dad,” I said.

He eyed me for a moment, then he said: “The divine diarrhea of the dollar.”

I recognized the words of Salvador Dali, and wondered again just how senile my father really was, and if it might strike me too.

But not yet, dear God, not yet. For the moment, me and Naïma were going to make a team. We’d get my dad home and whip Sean into some kind of shape. Rectitude was on the march again.

FIRST CALVARY

BY ROBERT KNIGHTLY

Blissville

The little girl is playing there by herself. She’s off in a corner of the yard by the alleyway where the girls come out of the Good Shepherd School at 3 o’clock when the bell rings and walk through to the street. But it’s already late, getting dark, time for all little kids to be home with their mothers. Nobody can see her there in the alley, he knows, because he’s been watching her awhile from behind the iron picket fence. She doesn’t see him, nobody sees him. For about the hundredth time, she takes her baby out of the carriage, fixes its clothes, talks to it, and puts it down again. He’s on the move now, out from behind the fence, walking quick on stubby legs down the alley. She can’t see him coming, she’s got her head in the carriage again.

“Be good now, baby,” he hears her say just as he reaches her and she straightens up and sees him. “Oh!” she says.

He pushes her hard and she flops down like a doll on her behind. He’s down the alley, out the gate, onto Greenpoint Avenue almost before she starts bawlin’.

He crosses the avenue, pushing the carriage in front of him fast as he can along the high stone wall between himself and the dead people buried in First Calvary. He dares not look left for fear of the Stone Saints high up on their pedestals standing watch over the graves. Even though he knows they can’t see him because their backs are turned to the street. He knows why this is so because his Nan has told him. Saints give fuck-all for the likes of the shanty Irish, Nan says. As he rolls across Bradley Avenue, he sneaks a look at the front door of the Cork Lounge, where Nan takes him and the dog on Saturday afternoons, after the stores for a growler of Shaeffer “to go.”

The carriage is big as him but he can push it all right. He hurtles past the people sitting on the front stoops of the houses, there like always, the mothers hanging out the windows in their parlors, resting big folded arms on windowsills all up and down the block, watching. He knows this, so he keeps his head down behind the carriage, pushing it up the block fast as he can, up and on his toes, leaning into it like the football team he’s seen practicing in the vacant lots off Review Avenue alongside the Newtown Creek.

Still, he feels the eyes on him, watching. He trips! Hits the pavement on hands and knees. The carriage rolls forward by itself, already two squares of sidewalk ahead, but he’s up! After it! Tears stinging his eyes, he grabs the handlebars, just missing the cars parked at the curb. He rights his ship and sails on up the sidewalk. His hands are dirty, right knee scraped where his overalls ripped. They’ll ask about that, he knows. He’ll say: I fell, it don’t hurt. At the corner, he wheels around onto Starr Avenue.

For the only time he can ever remember, there’s nobody on his stoop. Home free! He backs up the stoop, dragging the carriage by its handlebars up the four stone steps and into the vestibule of his tenement, then down the long, carpeted hallway to the door to the basement stairway, and parks it there in the dark. No one can see him reach in and take the doll in its frilly dress into his arms.

“Be good now, baby,” he cautions, then lays it back down in the carriage, covering it, head and all, with the pink blanket so no one can see.

He climbs the four flights of stairs, holding tight to the wooden banister worn smooth by generations of hands, all the way to the top where he lives with Nan and Aunt May. Nan’s his grandmother and Aunt May’s mother and his father’s mother. He knows this because they told him, and his home will always be with them as long as he’s a good boy, and his mother drinks and his father’s a whoremaster. He does not remember his mother because she dropped him off when he was eight months and didn’t come back. Nan keeps house and Aunt May goes to work at the phone company. And Aunt May is the boss of all of them, Nan says when Aunt May can’t hear her. There’s an old dog named Dinah lives with them, it’s Aunt May’s dog, it won’t let him walk it. He reaches up for the doorknob and goes inside.

“Young man!” Aunt May calls from the parlor. He goes in to her. She’s in her housecoat, sitting in the arthritis chair by the window. Nan calls it that because Aunt May has that, and sits in it all the time. Nan’s not there, she went to the store. He sees the open window and pillow on the sill, the sheer curtain wafting in and out on the summer breeze, before dropping his eyes to the little fox terrier sitting alongside the chair, studying him, alert as if also waiting for him to account.

“I found it,” he says, staring at the dog who stares back, weighing his words with beady, angry eyes. Then, curling its upper lip to show fangs, growls from deep down in its little chest.

“Where did you find it?” Aunt May snaps.

“In the schoolyard.”

“Liar!”

“She gave it to me.”

Aunt May makes him push it all the way back. As he runs the gauntlet, he again keeps his head down, eyes to the pavement. The little girl is still there, bawlin’, with her mother and a bunch of little girls. The other little girls are bawlin’ too; he has no idea why. When the little girl sees him, she stops, runs to the carriage, snatches up her doll and hugs it. But when Aunt May holds him by the scruff of the neck in front of the little girl and tells her to give him a good slap right across his face, she starts bawlin’ again. Staked out by bloodthirsty hostiles, his face burns under their piteous stares. In sight of the Stone Saints across the street giving him the ass, he prays with all his might that all the windows in all the houses on every block be nailed shut.

BOTTOM OF THE SIXTH

BY ALAN GORDON

Rego Park

Plaster dust fell lazily through the air. He watched it idly, betting on which finger it would land. His right hand was dominating his field of vision at the moment. His right hand, and the dust that drifted down from the crappy plasterboard someone had once used to patch up the ceiling, so old and crumbled that a loud noise could loosen it.

Like, say, a gunshot.

The dust fell on his ring and middle fingers, which twitched slightly when it hit them. That was a good thing, he decided. He moved the other three fingers, then rotated his hand on the floor where it rested. Even better. He was falling very much in love with the plaster dust, with his working fingers, with the hand and the wrist that turned it. He did a quick inventory of the rest of his body. Everything seemed accounted for, or at least attached. Something hurt around the right side of his rib cage.

Let’s try breathing, he thought. Haven’t done that for a while.

He sucked in air, and started to cough violently. The thing that hurt in his rib cage, which apparently had only been kidding before, began to throb badly. He used the right hand that he still liked so much to poke cautiously at the spot. It was tender and painful. But it wasn’t bleeding. Protruding slightly from the inside of the vest was the mashed tip of a bullet.

Michaels pushed himself up from the floor, pointing his gun unsteadily in front of him.

“You okay?” asked Carter, who was getting to his feet.

“Basically, yeah,” said Michaels. “Might have cracked a rib.”

Carter looked at Michaels’s vest, which had a neat entry hole on the front.

“Damn, those things actually work,” he said. “Who knew?”

“Not that guy,” said Michaels, pointing in front of him.

The man lying on the floor was groaning weakly, two bullet holes in his back and a pool of blood seeping out from under him.

“Shot his own man in the back,” observed Carter. “Just because he got in the way. That’s cold.”

A pile of blue uniforms burst through the door, guns drawn.

“Oh good, now you’re here,” wheezed Michaels. “Tell me you got him.”

“Got who?” asked one of the uniforms.

“Wasn’t someone supposed to be covering the fire escape?”

“Yeah. Merck. He’s still out there. He didn’t see anything.”

Michaels and Carter looked at each other.

“Two-bedroom apartment,” said Michaels. “There’s the door, which was us, and the fire escape, which is Merck. Where is the fucker?”

One of the uniforms called for EMS. The two detectives and the other three fanned out across the living room. Carter took a deep breath, then kicked open a bedroom door. He waited two beats. Nothing happened.

“Portillo, if you’re in there, you know you ain’t getting away,” he called. “Make this easy. No one got hurt.”

“Wait a second,” protested Michaels.

“Shut up, I’m working,” said Carter. He barged through the door, a uniform close behind.

“Clear!” they called a second later.

Carter came out and looked at the second bedroom.

“Portillo, I am not playing!” he shouted. “Don’t get any stupider on me!”

There was no response. Carter sighed, then kicked the door in.

“Fuck me, it’s empty,” he said, peering inside. “Guy did a Houdini. Where’d he go?”

“Hey, detective,” called a uniform from the first bedroom. “Take a look at this.”

They all crowded in. There was a floorboard that wasn’t quite flush with the rest. The uniform pulled, and a section of floor came up. The hole underneath was ringed by a dozen brick-sized packages wrapped in layers of plastic.

“Crawl space,” said Carter, shining a flashlight into it. “Looks like it goes all the way to the elevator shaft. He’s probably gotten to the basement by now.”

“Not one of our finer days,” said Michaels.

The EMS crew came in and went to work on the wounded man. Michaels took his first deep breath, regretting it immediately. He pried the bullet out of his vest and tossed it to one of the uniforms.

“Bag this,” he ordered. “Bag the coke. Get Evidence Retrieval in here for prints. I’m gonna ride along with the Swiss guy.”

“I thought he was Latino,” said the uniform. “How do you figure he’s Swiss?”

“’Cause of all the holes in him,” said Michaels.

The ambulance screeched up the ramp to the emergency room at Queens General, with Carter’s Corvette pulling up right behind them, his bubble light flashing on top. Two RMPs brought up the rear.

“I want him guarded 24/7,” said Carter to the uniforms. “Two men at all times, and heads up. If this guy wants to finish the job, he’ll come in blasting.”

They followed the gurney inside. There was a flurry of green scrubs and shouting, then the doors to the OR hissed shut, leaving the two detectives standing with a surgeon.

“How long for the operation?” asked Michaels.

“To take the bullets out, not long,” said the surgeon. “But we got to get Neuro down to take a look at the spine. I don’t think the guy walks again.”

“He wasn’t going anywhere, anyways,” said Michaels. “We’d like him alive and talking.”

“Don’t worry, that’s what we do,” replied the surgeon. “Welcome to Gunshots ’R’ Us.”

He vanished through the doors. Carter tugged on Michaels’s arm.

“What?”

“I figure that adrenaline rush you’ve been coasting on is about to run out,” said Carter. “Let’s get you looked at before you crash and get all whiny with it.”

Cracked rib, said the ER nurse. Cracked rib, said the X-ray tech. By the time an actual doctor came by and peremptorily taped him up, the formal diagnosis was an afterthought. The doctor pulled out a prescription pad, then looked at him quizzically.

“How much do you want it to not hurt?” he asked.

“What’s the tradeoff?” asked Michaels.

“You have any desire to be awake anytime in the near future?”

“Actually, I do,” said Michaels. “But give me something for when I need to sleep without screaming.”

The doctor scribbled something. “You’re a lucky man today,” he said as he handed it to him.

“I guess I am,” said Michaels. “Not really feeling it yet.”

He walked out of the ER. Carter was waiting for him.

“They told me you got a cracked rib,” he said.

“So I heard,” said Michaels. “How’s our boy?”

“Still in surgery,” said Carter. “And Birnbaum’s here.”

“He wants to debrief us?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Birnbaum’s moods were measured on the Richter scale. From the looks of his complexion, which was veering into the deep-purple end of red, there was major activity happening along his faultline.

“Routine execution of a search warrant, that’s what you said,” he fumed. “That is what you said, isn’t it?”

“Yes, captain,” answered Carter.

“And now I got an escaped cop-shooter with no description,” said Birnbaum. “Wonderful. Let’s call the Post and share our little victory.”

“I didn’t really get shot,” explained Michaels. “I got shot at. The bullet did not technically enter my body.”

“And my foot will not technically connect with your ass,” retorted Birnbaum.

“We did get twelve keys of coke off the street,” pointed out Carter. “And one guy to charge them against.”

“Oh, that was good work,” said Birnbaum. “Did he put up a struggle as you put the cuffs on, or was he too busy bleeding on the floor? Get Portillo, and then I can start sticking medals on someone.”

He stormed away.

“Ain’t no winning with this one, is there?” said Carter.

The surgeon came out. “You need these for evidence or something?” he asked, holding out his hand. There were two bullets in it.

“Yeah, thanks,” said Carter. “How’s the patient?”

“He’ll live, but he won’t be out of a wheelchair until someone figures out how to reconnect spinal cords.”

“That sucks,” said Michaels. “How long until he wakes up?”

“Should be soon.”

“Okay, doc, thanks,” said Michaels. He turned to Carter. “So now that they’ve sewed him up, let’s go see if he’s willing to spill his guts.”

“Not until I talk to him about his condition,” said the surgeon. “He hears that from me, not from you.”

“Look, doc, this is a serious case here,” said Michaels. “We got a shooter on the run.”

“My house, my rules,” replied the surgeon. “I’ll let you know when I’m through.”

About fifteen minutes later, he came out and gave them a nod. They went inside. The man was stretched out on a bed, a number of different monitors beeping and blinking around him. He was staring up at the ceiling, but rolled his eyes toward the two detectives as they pulled up a couple of chairs to the bed. One of his hands was handcuffed to the siderail.

“How’s it going, John?” asked Michaels.

“Who’s John?” whispered the man.

“That’s how they got you listed,” said Michaels. “You’re John Doe 375 until they find out your real name. Sorry about your situation. Guess your partner figured he didn’t want you talking.”

“I’m not talking,” said the man.

“Look at that loyalty, will you?” beamed Michaels.

“Impressive,” said Carter. “Gets shot in the back by his own boy, and still won’t give him up.”

“John—screw that, give me a name,” said Michaels. “We’ll have it by tonight with the fingerprints, so you might as well.”

“Santos,” said the man.

“Okay, Santos, nice to meet you. Here’s the thing,” said Michaels. “We took twelve keys out of the floor in the bedroom. That puts you deep into A-1 felony weight, which in real terms means a whole lotta years to life. Not only that, you get charged for what your buddy Portillo did when we came in the door.”

“What do you mean?” wheezed Santos.

“I mean two counts of attempted murder in the— Hey, I guess it’s first degree, isn’t it?”

“He was shooting at police officers,” said Carter. “Hit one. That makes it first degree in my book.”

“So that makes it another whole lotta years to life consecutive to the first whole lotta years to life,” continued Michaels.

“I didn’t shoot anyone,” protested Santos.

“Yeah, but it’s this whole acting-in-concert thing,” said Michaels. “Legal stuff, but I’m saying it means you go down for everything here.”

“He’s not my partner,” said Santos.

“Then you shouldn’t give a shit what happens to him,” said Michaels.

“I wouldn’t,” added Carter.

“You see, here’s what I’m saying, Santos,” Michaels continued. “We can give up on him and let you take the weight, and that’s a win for us. We go on to the next case, and you go upstate into maximum security . . .”

“That’s on account of it being a violent felony,” explained Carter.

“Where you will spend the rest of your life not being able to walk, piss, shit, or . . . which one am I missing?”

“Fuck,” said Carter.

“Oh yeah, fuck,” said Michaels. “On the plus side, when you get gang-banged, you won’t feel a thing. You could get some reading done while it’s going on.”

“You are going to be one well-read man,” said Carter.

“But, as you might have figured out by now . . .” started Michaels.

“Because you are an intelligent individual . . .” said Carter.

“There is a way of making this situation a whole lot easier.”

“Portillo,” said Santos.

“That’s right.”

“And you give me what? Witness Protection Program?”

“Not likely,” said Michaels. “But we could just charge you with the drugs, and there’s a lot of flexibility in the sentencing. Even probation comes into play if your info is good.”

“I can get out?”

“We could drop it down a grade or three depending on the level of cooperation we get,” explained Michaels. “This is Queens. We got a deal going with the Narcotics DA. Doesn’t mean you can go back to selling, but yeah, you can get out.”

Santos lay there, his eyes closed. “Am I ever gonna walk?”

“Not according to your doctor,” said Michaels.

“Fuck Portillo,” said Santos. “Fuck him up bad.”

“We’ll do our best,” promised Michaels. “So what have you got?”

“His sister’s kid,” said Santos. “He’s in Little League. He’s a pitcher. Portillo was always bragging on how great his nephew is. He was talking about going to see him pitch on Saturday. There’s a playoff game. He wouldn’t miss it if every SWAT team in the world was after him.”

“When? Where? What’s the sister’s name?”

“I don’t know,” said Santos.

“What’s the nephew’s name?” asked Carter.

“Portillo just called him Junior.”

“And that’s all you got? There are a thousand Little League fields in this city. How we gonna find the right one?”

Santos thought for a second. “Jews,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“He came back from this one game, I think it was last Tuesday night, and he was laughing about seeing all these Jews lining up for a bunch of school buses. He thought it was the funniest thing he ever seen.”

“Jews in New York,” muttered Michaels. “Well, that should narrow it down.”

* * *

“You got him yet?” asked Birnbaum when they entered his office.

“We know where he’s gonna be, sort of,” said Michaels. He summed up their information.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, so far,” said Michaels. “Doesn’t really help. There are a lot of baseball fields and even more Jews to track down. Not sure how to narrow this one down in time.”

“Maybe by asking the only Jew in the room, who has risen to his position of authority over you shmucks by means of superior intelligence,” said Birnbaum.

“Enlighten us, captain,” said Carter.

“When you or I say Jew, we’re talking about a whole range of things,” said Birnbaum. “But if a guy named Portillo is laughing about seeing Jews on a bus, he’s means old-school Jews. I’m talking Hasids here.”

“Those guys in the black coats and hats with the beards and the curly things on the sides,” said Michaels.

“That sensitivity training really paid off for you,” sighed Birnbaum. “Yes, those guys. Lubavitchers, Satmars, whichever sect, that’s probably who he was talking about.”

“So we’re looking at Williamsburg or Crown Heights?” guessed Carter.

“Not necessarily,” said Birnbaum. “They’ve branched out into a lot of neighborhoods. But if they’re getting on school buses, it probably means either a synagogue or a seminary. Start calling precinct captains—those guys should be able to tell you if there are Hasid places near Little League fields.”

“We’re on it,” said Michaels.

* * *

A few hours later, Carter hung up his phone and sighed. “Damn, when Cap’s on, he’s on. Got a likely from the 112.”

“Forest Hills?” said Michaels.

“Forest Hills, Rego Park,” answered Carter. “Proud home of the Forest Hills Youth Athletic Association, which is in Rego Park. They have their own fields on Fleet Street, and first round of playoffs is this Saturday.”

“And?”

“Around the corner on Thornton, there’s a Hasidic seminary. School buses line up to take the students back to wherever they live. The Captain at the 112 says they sometimes got complaints about the street getting blocked.”

“Let’s go take a look,” said Michaels.

They drove to Fleet Street. There was a high mesh fence bordering the sidewalk, a concrete bunker of a clubhouse on the right. It was Friday, around noon, and the field was being mowed by a guy on a large riding mower. There was an old railroad bridge, overgrown with bushes and trees, and abandoned tracks ran along a path off the street, parallel to the left field line. Signs from local sponsors decorated the outfield fence.

“Looks doable,” said Carter.

“Harder than it looks,” countered Michaels. “There’s another field there.”

They strolled through the gate and up a hill. Sure enough, a second baseball diamond was set up above the first, and they could see two more past that one. A path stretched between Fields 3 and 4, running to residential neighborhoods in both directions.

“What’s past that field?” asked Carter.

“Let’s take a look.”

There were woods, and a clearing. The tracks continued in that direction, heading toward a tunnel by the Long Island Rail Road tracks. A commuter train roared by as they watched.

“Someone’s been having a party,” observed Michaels, pointing to some empty beer bottles and crack vials scattered around a fallen tree.

“Our boy, or just the locals?” wondered Carter.

“Who knows? This could be a nightmare. We got three street entrances, the whole woodland frontier at the back, four fields going simultaneously for however many games, one very dangerous and armed cop-shooter, and civilians everywhere. Child civilians at that.”

“Portillo spooks, there could be some bad headlines on Sunday,” said Carter. “Shoot-out at a Little League game. Won’t do anyone any good.”

“We’re gonna need a big team. Let’s talk to the captain.”

* * *

Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m., Michaels handed out satellite photos of the field that he had downloaded. “First games are at 8:30. Four fields going, and a new game every two hours until sunset. Every field will have two dozen kids, and three times as many family members watching. We’re looking for a phenom, a Latino pitcher called Junior, and when we find him, we narrow down on that location and look for his uncle. We got twenty-five cops here. I want a car at the two side entrances at Thornton and Alderton, four guys up in the woods near the old railroad tunnel, two cars at the main entrance, and the rest of us wandering the location. If you see him, just phone it in. We’ll grab him once he leaves. We don’t want him to start anything when there’s kids everywhere. Everyone got their cell phones charged up? We’ll be keeping them on walkie-talkie mode.”

“Won’t that look kind of obvious?” asked a cop.

“Every parent on that field is gonna be giving play-by-play to Grandma,” said Michaels. “We’ll fit right in.”

* * *

Sleepy six-year-olds wearing primary-colored jerseys and black pants over cups they wouldn’t need for several years waddled up the hill to the T-ball field. Older children warmed up on the larger fields while their parents unfolded a wide variety of collapsible chairs. The caretaker trundled the chalk spreader from field to field, leaving foul lines in his wake. The tiny green snack shed’s shutters opened, and the smell of coffee and hot dogs began to permeate the atmosphere. Michaels bought his first cup of coffee and promised to pace himself. There were going to be no bathroom breaks today.

International League. Pan-Continental League. Major League. Grandiose titles for small players, wearing their sponsors’ names with pride. T-Bone Diner. Hancock Law. Fast Break—that was the best name for a team, Michaels thought. A basketball team, but still. He wandered around, listening in on coaches’ instructions, looking for Junior.

“It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame,” came Carter’s voice over his cell phone. “Let’s play sixteen.”

A burst of Spanish chatter caught his attention. A family had settled in to cheer their daughter on. A young woman, a young man, an older woman. The man had a beard. In the brief glimpse he’d had of Portillo, he hadn’t seen a beard. He had a vague impression of height.

“Girls generally don’t get named Junior, do they?” he asked into his cell phone.

“I’d say not,” replied Carter. “Unless she’s a real Griffey fan. But Santos did say nephew.”

“Right,” said Michaels. “I’m hanging by Field 3, Mom. I’ll let you know when little Barney comes up to bat.”

There were bleachers along the third base line, but he chose to stand by the fence near first. Families were still coming in as the pimply teenager who was umpiring the game yelled, “Play ball!”

Michaels glanced over the crowd, then watched as the pitcher plunked the first batter with his first throw. The crowd oohed in sympathy, then cheered as the batter swallowed hard to keep from crying and jogged down to first base.

“Settle down, Danny!” shouted a mom. The pitcher ignored her, and hit the next batter.

“One more and he’s out,” said a man sitting on a lawn chair by Michaels.

“That’s the rule?” asked Michaels.

“Yeah, you can only hit two kids per inning. Safety thing.”

“I guess you save it for the ones you really don’t like,” said Michaels.

“Yeah,” said the man. “That’s my boy in left. Which kid’s yours?”

“Still on the bench,” said Michaels. “They’ll probably put him in halfway through.”

“Well, they have to, don’t they? . . . Hey, I know you.”

“Yeah?” said Michaels.

“Yeah,” said the man. “You’re a cop, aren’t you? So am I. Bill Stanley, 101st Precinct.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Michaels, shaking his hand. “Jim Michaels.”

“Michaels, right. Didn’t know you lived around here. And you got a kid my boy’s age? Small world.”

“Sure is,” said Michaels.

“Yeah, I remember, you were working Narcotics,” continued Stanley. “Still there?”

“Yup.”

“Huh.” Stanley’s eyes narrowed. He stood by Michaels, keeping his eyes on the game. The batter popped up to third for the first out. “You don’t have a kid, do you?” Stanley said softly. “Tell me you’re not on the job right now.”

“Sorry,” said Michaels.

“Jesus, what’s going down here?”

“Just looking for someone.”

“There are children here,” said Stanley. “What the hell are you thinking?”

“We’re not going to take him down here.”

“What if he freaks?” asked Stanley. “Did you consider that?”

“We did,” said Michaels. “This is our only lead.”

“Crap, crap, crap,” muttered Stanley. “Is he at this game?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Michaels. “We were told he’s got a nephew called Junior. Latino. A pitcher.”

“Junior,” said Stanley. “I don’t know any Juniors in this game.”

The next two batters struck out. Danny had settled down. The parents cheered, including Stanley. As the kids ran to the dugout, he motioned to his son, who quickly came to the fence.

“Billy, this is a friend of mine from the force. Jim Michaels.”

“How ya doin’, Billy?” said Michaels.

“Fine,” said Billy.

“He was wondering about a pitcher named Junior,” said Stanley. “Spanish kid. Know anyone like that?”

“Junior? He’s in Majors,” answered Billy. “This is Pan-Con.”

“Which team?” asked Michaels.

“Yellowstone Tires. He’s their best pitcher. I gotta go, Coach is yelling.”

“Thanks, Billy,” said Michaels.

The boy scooted away.

“Here,” said Michaels, handing Stanley two bucks. “Buy him an extra ice cream on me.”

“My son, the snitch. His mother will be so proud.”

Michaels walked down to the league bulletin board and studied the schedules. Yellowstone Tires was playing at 10:30 on Field 1, the big one by the street. He pulled out his cell phone.

“Okay, Mom, I gotta see Junior play at 10:30,” he said.

“You got him?” asked Carter.

“I don’t know any other Juniors, Mom. Do you?”

“Haven’t found any yet,” said Carter. “Which field?”

“Yeah, Field 1, Mom, that’s the nice one by the street.”

“Well, I think we got to keep covering the others, just in case.”

“You said it, Mom,” said Michaels. “I’ll call you when the game starts, give you a play-by-play. Put your feet up and go easy on the gin, okay?”

“If your mother is really like that, it goes a long way toward explaining you,” said Carter.

Michaels bought a pretzel from the snack shack. The first base foul line for Field 1 paralleled the street, where a pair of ice cream trucks had parked and were doing brisk business. An apartment building loomed beyond the clubhouse. Michaels picked up his cell again.

“We should have someone covering the entrance of that building,” he muttered. “Any Latino male coming out after the game ends should be tailed.”

“You don’t have enough people for everyone in Queens,” said one of the backups. “And they all seem to be here.”

Michaels sighed and hung up. A pair of three-year-olds ran screaming by him, their mothers following behind, chatting. No kid was being supervised, because every kid was safe. It was an oasis of security in the big bad city, and Michaels started hoping that he was wrong and Portillo was on his way back to wherever he was from.

The yellow jerseys of Yellowstone Tires began assembling by the field at 10:15, some tossing baseballs around, some cheering for their friends in the game winding down. There were several Latino kids on the team. A coach said something to one, and he nodded while a shorter, squatter kid dug a catcher’s mitt and a baseball from the equipment bag. They went over to the side of the field and began throwing the ball back and forth. The Latino kid threw two easy pitches to the catcher. Then he brought his left knee up close to his chin and uncoiled. The ball hit the catcher’s mitt dead center with a pop that echoed off the apartment building. Michaels pulled out his phone.

“I got Junior here,” he said. “And he’s got an arm, my friends.”

“Right,” said Carter. “Units 3, 4, and 5 to Field 1. The rest of you keep covering where you are, just in case we’re wrong.”

The early game ended, and the two teams lined up to slap palms in a display of ritualized sportsmanship. Yellowstone Tires and Wilco Hardware came onto the field to warm up. The parents of the Wilco kids gathered in the third base bleachers. Michaels grabbed a seat next to a woman who was surreptitiously reading a Harlequin romance.

“Which one is yours?” asked the woman.

“Oh, I got here too early,” said Michaels. “Gonna see my nephew play, but my idiot brother got the time wrong. So I got a couple of hours to kill.”

“That’s my Tommy playing second,” she offered.

“Good-looking kid,” he said. “Looks like you.”

“Are you one of those men who hits on divorced women at Little League games?” she asked hopefully.

“Nah, I only go for soccer moms. And they’re out of season. Who’s the kid pitching for Yellowstone? He’s got some pop.”

“That’s Javier,” she said. “His mom calls him Junior. He’s excellent.”

“Which one’s his mom?”

“I thought you only went for soccer moms,” she said, pouting slightly.

“Buddy of mine runs a travel team. He told me to scout for him while I was here. Javier might be a prospect.”

“That’s her in the yellow T-shirt,” she said, pointing to the other bleachers.

He pulled out a pair of binoculars and scanned the Yel- lowstone supporters. A Latino woman was cheering loudly with some other moms. There were no Latino men.

The Wilco pitcher took the mound and threw his warmups. The catcher tossed the last one to second base, and then the game began. Yellowstone scratched out a run in the top of the first on three singles, the last by Javier, who was batting fifth. Then he took the mound for the bottom of the inning. He struck out the side on eleven pitches.

“This kid is good,” said Michaels into his cell phone.

“You’re telling me,” said Carter. “Any luck on Portillo?”

“Haven’t seen Uncle. I’ll get back to you.”

He stretched and stepped down from the bleachers. His colleagues were wandering around, pretending not to notice each other. He walked down to the street and bought an ice cream.

“Little League sure kills your diet,” he said on his cell.

“It’s our lack of will power,” replied Carter. “I’m on my fifth hot dog, and I don’t even like hot dogs. Any prospects?”

“Not yet.”

Bottom of the second. Two more strikeouts for Javier, the batters flinching at each pitch. The last one swung late and hit a weak ground ball to the first baseman, earning a cheer from the Wilco parents.

Michaels sauntered over to the first base bleachers and took a seat in the top row, giving him a good view of both the game and Javier’s mother. She kept up an animated stream of Spanish with a woman next to her, interspersed with cheers for her son and the other children. She did not look anywhere else.

The pitcher for Wilco, while not at Javier’s level, was effective after the first inning, pitching in and out of jams without allowing another run. Javier struck out the side again in the fourth, and the crowd erupted in cheers.

“Do you realize that we’re watching a perfect game?” marveled Michaels.

“Don’t jinx it,” warned Carter.

“Lucky bastards,” said another detective. “The T-ball game is 18 to 4 in the second, and all the runs are unearned. I’m having flashbacks.”

Word traveled, and kids and parents who were not committed to other games drifted down to watch Javier. Reluctantly, Michaels started scanning the crowd again, looking for possibilities. The ping of a bat distracted him, and he looked back at the game to see Yellowstone’s center fielder racing toward the fence. At the last second, he stuck his glove out and the ball somehow landed in it.

Both sides and all the onlookers stood and applauded the effort, Javier as hard as anyone.

“Did you see that?” shouted Michaels into his cell phone.

“Unbelievable!” said Carter. “Game-saver right there.”

Michaels stretched as the fifth inning played out. Javier was beginning to look fatigued. His pitches no longer popped, but his control was still with him. The Wilco batters were putting the ball in play instead of striking out, although the Yellowstone fielders were able to keep the perfect game going.

Only one inning left, thought Michaels. Then he saw a tall Latino male standing outside the right field fence next to a Hasid who had stopped to watch the game.

“Hey, Mom, I think Uncle Phil just got here,” he said. “Down on the street side. I’m gonna go say hello.”

“Got your back,” said Carter.

He ambled over to the fence by where the Latino stood. Yellowstone did nothing in the top of the sixth. It was still 1-0, and Javier walked slowly to the mound, the crowd cheering him on.

“Good game,” said Michaels. “That Javier is some pitcher.”

The Latino man grunted.

“It would be a shame if something spoiled his big day,” continued Michaels. “Like seeing his uncle get arrested in front of everyone.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” asked the Latino man, turning to face him.

“Oh, sorry,” said Michaels. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Then who you talking to?” demanded the man.

“Him,” said Michaels, pointing to the Hasid. “And I suggest you give us a little space for a few minutes.”

The Hasid glanced at him with a quizzical expression, sweat running through his beard. Then his eyebrows raised slightly.

“You were the one coming through the door,” he said.

“That’s me,” said Michaels. “And I have friends all around you, so let’s keep it quiet. There are kids here.”

Portillo turned back toward the game, keeping his hands visible on the fence.

“Tell you what,” he said softly. “Let’s watch the last inning. Give me that, then I’ll go quietly.”

Birnbaum will ream me for this, thought Michaels.

“All right,” he said. “Hell, I want to see if he pulls it off.”

The first batter took a called strike. Then he glanced at the dad coaching third.

“Whadaya think, they put the bunt on?” said Michaels.

“Let him try,” replied Portillo.

The bunt was on. The kid bravely squared around in the face of the onrushing pitch. It was a chest-high fastball, and it caught the top of the bat and went straight up. The batter, the catcher, and the umpire looked at it, then the catcher took a step forward and caught it.

One out.

“He read the play,” said Michaels. “Smart.”

The next kid gritted his teeth and took the count to three and two. Then he fouled off three pitches in a row.

“He’s tired,” said Portillo. “Come on, Junior, one good one here.”

Javier brought his knee up high and whipped his arm around. The ball started chest high and broke down and to the left. The batter flailed. Strike three.

“I’m guessing he’s an El Duque fan,” said Michaels.

“Better believe it,” said Portillo. “He was so happy when the Mets brought him back.”

Wilco was down to their last licks. The batter, a muscular twelve-year-old, was the kid who had put the ball to deep center before. He swung confidently, then stepped up to the plate. He took Javier to a full count, then, like the previous batter, fouled several pitches off.

Portillo looked at Michaels and grinned through the fake beard.

“Gonna give him the hook again?” speculated Michaels.

“Just watch,” said Portillo.

Javier reared back and threw it hard, right down the middle. The batter swung and connected, a line drive up the middle. Javier stuck his glove in front of his face in self-defense and managed to catch it.

Perfect.

Javier’s team swarmed the mound and lifted him exultantly above them. His mother was screaming from the bleachers, and he pointed at her in triumph.

“Some game,” said Michaels.

“Yeah,” said Portillo, taking off the black hat and wiping his brow with his sleeve. “Okay, let’s go.”

They walked casually away from the field toward Thornton, the rest of the crew falling into place behind them. As they turned the corner, Michaels produced his handcuffs.

“Hands behind your back,” he said.

Portillo complied, and Michaels cuffed him. The prisoner van pulled up. A uniform patted him down. “He’s clean.”

“Strip him when you get inside, just to be safe,” said Michaels.

Portillo turned and looked at him as they put him inside. “Thanks,” he said.

“You want me to tell them what happened?” asked Michaels.

“Nah,” replied Portillo. “It’s the best day of his life. Can’t spoil those.”

They closed the doors of the van and drove off. Carter stood by Michaels.

“How on earth did you know it was Portillo under that getup?” demanded Carter. “He looked kosher to me.”

“See any Hasids up by the seminary?” asked Michaels.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact, I do not,” replied Carter. “Why is that?”

“Because it’s a seminary, not a synagogue. Seminary’s where you learn, synagogue’s where you pray. And it’s Saturday morning. Hasids are in synagogues, not at ballgames.”

“Damn. So what happened between you two?”

“We bonded,” said Michaels. “Baseball does that . . . What do you say we get some lunch? I have this strange craving for bagels and lox.”

THE FLOWER OF FLUSHING

BY VICTORIA ENG

Flushing

Let’s get this party started!” Lily calls out to me from across the street. She’s late, as usual. I’ve been waiting for her by the train station on the corner of Main and Roosevelt, breathing in the greasy aroma of hot dogs and frying noodles from various sidewalk carts. Sunlight washes over Main Street and its procession of festive store signs, all red and yellow with black Chinese lettering. As Lily approaches, the traffic lights change; cars brake at the crosswalk in succession, like they’re bowing to her. She smiles brightly and bumps her hip against mine. I roll my eyes at her and don’t bump back, but inside I’m relieved that she even showed up. Today is important: I’m determined to talk to my crush, Jimmy Lee, a junior at my school. I know he plays basketball at Bowne Park on the weekends, so I made Lily promise to come with me so that I could “run into him” there. We head down Main toward Sanford Avenue, weaving around weekend shoppers and double-parked trucks.

“Think he’ll be there today?” I ask.

“Who? Yao Ming?” she says, her dimples showing.

“Stop calling him that.” I poke her arm. “You know his name.”

“Hey, look! There he is.”

My breath catches in my chest. I look around without moving my head, hoping that he’s too far away to have heard me talking about him. We’re approaching the underpass of the Long Island Rail Road station and I expect to see him perusing magazines at the newsstand, or worse, walking right toward me. But Lily points to a store window with a life-sized poster of Yao Ming, the NBA player from China, and starts cracking up.

“Oh, reeeeally funny, Lil,” I say with as much sarcasm as I can muster. I exhale through my mouth, the tension in my neck subsiding. “You almost made me puke, you know.”

She’s laughing so hard no sound is coming out of her mouth.

“Um, maybe you’re the one who’s gonna puke. You okay?”

She nods and gasps. I’m tempted to tickle her sides to make her throw up—she’s always been sensitive like that— but I’m too anxious to get going.

Jimmy Lee looks nothing like the famous athlete, but he’s 6'2"—way taller than most Asian guys—and he plays on the basketball team. That was enough for Lily to make fun of him. It made no difference to her that he’s Korean.

“Really, quit calling him Yao Ming. Jimmy’s not even Chinese.”

“I know,” she sighs. “Well, he’s far from perfect. A jock. What’s he going to do for you? Buy you pom-poms?” She catches her reflection in the window of a café and runs her fingers through her hair.

Lily Tong is the kind of girl who makes heads turn. She’s only fifteen, one year older than me, but she looks at least twenty. She’s curvy like the women in the music videos, and she wears her makeup and hair like she’s one too. As usual, she’s dressed in something slinky: an expensive, cut-up T-shirt that keeps falling off her shoulder, low-cut jeans that hug her curves, and black pumps. Dangling off her arm is a new purse, its print of interlocking letters broadcasting its expense. Along the street, old Chinese ladies carrying plastic bags full of groceries pause from scrutinizing vegetables to shake their heads at her disapprovingly. Men gawk at her from the open backdoors of restaurants; one worker almost falls from his perch on an overturned bucket into the pile of carrots he’s peeling. As usual, Lily pretends not to notice, but she lifts her chin a little bit higher, and swings her hips a little bit wider.

I hold my head higher too, proud to be her best friend. At 5'5", I’m taller than Lily, but I look like a child next to her, in my maroon tank top and green Old Navy cargo pants. Even if I had the courage to wear the kinds of clothes as Lily, everything would just hang on me loosely. My hair falls straight down in stringy strands no matter what I do to it, so I never even bother curling it like Lily does. I’m glad that I chose to paint my toenails red instead of pink; at least my feet look grown-up.

As we turn onto Sanford, someone calls out Lily’s name. We both turn around and see Peter Wong getting out of the passenger side of a gleaming black Cadillac Escalade.

He walks up to us casually and puts his arm around Lily’s shoulders. The sun glints off the rock-star shades he’s wearing. He’s older, in his twenties or maybe even thirties; I don’t know what he’s doing talking to Lily, but I figure he must know her through her father, who owns one of the biggest dim sum houses in Flushing. As a big businessman, her father knows a lot of people.

“Dai Guo!” She smiles and kisses him on the cheek. She called him Big Brother, but the way he’s looking at her is anything but brotherly. His hand lingers on her hair as he releases her shoulder. He barely looks at me when she introduces us. I know he’s headed to the park too; he and his friends are always there.

They continue walking together, Lily between us so I can’t hear most of their conversation. He calls her Xiao Mei—Little Sister—and coos at her as if she’s a baby. She’s all giggly with him, which I think is gross. Still, I wonder what it would feel like if a guy like him paid so much attention to me, if I were that beautiful. He tells her about the kinds of things he can get for her from his “connections.”

“I already have a Prada bag,” I hear her pouting. “Can you get me a Louis Vuitton?” She pronounces it Loo-iss Voy-tahn.

As we near the entrance to the park, we can hear people on the basketball court, the slap of rubber on cement followed by occasional grunts and metallic dunks. The park, or Bowne Playground as it’s officially called, is divided into sections separated by chain-link fences: The basketball court takes up the most space and is flanked by a kiddie playground and a treelined yard where old men pass their retirement days on its benches, reading Chinese newspapers or feeding pigeons. I scan through the trees for a glimpse of Jimmy, but I can’t recognize his voice over the faraway laughter of children.

We reach the yard first and I see Peter’s friends there— four guys and three girls. Most of them go to my school, seniors reputed to be gangsters. They have claimed the concrete chess tables set in the corner, but instead of chess pieces, there are mah-jongg tiles. Despite the heat of the day, the guys are in black and have spiky hair like Peter, and the girls wear their hair long and carefully frozen into voluminous curls. They’re all smoking cigarettes; I wonder how smart that is, given all the hair spray in the air. Snippets of Cantonese, Mandarin, and Fujianese rise from their conversation.

I recognize one of the guys from my algebra class. He’s a few years older, but he’s in my class because he doesn’t speak much English. We’ve never talked to each other, so I just kind of nod at him. He gives me a strange look, as if he recognizes me but doesn’t know why.

To my dismay, Lily follows Peter to the girls’ table, where a new game of mah-jongg is about to commence. It’s hard to look away from the mesmerizing whirl of pink and green, as pretty manicured hands shuffle and stack the jade tiles expertly.

“You play MJ?” Peter is actually addressing me as well as Lily.

“Uh, not really.” I learned how to play from watching my mom and aunts, but I couldn’t see myself doing it, here, with them. It strikes me as just so Chinese. I mean, sure, I’m Chinese, but not the same way they are, or even the same way Lily is. I was born and raised on Thirty-Ninth Avenue, but my neighbors were Dominican and Jewish, not just Chinese. My parents work in Manhattan’s Chinatown and commute from Flushing on the dollar vans, my mom to a doctor’s office and my dad to a TV repair shop. I grew up hearing almost as much Spanish as Chinese, whereas Lily’s parents made sure that she stayed immersed in Chinese culture and cultivated friendships only with Chinese kids.

Lily nudges me and answers that of course we play. Peter motions for one of the girls at the table to make room for us as he goes to join the guys at the other table. One of the guys hands Peter something wrapped in a crumpled paper bag, from which he takes a swig. The girl, a senior I don’t know, scoots right over and starts resetting the table, scowling at Lily. She’s not the only one scowling, but Lily isn’t fazed.

I look through the chain link to the other side of the park and finally spot Jimmy on the ball court. His brow is furrowed with intensity, his muscular arms outstretched as he motions for Eric Martinez, another junior, to pass him the ball. Eric responds, twisting away from his guard and whips the ball to Jimmy, who in one smooth motion catches it and shoots it into the basket for a three-pointer. Despite myself, I cheer along with the folks on the other side of the fence, which gets me strange looks from my seatmates, Lily included.

I lock eyes with Lily and talk to her under my breath.

“Are you coming with me or not?” I tilt my head ever so slightly toward the court.

“No! I’m staying here.” She presses her lips into a fine line and whispers, “You should stay too. Forget about Jimmy. This is cool.” She accepts a Newport cigarette from a spiky-haired senior whose name I still don’t know.

“Fine. I’m going to go watch the game.” I get up, nod at the table, and walk away. There’s a large enough crowd over there that I feel comfortable heading over by myself. I take a seat at the edge of the bleachers. By now I’m so irritated with Lily that I don’t even have time to get nervous when Jimmy plops down next to me. He has a towel wrapped around his neck and his cheeks are flushed.

“Hey! What are you doing here?” He is speaking to me. He knows who I am.

“Oh, you know, just visiting a friend.” I look down and tuck my hair behind my ear. If I were Lily I would look up at him through my eyelashes and flirt. But I’m not, so I focus on how red my toenails are.

“You mean those gangsters over there are your friends?” He jerks his head in their direction. A few of the guys are talking with some Latino kids from the neighborhood. They all stand stiffly in a semicircle, menacing expressions on their faces. Peter seems to be negotiating with their leader, a dark, stocky guy with a shaved head and an oversized basketball jersey. They all relax when Peter and the guy shake hands, which they do in a hip-hop sequence: fists up, they grasp each other’s hands as if they’re going to arm wrestle, yank themselves toward each other, and bump chests. As their palms separate I catch a glint of light off little plastic bags.

“Those guys? Nah. I’m here with my friend Lily.” Who is over there with those gangsters, I’m thinking. Lily is studying her tiles, but even across the park I can tell she’s watching me from the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t know you were going to be playing here. You’re really good.”

“Um, thanks . . .” He’s pulling the ends of the towel, rubbing it back and forth over his neck. “I uh . . . I’m glad you’re here.”

Before we can say anything else, he’s called back into the game. The sun feels good on my face.

* * *

And now, a couple of hours later, the sun is starting to set. The basketball game is winding down, without him for the last hour—Jimmy ended up leaving the game to come back to me on the bleachers, and we just talked about everything. He told me he thinks I’m the most mature sophomore he’s ever met. I played it cool and did not tell him how I’ve been practically stalking him.

Eric yells to him that it’s time to go, and as he turns to leave he bends and quickly kisses me on the lips.

“See ya at school!” He grins at me, then heads toward Union Street. I am too stunned to reply, so I just smile weakly at him.

But as the two of them walk off with some of the other ball players, one of the spiky-haired guys struts up to him and bumps him with his shoulder, hard enough not to be an accident. It’s my algebra classmate. Eric looks at him as if to say, What the fuck? but once he realizes who it was that bumped him, he just mumbles, “Excuse me.”

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” Jimmy has his hands up the way basketball players do when they’re trying not to foul out. Behind him, Eric Martinez and the other guys who were on the court stiffen. Smiles disappear as fists tighten. Jimmy backs away, holding his arms out from his sides to keep them at bay. His friends back off too. They’re not stupid.

“What’s your problem? Get the fuck out of my face!” Algebra is clearly drunk and enjoying the moment of power, but he doesn’t push it any further. He holds up his hand, thumb and forefinger out, and pretends to shoot Jimmy in the head.

Back at the chess tables, Peter and his friends are chuckling amongst themselves. The mah-jongg tiles have been packed up and the table is littered with several more of those paper bags.

An unfamiliar emotion washes over me as I watch Jimmy leave with his friends, who are no longer laughing and joking. My eyes burn with tears and the words come to mind: fear, shame, anger. There was just no reason for that, I’m thinking to myself. And this is what Lily thinks is so cool? I look over at her, now leaning languidly against Peter’s arm. Her fingertips are at her lips and I can tell that she’s as shocked as I am, but she’s trying to hide it, to look grown-up and still perfect.

“Let’s go, Lil.” I don’t even want to make eye contact with anyone else. She nods and reaches for her bag, but as she slides away from Peter, he grabs her arm and pulls her toward him in a gesture that’s meant to look gentle but isn’t.

“Don’t leave me, Little Sister. It’s early. We’re going to a party. I want to show you off.” He looks me up and down. Without his sunglasses his eyes look dead serious and kind of scary. “You can go home.”

“No, Tina’s my best friend. I can’t go without her.” Lily shakes her hair as if to clear her head of cobwebs. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a party at Kuo’s place, the Tulip. It’ll be fun. We’ll make a karaoke video.” His voice is too sweet when he speaks to her.

A lump forms in my throat. Even I’ve heard of that nightclub, the Yellow Tulip. It’s always in the news; it’s been raided several times for prostitution and there’s a shooting there every other weekend. Of course, I can’t say any of this. These are probably the people who do the shooting.

“Isn’t that a bar?” I ask innocently. “Lily and I can’t go. We’re not twenty-one.”

This makes everyone laugh. Except for Lily, who is staring at me as if I should spontaneously combust.

“What? They know how old you are,” I whisper to her.

“No they don’t,” she hisses. She pulls me aside as darkness descends on the playground. Most of the group staggers out of the park, but Peter lights up a cigarette. His cell phone blares an electronic waltz and he answers it, leaning against the gate. The streetlights cast a shadow of the chain-link fence, crosshatching Lily’s face.

I whisper to her: “Lil. You can’t be serious. Isn’t he like thirty? He knows your dad, so he’s got to know you’re only fifteen. He’s not someone you should be messing with.”

“Look. If you want to go out with a nobody, that’s your problem. I think you can do better. But don’t you ruin this for me. I really like him.”

“You mean, you like ‘Big Brother’s’ connections.” I point at her expensive purse. “By the way, it’s pronounced Loo-ey Vee-tawn.” Her face twists, and she looks like she’s going to cry. I’ve pressed her button. Her dad didn’t always own his restaurant; he started out in the business as a dishwasher. “I’m really sorry. It’s just—”

“It’s just that you’re jealous,” she states flatly. “They chased your little boyfriend away and now you don’t want me to have any fun. Well, I’m sorry if they want me at the party and not you. Maybe we’re just too different. Maybe you’re not my best friend after all. Maybe you’re nothing.” She steels herself for a fight. The defiant set of her chin makes me think of her mahjongg partners.

It’s the liquor talking, I tell myself. I imagine what would happen if she were to go with them to the Tulip. Peter Wong and the drunk, sexy, teenaged daughter of his business associate. Algebra shooting invisible bullets with his thumb and forefinger. I imagine her beautiful hair splayed out across a dirty, beer-soaked stage.

With a grace worthy of a professional athlete, I reach under her arms and tickle her. At first she looks at me as if I’ve gone crazy, but as she begins to giggle she realizes what I’m doing, and her laughter turns intense, and then furious. She tries to fend me off but she’s too drunk and I’m too quick, having trained myself since childhood to know her weak spot. Laughing and sputtering uncontrollably, she can’t even turn away from Peter when a stream of vomit erupts from her mouth and all over his Bruno Magli shoes. The look on Peter’s face as he studies his sopping shoes, before he turns and walks away, says it all.

The party is over.

CRAZY JILL SAVES THE SLINKY

BY STEPHEN SOLOMITA

College Point

When the over-muscled hulk in the studded leather jeans smacks the fat guy in the polka dot sundress, the eight patrol officers gathered around the small TV in the muster room cheer loudly. The body builder is a prostitute, the fat guy a prominent New York politician. The video is evidence discovered in the apartment of an extortionist.

Groans and cat calls greet the white guy’s flabby thighs and flaccid penis when the hulk tears off his dress. When the fat guy turns to reveal a cotton-white ass the size of a watermelon, the boys nearly fall off their chairs.

I’m the only woman in the room, Officer Jill Kelly, and I feel sorry for the fat slob in the dress. I wonder what it’s like to be a City Councilman, a Catholic, a husband, a father, a transvestite in a hotel room with a leather boy. The truth is that I can smell his desperation. The truth is that some cop’s gonna leak the tape and the fat guy’s life is gonna drop out from under him like a body through the trap door of a gallows.

“Jill? The captain wants to see you.”

“Thanks, Crowley. I need to get away from this.”

Bushy enough to conceal small game, Sergeant Crowley’s eyebrows rise to form lush semicircles as he jerks his chin at the TV. “I woulda predicted this was right up your alley.”

* * *

Captain McMullen’s office is another world altogether, a quiet, clean world-unto-itself. Instead of peeling green paint, the captain’s walls are lined with expensive paneling. Instead of scuffed linoleum, his floor is covered by a Berber carpet flecked with beige and gold. His walnut desk is big enough to land helicopter gunships.

I close the door behind me, shut out the squeals of the fat politician, the mindless comments of my peers. Captain McMullen is nowhere to be found, but the man seated behind his desk is very familiar.

“Whadaya say, Uncle Mike?”

Deputy Chief Michael Xavier Kelly offers a thin smile. He has a very narrow face with a prominent jaw that dominates veal-thin lips, a button of a nose, and blue glittery eyes that rarely blink. Uncle Mike is Deputy Chief of Detectives and heads the Commissioner’s Special Investigations Unit, an attack-dog bureau far more terrifying to ranking officers than Internal Affairs.

“Jill Kelly,” Uncle Mike squawks, “in the flesh.” Thirty-one years ago, as a rookie on foot patrol, Uncle Mike took a bullet that passed from left to right through his neck. Now he can’t raise his voice above a hoarse whisper. “Take a seat, Jill. Please.”

I do as I’m told. “So, how’s Aunt Rose? And Sean?”

“Fine, fine.” Uncle Mike walks his fingers across the desk and over a bulging file. “I hear the boys have taken to calling you Crazy Jill.”

“I consider it a compliment.”

My admission evokes a raspy laugh, immediately followed by the most somber expression in his repertoire. “I came here for a reason,” he announces. “Tell me, do you believe in redemption?”

Ah, right to the point. I was a naughty girl, a girl in need of punishment, but now I can make it up. Just do Uncle Mike this unnamed little favor—which will not turn out to be little—and retrieve my working life. Uncle Mike will pluck me out of the 75th Precinct in the asshole of Brooklyn. He’ll restore me to the Fugitive Apprehension Squad and the SWAT team. I only have to do this one little favor.

* * *

It was last August and blazing hot. I was in an uninsulated attic, looking out through a window at the house across the way. The man in the house, George Musgrove, had butchered his ex-wife, then taken his three children hostage, naturally threatening to kill them as well. At the time, I was part of a SWAT team assigned to eastern Queens, a sniper, and my orders were to acquire a target a.s.a.p., then notify the boss. The first part wasn’t a problem. When I came into the attic, George was standing in a bedroom window, completely exposed. He wanted out by then, but didn’t have the balls to kill himself. That’s what I figured, anyway. Just another suicide-by-cop.

I had my partner call down to the CO and explain that I was thirty yards away with a clear target, and that I couldn’t miss. But Captain Ed McMullan—known to his troops as Egg McMuffin—turned me down flat. The hostage negotiator, he told my partner, was confident. Musgrove would be talked out eventually. There would be no further loss of life.

All through this back-and-forth, Musgrove stayed right there, right in front of the window with a cordless phone pressed to his ear. And I started thinking, Yeah, most likely he’ll give it up without hurting the kids. Maybe even nine out of ten times he’ll surrender. But when you consider what happens if he ends up in the wrong ten percent, a hundred percent is a lot better than ninety. I was in a position to guarantee those kids would survive and I exercised my options.

If Uncle Mike hadn’t intervened, I would have been charged with disobeying a direct order, and might have faced criminal charges. But that was Uncle Mike’s way. Clan Kelly first became prominent in the NYPD a hundred years ago, when Teddy Roosevelt was Acting Commissioner. Clan Kelly is still prominent today. This was especially relevant to Uncle Mike, who fully expected to become the next Chief of Detectives. Obviously, the Kelly name could not be besmirched. We were a self-policing family and a Kelly could be punished only by another Kelly. Thus, at Uncle Mike’s behest, my gold shield was taken away and I was exiled to the Seven-Five, there to languish until he needed a favor.

As for me, I want back on the SWAT team and the Fugitive Apprehension Squad. I want both of those things and I want them bad enough to play along.

* * *

“Anything I can do for you, I’m ready,” I finally say. “You know that.”

“It’s about your cousin, Joanna.”

“The Slinky?”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what I call her, Uncle Mike. The Slinky.”

He bursts out laughing. “Yes, I can understand why you’d say that.”

Joanna Kelly embodies the concept of slender. Her fingernails are slender, her elbows, her teeth. On those rare occasions when I’m with her, I feel like the Incredible Hulk.

“It wouldn’t be so bad, Uncle Mike, if she didn’t wear those dresses.”

He nods agreement, his narrow smile widening slightly to indicate genuine amusement. “Ah, the dresses.”

Joanna likes plunging, short-skirted designer frocks. When she attends family gatherings, male attention drifts her way like dust to a vacuum cleaner.

“So what about Joanna?”

“Paulie assaulted her last night.”

“I thought Paulie was in prison?”

“He was paroled a week ago.”

“So pick him up and violate him. What’s the big deal?”

Paulie Malone is Joanna’s ex-husband. He’s an all-around knucklehead and he pretty much beat Joanna from the earliest days of their marriage until she finally called down the wrath of Uncle Mike and the rest of the Kelly clan. Then, within hours, Paulie was off the street, his bail denied, his lawyer made to understand that no plea bargain would be forthcoming. A short trial was followed by a conviction and a three-year sentence, the max for second-degree assault.

“I could have him picked up eventually,” Uncle Mike concedes, “but I’ll tell ya, Jill, if he hasn’t gotten the message by now, he’ll never get it. He’s incorrigible.”

“So what exactly do you want from me?” The words have an air of defiance, but my tone is resigned. Do it, or else: That’s how I understand the offer.

“Your cousin needs protection.”

“Only if you let Paulie stay on the street.”

“Okay, I won’t argue. Joanna needs protection until Paulie is taken into custody.”

“You’re telling me Paulie’s not to be found?”

“He never reported to his halfway house or his parole officer. His whereabouts, as we in the policing business like to say, are unknown.”

I look out the window at a nondescript street in a nondescript neighborhood. The stores on the other side of Pitkin Avenue survive from month to month. A barber who makes book, a candy store that hawks cigarettes smuggled in from Virginia, a cop bar named Melvin’s Hideaway.

“Jill?”

“I’m still listening, Uncle Mike.”

“Then I’m still insisting. Joanna needs twenty-four-hour protection.”

“And you want me to do the protecting.”

“I think Joanna would be more comfortable with a woman, and you’re the only woman I trust to do the job.”

The rumor in the Kelly family is that Uncle Mike continued to offer Joanna his support long after Paulie went to prison, that Joanna found a suitable way to express her gratitude. I’d never cared enough to check it out, but now it begins to make sense. Under no circumstances would Uncle Mike allow his main squeeze to be locked in, 24/7, with a male cop.

“Am I gonna do this in uniform?”

“Sad to say, the job doesn’t provide bodyguard protection to battered women.” He shakes his head. “I’ve arranged for you to take your vacation. Later, I’ll make it up to you.”

I’ve got a big mouth and I say the first thing to enter my mind. “Ya know, I really wanna tell you to go fuck yourself.”

Uncle Mike leans forward, his blue eyes twinkling, “Well, darlin’,” he croaks, “don’t waste your breath. If I could, I’d already have done so.” He gets up, comes around the desk, and offers me his hand. “Let’s take a walk, Jill. I feel the need of some fresh air.”

He’s right about the fresh air. Spring has penetrated the steel-and-concrete heart of the city. Tight buds crown every twig, and weeds push up through cracks in the sidewalk. For a few minutes, I keep pace with Uncle Mike, who walks with his hands behind his back as if pondering some weighty matter. Then, mostly because I’m getting bored, I decide to give him a break.

“You want me to kill him, Uncle Mike? That what you want?”

“That’s harsh, Jill.”

“If you were gonna bust him, send him back to the joint, you could just make Joanna disappear until Paulie surfaces.”

He bares his teeth and grips my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. “The Kellys don’t run,” he announces. “Never.”

The effort to raise his voice makes him sound like a spooked chicken, but the point is clear enough. Paulie Malone has defied the Kelly family for the second time and he’s not gonna get another warning. The other part, about taking him into custody, was pure bullshit.

“That makes Joanna the bait.” When he doesn’t respond, I add, “And me the executioner.”

“Well, it won’t be the first time, will it?” That said, Uncle Mike shifts gears. “Sooner or later, Paulie’s going to kill her. We both know that, Jill. You may not like Joanna, but you can’t deny that she has a right to her life.” He takes a deliberate step, then another. “The sad truth is that I wouldn’t trust anyone else in the family to handle this.”

I ignore the flattery. “What if he shows up without a weapon, Uncle Mike? You want me to shoot him down, maybe go to prison for the next fifteen years?”

“Last thing on my mind.” He reaches into his pocket, comes out with a battered .38, holds it up for my inspection. The grip, hammer, and trigger guard are wrapped with cloth tape. “I’ll be able to control the post-shooting investigation. You just make sure this is laying on the ground next to Paulie and that you call me first.” Suddenly, he takes my hand and grips it hard. His fingers are bony and cold. “Do this for the Kellys, Jill. Do it for us.”

Repulsed, I pull my hand away. “So where’s Joanna living these days?”

“She has a little house in College Point.”

Again, it makes sense. I got to know the small neighborhood of College Point well in the two years I worked at the 109th Precinct in Queens, my first assignment out of the Academy. The Point’s white working-class population is protected on one side by the East River, on the others by a solid wall of industry. The Asian explosion in Flushing, only a few miles away, has barely made a dent in the community’s ethnic makeup. To Joanna, who was raised in Howard Beach, the mix of Irish, Germans, Italians, and Jews must seem like home.

But I know that Joanna’s comfort is a secondary concern to Uncle Mike. Far more important is getting to and from her bed without being spotted by anybody who knows them.

Uncle Mike fancies himself the Kelly patriarch, and his authority goes unchallenged for the most part. Even as a Deputy Chief, he still has the ability to grant favors and deliver punishments. So the clan doesn’t object to his relationship with Joanna, as long as he doesn’t throw it in his wife’s face.

“Yes or no,” Uncle Mike finally declares. “I need an answer.”

I take the .38 and shove it into my pocket. Though I haven’t decided what, if anything, I plan to do, I don’t have the cojones to refuse outright. I don’t have the balls to seal my fate.

“Yes,” I tell him.

* * *

Joanna has a right to her life, small and miserable though it may be. It’s the only part of Uncle Mike’s argument that holds up. It doesn’t matter that a minute after I walk through the door, Joanna tells me I should let my hair grow out and change the color. Or that she wears a slinky jogging suit that cups her breasts and butt as though paying homage. Or that her arms and legs are firm without being muscular and she’s so perfectly made up, the black-purple bruises on her face look as if they’re part of the overall design. Joanna has a right to her life.

After a perfunctory air-kiss, Joanna leads me into the kitchen, where she evaluates my potential as if I was a coat on a rack. “So, you seein’ anybody?” she finally asks. When I don’t respond, she says, “I could fix you up, but you scare the kind of guys I know.”

“Actually, I’ve got a boyfriend, Joanna. Joey Kruger. He’s hung like a horse and he can hump all night. What more could I possibly ask from life?”

As usual, my words, no matter how crude, have no appreciable effect on Joanna. Instead, she opens a cabinet next to the refrigerator, withdraws a can of Colombian coffee (the one with the likeness of the grateful peasant), and fits it into an electric can opener. I note that her arms appear boneless, then turn away.

“I’m gonna go outside, take a look around.”

Ten minutes later, I’m back in the kitchen, hoisting a cup of coffee. “When did the fence go up?” I ask Joanna.

“Three months ago.”

“What about the outdoor lights? When were they installed?” “The same time.”

“And the window bars on the first floor?”

Joanna glances into my eyes, the gesture sly, then looks down at her coffee. “Me living here by myself, Uncle Mike thought it would be a good idea. For my security.” She rubs the back of her hand across her brow, as if to erase the lie. “It’s getting warm in here. Do you think I should turn on the air-conditioning?”

Instead of answering, I lower the metal blinds, then set tables and lamps in front of as many windows as possible. When I finish, I’m nearly certain that Paulie won’t be able to see into any room. Then I go back through the entire house, including the basement, checking every lock on every window and door. As I work, I become more and more pissed off by the obvious fact that Uncle Mike set this up months ago, that he knew Paulie was coming out, that he made his preparations well in advance.

When I reenter the kitchen, I find Joanna touching up her nail polish. I lay Uncle Mike’s taped .38 on the table, say, “If Paulie gets past me, you’re gonna have to use this.”

Without looking up, Joanna asks, “How’s he gonna get past you, Jill? I mean . . .”

What she means is that I’m a trained sniper, that there’s not a cop in the city who can shoot with me. What she means is that the way Uncle Mike arranged things, Paulie’s gonna have to come through the front door and he’s gonna make a lot of noise in the process. What she means is that if I do my job, if I decide, mercilessly and without warning, to execute Paulie Malone, she won’t need the .38.

Joanna inspects the nails on her right hand, then blows softly across the drying polish. Her fingers are as supple as her arms and shoulders. If she has knuckles, I can’t see them.

“From here on out,” I tell her, “I want you to stay upstairs as much as possible.”

“Fine by me. I was gonna go up and change for dinner anyway.”

“Joanna, it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon.” I glance at the stove. “And you haven’t started cooking yet.”

The corners of her mouth pull down and she rolls her eyes. “I’m gonna take a bath,” she announces. “I need to calm my nerves.”

I wait until Joanna’s in the tub, then toss her room. Beneath a pair of lime-green panties in her second lingerie drawer, next to a .32 caliber automatic and a box of ammo, I find a small bundle of letters written on prison stationery.

It only takes me a few minutes to read through them. Like every wife beater, Paulie is both contrite and optimistic. He knows he’s done the wrong thing, but now he’s straightening himself out. He’s in therapy. He goes to Mass every Sunday. His shrink loves him. Father O’Neill loves him. Even the warden loves him.

None of this interests me very much because I saw a lot of domestic violence when I worked patrol. Once you put them in cuffs, wife beaters are always remorseful. But what does capture my attention is Paulie’s reference to a note sent by Joanna: Your letter gave me hope for the first time. I know I don’t deserve another chance, but when you wrote that you never stopped loving me . . .

I slip the .32 and the ammo into the pocket of my blazer, scatter the letters on Joanna’s bed where she’s sure to notice them, and finally go downstairs to open the blinds on a window in the living room. From a chair set back in the shadows, I can see most of the front yard. I note that there are no trees and no tall shrubs between the house and the seven-foot fence. The newly mown lawn is a killing zone.

* * *

By the time Paulie Malone opens the gate, steps inside, closes it behind him, I’m sure of only one thing: I’m not gonna whack him before I give him a chance to mend his ways.

I understand the implications. This means that I have to speak to Paulie close up. It means a dedicated knucklehead with two years in prison behind him might decide that I’m the enemy and beat me to a pulp. But as I rise from the chair and head for the front door, I know I’m just gonna have to take the chance. My one consolation is that if Paulie gets past me, he’ll probably murder Joanna, who’s still in the bathtub.

I meet Paulie just as he reaches the top step of the little porch. He jerks himself to a halt, but neither of us is willing to be the first to speak. I drop my gaze to the middle of his chest and wait. Two seconds, then three, then four, then ten, until there’s nothing left to us but violence. I watch his torso rotate slightly, then I grab his balls, drop to one knee, and yank down as hard as I can. When his body naturally follows his jewels, I snap my head up and catch him flush on the mouth.

He goes over backwards, slams his head into the porch railing, and drops, facedown, on the floorboards. I pull my Colt and jerk the slide back to draw his attention to the bottom line, his miserable life. He pulls himself to a sitting position, then leans against the railing and brings his hand up to his bloody mouth. Finally, he raises his eyes to look at me.

I have to blink twice before I can meet his gaze. Paulie Malone has the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen, a fact that a moment before completely escaped me. Now I remember him when times were better, at Christmas and Thanksgiving. Even in the best of moods, even laughing, the pain never left his eyes.

“You comin’ back here, Paulie? Huh?” I center the Colt on his forehead. “Because if you do, I’m gonna personally serve you with the only order of protection that really matters.”

But my words don’t penetrate the wall of his obsession, and Paulie responds by listing his grievances. Although he once made forty bucks an hour working the high steel at construction sites, Joanna spent every penny and more. She openly flirted with men, even with family members, even in his presence. She not only refused to cook, clean, or do laundry, she wouldn’t lift a finger to augment the work of a weekly housekeeper. Worst of all, though she’d known how much he wanted children, she’d had an abortion without his permission or knowledge.

Nice, right? But not relevant. I lower the Colt and shake my head. “Shut up for a minute, Paulie.” When he quiets down, I continue: “Look, I don’t like Joanna either. But I handle it by avoiding her as much as possible. Whereas you, Paulie, you keep comin’ back. What’s the point? You can’t win.”

I squat down about six feet away and lean against the front door. While it’s nearly 6 o’clock and the sun has dropped behind the house, the air is still warm enough to caress my neck and face. From down the block, I hear children arguing, the echoing clang of a basketball against a hoop. “What’s the point?” I repeat.

Paulie strips off his T-shirt, wads it up, and presses it to his mouth. “I can’t let her go.”

“Why not, Paulie? It’s not like she’s the only game in town.”

“I know she loves me, Jill. The letters she wrote . . . She always said she loved me.”

“The letters were a setup. You understand that? Joanna doesn’t love you because she doesn’t love anybody except herself.” When he doesn’t respond, I push his buttons again. “Joanna was your punching bag for eight years. You can’t get her back. You’ll never get her back. I’ll kill you first.”

After a moment, Paulie opens up. “I don’t understand it,” he admits. “When I was with my counselor or with Father O’Neill, it always seemed easy. Turn my back, start over, there’s a new life right around the corner. But at night, after the final count, Joanna would march into my brain like a storm trooper. It was an invasion, Jill. I’d try to throw her out, think about something else, but she stuck to me like a leech. You ever get so mad you felt as if you were gonna fly apart?”

“Recently, Paulie. In fact, just this afternoon, when I saw what you did to Joanna’s face.”

He pulls the T-shirt away from his mouth and stares down at his own blood. “Something’s wrong with me,” he says, “and I can’t fix it. When I think about losing Joanna, I feel like my heart’s gonna fall out.” He probes his ribs, as if checking for leaks. “I came here yesterday sure that Joanna really wanted me back. I thought she was gonna give me another chance. When she wouldn’t let me in the house, I was just blown out of the water. I asked her about the letters, what she’d written, and she told me she wrote them because she was bored. She said, ‘I shouldn’t have done it. Like I’m sorry, all right?’ Jill, I went nuts. I couldn’t help it.”

Any sympathy I might have felt dropped away with the last bit: I couldn’t help it. That’s what all the wife beaters say. I couldn’t help it. She made me do it. It’s not my fault.

“There’s still a way out, Paulie. Go to your parole officer, tell him what you just told me, get yourself violated. That way you’ll have some time to think it over.” I’m wasting my breath. I can see it in his eyes, see the pain marching back through a hundred lifetimes.

After a struggle, Paulie manages to stand upright. He limps across the yard, through the gate, and out into the street. When he releases the gate, it snaps back into place so hard the fence quivers on either side. “I came,” he calls back over his shoulder, “to tell Joanna how sorry I am. I came to make it up to her.”

* * *

Joanna comes down at 6 o’clock to throw a pair of frozen dinners into the oven. She’s wearing navy slacks over a pale blue top, an outfit that not only complements her jewelry and her eyes, but the sheen in her inky-black hair. She keeps her back to me as she unwraps the dinners and sets the timer on the stove. “You want a drink?” she asks.

“I want,” I tell her, “to get so drunk I aspirate my own vomit.”

“Does that mean yes?”

“It means no.”

She fixes herself a stiff one, three fingers of Wild Turkey and a splash of ginger ale. “Are you gonna tell Uncle Mike about the letters?”

“He doesn’t know?” It’s the first time Joanna has ever surprised me. Before this moment, I’d always assumed that her brain and body were equally free of angles.

“Uh-uh.”

“Tell me why you wrote him, Joanna, if Uncle Mike didn’t ask you to. Make me understand.”

“I don’t know. Paulie sent me a couple of letters and, like, I was bored.”

“Then why’d Uncle Mike secure the house? If he didn’t know about the letters?”

“Uncle Mike knows about some of Paulie’s letters because I showed them to him.”

“But not all of them?”

“Not the ones that said about me writing back.”

“And if he finds out, he’ll make you wish you were still living with Paulie. That about right?”

Joanna’s crimson lips fold into a childish pout. The effect is nearly pornographic. “I’m not like you, Jill. You can’t expect other women to be like you.”

“Yeah? Well, answer me this, Joanna. How come Uncle Mike didn’t arrange for your protection before Paulie knocked on the door yesterday? How come he waited until after you took a beating? You think maybe he used you to set Paulie up? Or do you think he forgot to check his calendar?”

* * *

That night, long after Joanna has gone to bed, I’m lying awake on the living room couch. I’m not worried about Paulie getting past me. By the time he breaks through the door, I’ll be ready. No, it’s Joanna who keeps me awake, Joanna and Michael Xavier Kelly.

I slip into a T-shirt and jeans, then walk out onto the porch. The quiet eases over me, comfortable as an old sweater, the one you only wear in the house. A few fireflies, the first of the year, dance above the lawn, and I can smell, very faintly, the lilacs blooming in a neighbor’s yard. There are no nightclubs in College Point, no theaters, no after-hours bars. The locals are committed to work and church, to the small, neat yards that surround their small, carefully maintained homes. There’s not a lit window anywhere.

A few blocks away, MacNeil Park leans out into the East River. I ate more than a few meals in the park when I was stationed at the 109. I liked the sullen odor of the sea on summer nights and the slap of the waves against the bulkhead. The view, on the other hand, is less than spectacular. No glittering skyline. No ladder of bridges. Across the river, the South Bronx is a jumble of low-rise warehouses and isolated tenements. To the left, the many jails of Rikers Island rise into the night. They do glitter, those jails, because the lights are on 24/7. But they somehow lack the panache of Manhattan.

Suddenly I find myself wondering what, if anything, Joanna feels when she undresses for Uncle Mike. Does she pretend she’s somewhere else? With someone else? Uncle Mike is past sixty and Joanna’s still four years short of thirty.

Maybe, I think, I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe she basks in his approval. Maybe she can see it all in his eyes: admiration, gratitude, even worship. Maybe she likes what she sees.

But what I can’t imagine is Joanna being aroused in any way, and I know that sex is a chore that brings out the actress in her. I know that she squeals in the right places, urges him on, groans with delight, screams when he comes. And then she defends herself by saying, I can’t be like you, Jill.

So what am I gonna do? I’m as bad as Paulie now. I can’t get Joanna Kelly out of my mind.

I fall asleep somewhere in the early morning hours and wake up at 8 o’clock when Joanna comes down. She’s wearing a gray terry cloth robe and plaid, down-at-the-heels slippers. No makeup, no jewelry. Maybe this means she’s in a sober mood. For her sake, I hope so.

Without a word, I rise, head upstairs to the bathroom. When I come back down, Joanna’s sitting with her elbows on the table and her chin cupped in her palms. Her eyes flick toward me, then back to the tabletop. “What a mess,” she announces.

The coffeemaker emits a final burst of steam, then goes quiet. I fumble through the cabinets until I find cups and saucers, spoons, and sugar, then set the table. Joanna leans back in the chair and crosses her legs.

“You think about what I told you last night?” I ask as I fill the cups. “That Uncle Mike’s risking your life? Because one of these times, Paulie’s gonna come to kill you. It’s just pure luck that it didn’t happen the last time.”

“Well, that’s what I mean,” Joanna explains, “it’s gotta stop.”

“Maybe it’s gotta stop,” I say, letting the words drop like wet sponges into a dirty sink, “but I’m not gonna be the one to stop it.”

Joanna nods, as if at something she figured out a long time ago. “Tell me what to do.”

I reach down into my pocket for Uncle Mike’s throwaway and Joanna’s .32. I put the throwaway on the table, then eject the .32’s magazine and the round in the chamber. Finally, I hold up the .32.

“Did Uncle Mike give you this weapon?”

“Yeah, for protection.”

“He show you how to use it?”

She takes the .32 from my hand, grasping the butt with two fingers like the weapon is a shit-filled diaper she wants to be rid of in a hurry. “First, you push this thingy here . . .”

Suddenly, I’m tempted to reach across the table, grab a handful of Joanna’s hair, slam my fist into her mouth. Suddenly, I’m Paulie Malone.

“Jill?” Joanna’s lower jaw is hanging open. “It scares me when your face gets like that.”

“Yeah.” I force my shoulders down, take a deep breath. “I was just trying to demonstrate what happens when you get emotional.” I press the automatic’s grip into her palm, force her to grab the handle, flip the safety, curl her index finger through the trigger guard. “I scared you, right?”

“Yeah,” she admits.

“Good. Now point the gun at the center of my chest.”

“What?”

“Do it, Joanna. Point the gun at the center of my chest and pull the trigger.”

She wouldn’t be Joanna if her hand didn’t tremble, if she didn’t say in her precious little-girl voice, “Jill, I can’t.”

“You better. Because if you don’t, I’m gonna kick your Slinky ass from one end of the house to the other.”

Joanna’s pupils go flat, as if they’ve suddenly decided to absorb instead of reflect light. Her mouth tightens into a sneer and she yanks on the trigger.

Clack.

The principle established, I take the .32 back and hold it up for her inspection. “Now, this gun, it’s really small, Joanna. That’s good because it won’t jump out of your hand when you pull the trigger.” My goal is to keep it simple, and I wait until she nods her head. “But it’s bad, too, because one shot won’t necessarily stop a grown man. So what you have to do is center the gun on Paulie’s chest and keep pulling the trigger until it’s empty.”

“How will I know that? I mean, when it’s empty?”

I consider this for a moment, then say, “Put the gun in your mouth and give it one last pull. If you’re still alive, it’s empty.”

“Very funny.” Joanna glances down at her hands. Her mouth works for a moment, before she speaks. “You really think I can do this, Jill?”

“Tell you the truth, Joanna, I don’t see as you have a lot of choice. But you might wanna think about this: If Joanna Kelly shoots Paulie Malone, Uncle Mike’s never gonna be sure that at some point Joanna Kelly won’t shoot Uncle Mike. It’s an edge you can use to your advantage.”

Joanna thinks it over, then says, “Now I know why they call you Crazy Jill.”

I ignore the comment. “Two things to remember. First, this gun with the tape on it? Put it somewhere close to Paulie’s hand. Second, call Uncle Mike. Not 911. Uncle Mike.”

She looks at me for a second, then mutters, “Uh-huh.”

“Now, I’m going outside to sit in the sun before it gets too hot. If Paulie shows up, I’m not gonna stop him. I’m not even gonna slow him down.”

Joanna’s tongue slides over her lips. She raises her hand and flicks her fingers in a little wave. As I open the door, she finds her voice. “Jill,” she says, breaking into a heartfelt smile, “I just want you to know. If I ever decided to go to bed with a woman, I’d pick you.”

* * *

I expect Paulie to charge up the walk, but when he comes through the gate he’s limping noticeably and his swollen mouth is the color and texture of chocolate cookie dough. Still, his features are twisted with rage and the sledgehammer he grips with his right hand makes his intentions abundantly clear.

By the time he sees me, Paulie’s halfway to the door. He stops abruptly and throws out his chest as though offering a larger target. But when I circle him, heading for the gate, he becomes confused. He glances toward the front door.

“Whadaya doin’?”

“I’m going home, Paulie.” I want to add something about him maybe doing the same thing, but I find that at the moment I don’t care what happens to him. Or to Joanna. I step through the gate, turn right, and start walking. Maybe, I think, I can get away before it happens, though I’m still short of the neighbor’s yard when Paulie crashes the sledgehammer into the front door. A moment later, I hear him shout, his tone still defiant, “What are you gonna do, Joanna? What are you gonna do with that gun? You gonna kill me?”

I count the gunshots, one through nine. They come faster toward the end. Paulie cries out once, early on, a short choking moan that ends almost before it begins. Then silence and, very faintly, the acrid stink of cordite through the open door.

Bye-bye, Paulie.

* * *

I drive to a gas station on College Point Boulevard, pull up at a pay phone at the back. There’s somebody using it, but I don’t mind. I nod to the jerk on the phone when he flashes an apologetic smile. I even thank him when he finally hangs up.

I take my time getting out of the car, searching my pockets for a quarter. I feel there’s no hurry, that Joanna will shut her mouth until Uncle Mike arrives, that Uncle Mike has no choice except to keep me out of it. I punch Joey Kruger’s number into the keypad, wait as it rings three, four, five times. I know Joey’s been working the late tour for the last week and he’s most likely still asleep. I realize, too, that I have no idea what I want Joey to say when he eventually answers. I have no idea until he finally says it.

“Baby,” he whispers, his voice dulled by sleep, “when are you coming over? I’ve been dreaming about your ass all night.”

LAST STOP, DITMARS

BY TORI CARRINGTON

Ditmars

Rule #37 in the P.I. handbook: Never eat where blood’s been spilled.

“I want you to find my husband’s killer.”

I knew what words the woman would say even before she said them. I knew the instant she spotted me, said goodbye to the man she was talking to at the counter of the Acropolis Diner, and headed straight for my table. She was dressed all in black, her mascara smeared because she’d been crying. I figured that since she was only two days into her new role as widow, she was entitled.

I sat back in the booth, considering her where she had taken the seat across from me. I’d also known what she was going to say because I knew her. And had known her husband. Mihalis Abramopoulos had owned and operated the Acropolis Diner on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens, for the past thirty years. Ever since he’d come over from Greece in the early ’70s. Not unlike many of Astoria’s Greek population that had been trying to escape military coups and martial law and were looking for a safe environment in which to raise their kids. Hey, my parents had done it in the ’60s, before the colonels had staged a military junta in Greece and taken over control of a country that was still trying to get its shit together after the civil war. I’d been seventeen at the time, but I’m told I still speak like I’d just arrived on the last plane over the Atlantic. Usually after I’ve had one too many glasses of Johnnie Walker Black and was trying to figure out the mystery of my life rather than one of the many cases on my desk back at the agency.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. My name’s Spyros Metropolis and along with my silent partner, Lenny Nash, I run Spyros Metropolis Private Detective Agency, which is located on Steinway Street halfway between Broadway and Ditmars. While most of my family gravitated toward the Broadway end of Astoria, I preferred Ditmars. Mostly because my family gravitated toward Broadway. I didn’t live in the rooms above the agency, partly because they’d need extensive restoration to make them livable. Mostly because I preferred to keep my business life separate from my personal life.

I eyed the widow across from me. So much for that philosophy.

Then again, being a twice-divorced P.I. with alimony and child support payments, where else was I to take my meals if not a diner?

“My condolences, Kiria Abramopoulos.”

Hermioni blanched, possibly tired of like sentiments even though her husband wouldn’t be lowered into the ground until the day after next, when the M.E. officially released the body. “Can you do it? Find my husband’s killer? I’ll pay your going rate.”

Probably she didn’t know what my going rate was. Probably she would change her mind if I told her. “Kiria Abramopoulos, I’m sure the police will find your husband’s killer.”

And I had every confidence that they would. Not because I was a big fan of the NYPD, but because I used to count myself as one of them.

“The police have their hands full with the blackout. Mikey’s death is a low priority.”

The blackout. Over 100,000 Queens residents had gone without power for almost two weeks, predominantly in the Astoria area. LaGuardia Airport had been closed down, parts of the subway, and even Rikers Island’s jails had to rely on backup power for the duration. Many businesses were forced to close their doors. But the diner had remained open, Mike relying on propane burners and a grill set up out back to offer a short menu of items, and a generator to operate a couple of fans and a cooler.

The blackout had coincided with a heatwave that left residents scrambling to find someplace with air-conditioning or sweating it out. And all my good shirts bore sweat stains to prove it.

Then the night before last, the lights came back on. Revealing Mike Abramopoulos lying on his diner floor in a pool of his own blood. The floor I was looking at filled now with white orthopedic shoes as Petra, the young Albanian waitress I’d come to know since she hired on eight months ago, approached to top off my coffee cup. I noticed her smooth alabaster arms as she poured, as well as her other fine parts; she was a very attractive kid. She asked if Hermioni wanted coffee. The widow waved the girl away.

There had been a rash of restaurant robberies in the Astoria area of late, perhaps blackout-driven, perhaps not. Chances are, Mike was a random victim. Greeks worked hard for their money and were loathe to give it up. Especially to a masked man who would make in two minutes what it had taken the Greek all day to earn. It was the principle of the thing.

It was also what tended to get Greek business owners into heaps of trouble.

Hermioni covered my hand with hers where mine held my coffee cup, a damp Kleenex between her skin and mine. I grimaced and pulled my arm back and pretended to fix the right cuff of my white long-sleeved shirt that I had rolled up to my elbows. My wardrobe was limited to white shirts, plain ties, and dark slacks in the summer, and varied little in the winter except for the addition of a black trenchcoat and hat. My appearance had never been a priority for me beyond staying neat. I’d been cursed with a Greek nose that my brother said you could see turning a corner at least half a minute before I did. And the march of time on my hairline couldn’t be stopped with a lifetime supply of minoxidil.

“Please, Spyros. I . . . need to know who killed my husband. I need justice.”

Dishes and silverware clanked where Stamatis, the busboy, cleared the table behind Hermioni. The widow slanted him a glance that told him he could have picked a better time. I agreed. Stamatis ignored us both.

I drew my attention back to Hermioni. “Did Mike have any enemies?”

“No, no.” She smiled feebly. “Aside from me, of course.” An attempt at humor. “But you know I could never do that to him.”

Did I? Over the course of my career, I’d seen a lot of things I’d originally thought were impossible. Learning that Hermioni did away with Mike so she could take over the diner and move in with an Ethiopian half her age would rate somewhere on the less-shocking end.

“So you’ll take the case then?”

I told her my going rate.

I had to give the old gal credit. She didn’t even blink.

“I’ll bring the retainer by the agency this afternoon,” she told me.

My intention had been to scare her away. Instead, I’d just let her in the front door.

* * *

Murder cases didn’t make up a large percentage of my caseload. Mostly because they were best left to the boys in blue and it wasn’t a good idea to get in their way when you were a P.I. But those I had worked had taken a great deal of detective work that rarely included any fancy crime lab results. Fact was, a lot of evidence was contaminated and untraceable. And the results on most of the potential evidence they collected was slow in coming. New York’s forensics labs were so backed up that a suspect on a case stamped low priority could have skipped to a foreign country and started a new family by the time the authorities caught up with him.

As far as I was concerned, solving any case almost always came down to pounding the sweltering NYC pavement and examining a few rocks to see which way the moss grew, in order to find the answers.

* * *

Later that afternoon, I stopped on the corner opposite the diner and lit a cigarette. Whereas before I might have taken a seat in the restaurant opposite to watch the joint, now New York City law had chased me outside. Oh, a lot of places had smoking areas. Usually outdoors in the back surrounded by neighboring buildings and glass. But I didn’t particularly like the feeling of being walled in, put on display like a smoking turtle in a terrarium for the other diners to stare at as they ate. Which was probably a good thing, because I didn’t smoke half as much as I used to. But I wasn’t going to admit this to anyone that mattered.

I drew deeply on my cancer stick and slowly released the smoke, watching as Petra updated the chalkboard propped outside announcing the dinner specials. I had half hoped that Hermioni Abramopoulos wouldn’t come by the agency. But she had, putting down the retainer I’d asked for. Which meant I was pretty much in this till the end.

Inside the diner I could make out at least seven regulars. Whereas before I might have viewed them simply as fellow diners, now each and every one of them was a suspect.

Could a customer have been upset at his burned steak— earlier thrown out of the house by his wife, fired from his job—taking his rage out on an unsuspecting Mike? Or, in the case of the young couple holding hands in the first booth and sharing moussaka, could an argument have grown loud, causing Mike to intervene and become victim rather than mediator?

At any rate, I didn’t have many resources to dedicate to this case. Sure, Hermioni was paying me. But I was in the middle of a sticky job that commanded most of my attention.

Since Mike had been a friend of sorts, however, and a fellow Greek, I figured I could give him at least a fraction of the time I’d spent eating at his establishment.

I looked up and down the street. To my left, Ditmars Boulevard would take me toward the East River and Astoria Park, the Hellgate Bridge looming as a reminder of history in a city full of history. To my right, the street would take me to LaGuardia Airport.

But it wasn’t the river or the airport I was interested in now. I turned and walked east, crossing 31st Street, the squealing brakes of the N train announcing its arrival at Ditmars station, the last stop on the elevated line, a regular sound that blended with the din of cars and airplanes sweeping down from the northwest. I stopped and bought a fresh peach from the Top Tomato on 35th, then walked further up still, to the only spot I’d been able to find in this parking-challenged area. I climbed into my old Pontiac and pointed the car in the direction of the 114th Precinct on Astoria Boulevard at 34th Street.

A little while later, I sat opposite Detective Sergeant Tom McCurdy, who I’d learned was the guy in charge of the case after a quick call to my NYPD mate, Officer Pino Karras. If the files littering Tom’s desk were any indication, Hermioni was right: It might be some time before anyone got around to finding out who had killed her husband.

Of course, I hadn’t ruled Hermioni out as a suspect yet. Call me jaded, but there was something about the human condition that allowed some folks to believe that if they hired a private dick, it deflected suspicion away from them, no matter how damning the evidence. One of my former clients had learned the hard way that guys like me weren’t wired to look the other way. While I wasn’t a cop anymore, the basic principles that had led me in that direction were still very much intact.

Besides, I knew enough about life to know that you took order where you could find it.

Tom McCurdy finished a phone call, sighed, and then nearly dumped the contents of his coffee cup over the files covering his desk as he reached for a pen.

“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” I remarked.

“That ain’t the half of it. That goddamn blackout has us backlogged two weeks. We’re investigating every death until we can rule out those that were heat-related.” He fingered through one pile, then began on another, pulling out the file on Abramopoulos. “I thought you might be by for this. Ugly case, this one. Steak knife to the neck. Real mess.”

I’d known Mike had been stabbed. Only I hadn’t known where or with what. “You wouldn’t happen to have handy the list of the vouchered evidence and crime scene photos, would you?”

“Probably. But you know I can’t let you see them.”

I crossed my arms over my brown tie and grinned. “I don’t think I have to remind you that you owe me.”

Tom frowned, plainly remembering the hit on a prominent Greek politician I’d helped him thwart a year ago. “I think you just did.” He squinted at me. “The widow hire you?”

I indicated she had.

He swiveled in his chair and pulled out another file. The evidence itself had been collected by the Crime Scene Unit and was probably at the NYPD lab waiting to be tested. After that, it would be sent to the prosecutor’s office, once a suspect was named. I looked over the list Tom handed me and the photos. One shot was of a steak knife, the blade coated with blood. Another showed a short-sleeved blue shirt stained with blood in a pattern I guessed was consistent with a neck wound. I squinted at the third shot.

“The knife was still in the side of his neck.” Tom tapped a spot near his left carotid artery.

“Any idea if the attacker approached from the front or the back?”

“Nah. Still waiting on the M.E. for that. But this guy was a fighter. Scooted at least ten feet toward the telephone on the wall before he blacked out. Hit the left carotid head on. There ain’t no bigger bleeder in the body.”

I nodded, my gaze catching on a small, blood-caked item featured in the third shot. A dime had been placed next to it to indicate scale.

“Don’t know what in the hell that is yet,” Tom said. “Maybe after the guys scrape the blood off we’ll get a better clue.”

I already had a good idea what it was.

“What’s your take on who did it?” I asked.

“Cash register emptied, hour late. Robbery gone bad, is my best guess.”

“That’s what I figured you’d say.”

I again looked through the photos that had been printed out on regular paper. Not very good detail. But with digital cameras and computers nowadays, there was very little need for hard photos, unless you wanted to make a point with a jury. Needed to know something? You used a computer to zoom in on it.

While originally I had been reluctant to add the new technology to my inventory, in the past few years I’d become quite proficient, updating my software every year and a half or so to make sure I had the latest.

I held up a photo. “Prints on the knife?”

“Only those of the victim. Probably he tried to take it out. Made a real mess of things. Which is why he bled out.”

“How about footprints in the blood?”

“Only those of the victim.”

“Was the knife clean or dirty?”

Tom grimaced. “Do you mean, did someone use it to cut a steak or something before burying it in Abramopoulos’s neck?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I eyed a shot of the entire diner and then handed him back the photos. “Thanks.”

“That’s it?”

“I’ll be in touch,” I said over my shoulder, heading for the door.

I sat back in my office chair, staring at the notes I’d made. Was Tom right? The killing the product of a robbery gone bad? Mike was the kind to resist.

Hermioni had provided me with a list of the staff—names and Social Security numbers; I’d checked them out. Nothing but minor traffic violations. Hermioni had also told me about a customer Mike had argued with the morning before he was killed, but she didn’t have a name, so I’d have to ask around if I was to pursue that lead.

I personally knew of other strange regulars who kept to themselves. But to spotlight them was like shining an unflattering light on myself.

Was Mike the victim of some psycho agitated by soaring temperatures and the blackout? No, I didn’t think so. The problem with that as the scenario was that while Astoria—the entire city of New York, for that matter—hadn’t always been safe, now it was a nice place to raise a family, the Manhattan skyline near enough to appreciate across the East River, but far enough away to escape the problems of too many people crammed into small spaces.

Yet the real reason I rejected all the theories was because I was pretty sure I knew what had gone down that night in the Acropolis Diner.

I grabbed my notepad, purposely leaving my pen behind, and decided it was time for dinner.

* * *

Mayor Bloomberg and I didn’t agree on much, but our take on Greek diners was in sync. He’d said in a recent interview in the Times that if he had to eat at only one New York restaurant for the rest of his life, it would be a Greek diner, because the variety of food was impressive and the ingredients fresh.

I concurred. And it wasn’t just because I was Greek. Having been single for the better part of my life, I’d come to appreciate the range my compatriots offered up. While tonight I’d ordered only yemista—rice-stuffed tomatoes—that could rival my own mother’s, since I ate at diners every day I often mixed it up with meatloaf and fried chicken. While none of the meals would win any awards, they were pretty close to what Mom would make, if, indeed, Mom made these dishes.

My mother had been living with my younger brother Pericles and his wife Thalia ever since the old man had cashed in his lottery ticket for a big exclusive condo in the sky. She still cooked, but rare were the times when I got to enjoy it. Call me a coward, but I didn’t like the way she looked at me across the table even as she told me about some distant cousin or other from the Old Country who she could fix me up with.

Of course, my life probably would have been a whole hell of a lot simpler had I just taken her advice from the beginning. Instead, I’d married two American women who had thought me exciting and exotic in the beginning, plodding and boring at the end.

The topic of marriage brought my brother Pericles’s oldest daughter, Sofie, to mind. She’d just announced her engagement to a good Greek boy, much to the family’s delight. She’d done some odd jobs for me on and off over the years whenever she got fed up with working in my brother’s restaurant or her maternal grandfather’s café, both on Broadway. I remember thinking she would make a good P.I. That is, if wedding cakes, color swatches, booking good bouzouki bands, and trying to be a good Greek girl weren’t what currently populated her list of priorities.

Personally, I thought she could do better.

I finished my food and pushed my plate away, craving a post-meal cigarette. But I just sat back and waited for the waitress to take my plate and offer me coffee.

When she popped up like clockwork, I motioned toward the empty seat across from me. “Sit with me a minute, please, Petra.”

Her movements slowed and her expression was pinched. She glanced around as if seeking an excuse to refuse my request. But I’d purposely come into the diner just before closing, so there were no other customers to be waited on, aside from an old man at the far end of the counter who was reading a newspaper and nursing the same cup of coffee he had been for the past hour.

Petra reluctantly sat down.

“You know that Mrs. Abramopoulos hired me, don’t you?”

She looked down at where she had her hands tightly clasped on the table in front of her, then nodded.

I took out my wirebound pad and pretended to consult notes that didn’t exist even as I looked in my pockets for a pen that wasn’t there.

Petra removed a pen from her apron pocket and held it out to me with her right hand. Her wrist was not only minus the Greek evil-eye charm that had been covered with blood in the crime scene photo, but the bracelet that had held it too.

“Did you lose your bracelet?” I asked, taking the pen.

Her face burned bright red. She nodded again.

I took a sip of black coffee. “There were times when you and Mike didn’t get a long all that well, weren’t there?”

Big green eyes looked up into mine.

“Yeah, I saw it. The old man making passes. The swats on the ass.” I shrugged. “Kind of hard to miss.”

“Mr. Abramopoulos was a nice man,” she said quickly.

Of course she would say that. Since I hadn’t been able to dig up much on her, I’d guess that Petra Ahmeti was illegal. Chased from a struggling homeland like the Greeks had been a generation earlier. Mike had paid her in cash, and since she was good worker, she took home good tips. Better than the other two waitresses who would just as soon dump your plate into your lap as serve you.

Maybe the night Mike was killed he had pushed things beyond an ass-swat with pretty Petra. And paid for it in spades.

A price exacted not by Petra, I was sure.

“When did you lose your bracelet, Petra?”

She began rubbing one of her thumbs hard against the other. “I didn’t. Lose it, I mean. I . . .” She appeared to be searching for the right words, as any non–native speaker might. But I guessed her hesitation grew more out of her not wanting to tell me what she had to say than her limited English.

I heard the sound of a tub of dishes being put down heavily on the table behind me.

“She gave it to me,” the busboy said. “So just leave her alone.”

Bingo.

You see, Petra had never been on my radar as a suspect. She was just too gentle. Someone had killed on her behalf. And it was a sure bet that the guy was Greek. Because while it wouldn’t be unusual for an Albanian girl to be wearing a Greek evil-eye charm on her bracelet, I’d gotten the impression from the way I’d seen her play with it that it had been a gift. From a Greek guy. And since Mike hadn’t been the gift-giving kind, that left one other Greek guy in the diner.

Stamatis came to stand next to my booth, his hands fisted at his sides. “What do you want with Petra? Why are you asking her these questions?”

I kept my gaze on Petra’s pretty face. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go in the back and see if you can scare up a piece of fresh baklava for me. Not the pieces that have been in the display all day.”

She briefly met my gaze and then scooted from the booth, disappearing into the back of the diner.

“How long you been working here, Stamatis?” I asked the kid as I peeled off a twenty from my clip.

The question was rhetorical. I already knew how long he’d been working there. Exactly eight months. Hired on the day after Petra, after the previous busboy had met with a hooded mugger in a dark alley.

Now, you might say that was just a coincidence. Then I would have to remind you of Rule #2 in the P.I. handbook: There are no coincidences. My inquiries had revealed that Petra worked at another restaurant in Jackson Heights prior to coming to the Acropolis. And so had Stamatis. And through NYCIS, that the young man also had two priors, violence-related. A name-check by my buddy McCurdy had produced that tidbit. Of course, being illegal, Stamatis had no Social Security number.

Enter Mike Abramopoulos, restaurant owner, husband, father of three, and pretty much harmless, if a bit lecherous. Being of the male persuasion myself, I knew that many of us appreciated the value of a pretty girl. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m just saying that a man’s primal desire to spread his seed is, well, it is what it is.

As for the steak knife, it was an even bet that the forensics lab might discover that it had been used for its normal intended purpose—even though the photos of the entire diner post-murder had shown the tables and counter cleared of all plates, glasses, and utensils. Stamatis may have cleared the tables for some reason after using the steak knife to stab Abramopoulos.

A crime of passion, and a mundane weapon ready to hand.

Then he may have emptied the cash register to make it look like a robbery gone bad.

I noticed that Stamatis hadn’t answered my question, and his fists were still clamped tight at his sides.

I pushed from the seat, tucking a copy of the Queens Tribune under my left arm. Stamatis had to either back off or make good on his unspoken threat. I wasn’t sure how he’d play it. But he blinked.

I eyed the kid. A shame, really. He was all of nineteen and had his whole life ahead of him.

A life that would now include a sojourn at Rikers before a long stretch upstate.

“Tell Petra I changed my mind about the baklava,” I said, putting the twenty on the table and heading for the door.

* * *

A little while later, I watched from the opposite corner as Sergeant Tom McCurdy and his partner pulled up in front of the diner and went in to arrest Stamatis. While no confessions had yet been extracted, nor solid evidence produced, I’d suggested to Tom on the phone that a little pressure applied just so would get him both.

The homicide detectives led the kid out in handcuffs and nodded in my direction. I nodded back and then took a long pull off the cigarette I’d just lit. I coughed, stared at the burning end, let it fall from my fingers to the pavement, and ground it out under the heel of my shoe. As I turned to head to my car, the N train squealed to a halt on the elevated tracks a half a block up on 31st. I didn’t have to hear to know that inside the train the announcement was: Last Stop, Ditmars.

And for Mihalis Abramopoulos, Ditmars had been his last stop.

I looked at the sea of people coming down the platform stairs on their way home, and others out on the warm night with families and friends, gathering in cafés and restaurants and Astoria Park. For other immigrants and locals alike, Ditmars represented a beginning . . .

PART III

FOREIGN SHORES

AVOID AGONY

BY SHAILLY AGNIHOTRI

Jackson Heights

AVOID AGONY: Let me investigate the morals of your child’s intended before the sacred blessings of Marriage are arranged in America. Make sure your future son- and daughter-in-law are of pure values. Based in New York. $US 200 per report.

The week after he placed the advertisement in the India Today matrimonial pages, he received fifty-six requests. Not all, of course, had paid the $200 he charged through PayPal. But twenty-one had. He did a criminal background check of the ten men and eleven women. He ran their credit histories and sent the reports:

Dear Sir:

It gives me great pleasure to report that the match for your daughter/son should proceed as planned. My investigation has revealed no character flaws in the intended.

If you need further assistance, please advise. I should note that I also offer astrology guidance in selecting the date/ place for marriages, children, and the like.

Jai Hind,

Raj Kumar

With the astrology business and now the Matrimony Investigating Agency up and running, things were looking good. Raj treated himself to a masala dosa at India Grill. “Add more mirshe,” he always reminded them, or else the dosa lacked the requisite zing. He relished the spiced potatoes and the sweet masala tea. All around, families, business people, and ladies sat and gossiped, some in English, some in Punjabi, and some in Gujarati. Almost everyone was Indian. Why, he sometimes thought, Queens is more Indian than India. He took out some quarters, left two as a tip, and went to the register to pay.

It was a Saturday; he would sit and wait for any walk-in business. He headed into the Sari Palace, past the mannequins in langas and saris, nodded his greeting to the ladies setting up the register, and up the stairs to his office. It was best not to speak to them, he had realized, or else they’d draw him into their gossip. Then he’d have to listen to the not-so-subtle suggestions about some cousin or niece who was ready to marry, who cooked so well and sang beautifully. Would you like to see her photo? Best to avoid the tedious talk.

The walls of his second-floor office were bare but for three posters of the most beautiful woman who had ever lived, the 1950s Indian film star, Meena Kumari. When he procured the lease to the office, he had allowed himself the extravagance of taking some publicity photos he’d had since his teens to the copy center and enlarging them. Her gaze never escaped his.

He flicked on the neon Open sign in his window, under a hand-lettered one that read, Vedic Astrology, and checked his e-mail.

He scanned the few requests for matrimonial character checks. One e-mail caught his eye:

Dear Sir,

I am in urgent need of your investigative skills. Tell me, are you based in New York? I need a full report on a person living there who has entangled my son. I must get a full dossier on the woman in question to save my son from this match. Please advise as to your services and fees.

M.S.

Raj read the e-mail over several times and mulled the “full dossier” request. What should be the quote for such a report? $400? This one doesn’t want a report that reassures him that his child will be fine coming to America and marrying his intended. He wants dirt. The salacious detail of depravity. That she drinks, smokes, and dances.

He responded:

Dear Sir,

Thank you kindly for your request. The services you require can be had for a fee of $340. Please supply details, names, date of birth, and the like for the girl in question. Please use PayPal to arrange these transactions.

Within ten minutes, he received confirmation of a payment and a name: Ritu Rani. Ritu Rani? He smiled and dug through the stack of Little India magazines on his desk, finding the one from four months ago. There she was on the cover: Miss Little India, Queens 2006—Ritu Rani. He remembered every curve of her delicate body. She was back in his life again.

He waited two days before responding:

Dear Sir,

I am saddened to inform you that Ritu Rani is of questionable moral character. She has been known to smoke, and further, participate in beauty contests. She was awarded the title of Miss Little India after performing a dance on the stage. Her sign is one of a woman with much ambition and greed. I would advise avoiding further alliance between your son and her.

Within minutes of sending his report, he received a most pleasant offer.

I am disappointed to hear of the adventures of the lady in question. However, these facts of smoking, beauty pageants, and dancing in public will not dissuade my son, as he has come under her spell. Please consider an extensive investigation with more meaty facts. MONEY IS NO OBJECT.

This time it was signed with the full name: Manny Sharma.

“Lakshmi, praise be to you,” Raj said out loud. Manny Sharma. The Manny Sharma needs his services. How fortunate is his cusp. He must do his horoscope to see what other good karma is coming his way. Manny Sharma needs him. A wayward only-son entangled with a woman. Well, one man’s bad luck is another’s good fortune.

Dear Mr. Sharma,

Thank you very much for your kind e-mail regarding the plight of your son. Of course, as a man who values the auspiciousness of marriage, I can understand your deep concern. This is an unfortunate set of circumstances. God willing, I will be of assistance to you. Kindly send me your son’s vitals, date of birth, time of birth, and of course his current address. I will never let him suspect that I am in any way involved with his affairs. I will simply ascertain, based upon my understanding of human nature, what set of facts will dissuade him from pursuing this unholy alliance.

My hourly rate for this in-depth work will be $95 US. Please advise how much time you wish for me to devote to this investigation.

Raj read his work over with care and wondered whether the $95 was high enough to show his worthiness but not too high to make him seem greedy. He changed it to $85 before sending the e-mail.

Raj was so pleased with himself that he left right away for some paan. It was important to sweeten one’s mouth at good news so that it would linger longer. He walked to the corner of 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue. Vinod had set up a paan stand inside the sweet store. Raj came here a few times a week, as nothing was as satisfying as the taste of a freshly made paan. As Vinod wrapped the betel leaf and added areca nut and mineral lime, then sprinkled some spices, sweet mixture, and whatnot, they chatted. But Vinod was always looking for some free advice. What’s an auspicious date for buying stock? Good dates for traveling? Today Vinod wanted to know about his sister’s marriage. What good dates are coming? Nothing annoyed Raj more. Astrology was an ancient and sacred art. It required precise calculations. It was not gossip material. But he loved paan, and Vinod was the only game in town, so he held his tongue and gave general information. “Well, till the eclipse on the thirteenth, not good to set the date.” He finally got the paan, plopped it in his mouth, and chewed.

As he walked back to his office, he stopped at the DVD store at the corner of 37th Road to see what latest Hindi movies they had. All the usual trash. He rented two and headed to his office, feeling satisfied that now his moment had come and Manny Sharma himself would be the vessel.

Manny was around fifty, ten years older than Raj. Manny had made a fortune in the Indian steel business. When Raj had taken his correspondence course in astrology a few years before, Manny’s horoscope had been his final project. Raj remembered that even with all of Manny’s money, the chart showed difficulty in the fifth house—some fracture with a child. And since Manny had but one son . . . Well, well, well, Manny and Raj’s fortunes intertwined.

Now Raj did a more extensive moon chart of Manny, which showed him to be a ruthless man who destroyed his competition and cared little for others. So it is only fair, Raj reasoned, that though he have a fortune (he was, after all, born in the Shukra ascension), his lack of humility must bring him pain in some other area of his life. And nothing would concern the great Manny Sharma more than the thought of his prince marrying a loose woman.

Neal Sharma was an MBA student at the Stern School at NYU. Raj had no trouble locating him the next day. Raj presented himself in the lounge of the Stern building and waited. Soon classes were over and he spotted Manny’s son with a group of other young men. Neal was handsome, slim, and decidedly casual for being the son of one of the wealthiest families in India. Raj watched and studied him. Was he a good kid? He seemed to be enjoying the company of his friends. No pretentiousness. Not the strongest personality in the group. Not the most handsome. But a good enough fellow.

Raj continued his investigation by doing Neal’s chart. His instincts were correct: Neal was a boy of unquestionably good moral character. Would have a happy family life. Three children. And, of course, lots of wealth. How to play this out? Raj wondered. He felt he was still missing something and so he’d sleep on it. He dreamed all night of Miss Little India, Queens.

Raj woke up with a plan that made him feel young. He knew where his destiny lay. He did not doubt the stars. He went to the electronics store and haggled a digital camera. He knew where Ritu lived and went to her apartment building five blocks away. Soon enough, he saw her. She wore a skirt that covered her knees and a simple pink top. No makeup. Flat sandals. Just the sight of her made his heart beat faster. He moved to the other side of the street.

And took her picture.

Dear Mr. Sharma,

I have started the surveillance you requested. The girl in question is difficult to track and will require many days of observation. I attach a photo of her I took just this morning.

RK

For the first time in years, he was hungry for something. His brain—which, as a young man, had been routinely praised for its discipline and quickness—was perhaps going to be used again. Maybe it had just been resting till now. Wearing a hat and dark glasses to obscure his appearance, he went in search of the couple. It wasn’t hard. He waited outside her building, and soon he saw Neal buzzed in. They came out together not ten minutes later, and he took photos of them walking. They went to lunch at Chat Hut. He slid into the table behind her, and she never noticed him. How could she, when all she did was look at Neal and smile? They were chatting about this and that, in the meandering way young couples do when smitten. He had a paper due, she had a job interview; he wanted to go to a movie that night, she said earlier was better. Neal was eating channa with puri and she had a dahl chat plate. She fed him a spoon full of her chat.

“Ritu, I can’t wait to take you to the chat place in Delhi, baby, you will love it,” Neal said as they got up to leave.

Raj waited a few days and sent the photos to Manny. With an email:

Dear Sir,

I am distressed to inform you that your son is in fact seriously entangled with the girl in question. Their contacts are substantial and plans of going to India together were discussed. If you advise, I will speak to this girl, who is known to be greedy, to see what I can work out—for the sake of your son and your family honor.

RK

Manny replied instantly:

Understood. Range of $25,000-$50,000 approved. Send details for money transfer.

Raj e-mailed again two days later—at night so it would be received early in the morning in Delhi:

Dear Sir,

I met with the girl and had to go the maximum range of the offer as she was determined to get more after marriage or possible divorce. So you see how she thinks. If approved, she wants funds quickly and will move away from this city.

RK

Almost immediately, Raj received a response:

My son’s happiness is my duty to ensure. Thus, $50,000 is my obligation to pay. Send details and wire transfer will take place. Thank you for your diligent service.

The money was in Raj’s account within twenty-four hours.

He put on his best suit with the red tie and first went to the Lakshmi Temple when he knew there’d be no long, drawn-out prayer ceremonies under way. He wrote a check for $201 and left it in the donation box. Bowed to Lakshmi, took a bit of parshad to sweeten his mouth, and left. He knew the right thing to do. And God blessing him for doing the right thing would bring good karma.

Time to visit Miss Ritu. He had with him her astrology chart. Ritu lived in a small studio apartment. It was simple and tastefully decorated. She had taken his call and his request for a visit in a relaxed way. “So nice to hear from you again,” she’d said. She’s all class, he thought..

“Mr. Raj, would you like some tea?” she asked when he arrived. He accepted her gracious offer. When they were seated at the dining table, he opened up the astrology chart.

“Dear Ritu, I have some news I must share with you,” he said. “With the moon on the eclipse and the house of Rahu on the cusp, I urge you to marry quickly. If you need help finding a suitable mate, I will help. You should be with a doctor or businessman . . .”

She was listening intently. “No, no, I appreciate your offer of help—but I’m—”

“Oh, so you are involved?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Good news. Good. Then arrange hastily, if you must. Arrange quickly to marry. It is so written and must be done before the full moon or you risk . . . Let’s not discuss that. Marry immediately, you must.” He noticed how her delicate fingers twirled the silky strands of her hair as he spoke. He departed then, leaving the chart behind.

Four months before, he had been the judge for Miss Little India, Queens. He had been one of the sponsors of the contest—having given $550 to place his name prominently in the advertisement for the event. For his money he had expected flirting from the contestants, hints of romance, some ego stroking—and these of course had come—but nothing prepared him for the pressures of the final round. It ended up that for the last stretch of the two-day contest, he was the sole judge. So he decided that the five girls in the finals would each dance to a song from the Hindi classic film, Pakeezah. It was enchanting, haunting music that Meena Kumari, the loveliest actress to ever grace the big screen, danced along to with stunning grace. Raj had picked his favorite movie and favorite actress as the challenge. There could be no greater challenge, as the audience, too, knew every gesture and movement that Meena Kumari danced in the film. It was the highlight of Indian cinema—the beauty of the camera movement, the music, the story, Meena Kumari.

During the day of the event he was visited by two contestants, and the fathers of two others. He drew a bit more than just attention from one of the two girls. Her breasts were round and firm and he enjoyed lingering there for a moment. The other, a young woman named Geeta, had kissed him and he’d put his hand on her thin waist when she leaned into him. The fathers left envelopes with cash. One $350, and one $500. Only the fifth contestant failed to visit him or send her father.

And, of course, she won.

It wasn’t just that Ritu didn’t visit: It was the dance. Ritu seemed to possess the characteristics of the Ideal Indian Woman. Her curves were generous, her movements minimal. She didn’t strive too hard, instead the music just swayed her. She smiled at him from the stage, which had excited him even more than the touching or the money. It was the warm smile of innocence untouched by the crass world. He avoided her after that, lest she disappoint him. Or perhaps he would disappoint her. But he thought of her often, alone in his bed.

She deserved abundance—and to be married to the rich only-son of one of India’s wealthiest families. That bastard Manny couldn’t appreciate a classy girl like Ritu. He represented all that was wrong with these situations: the brutish man keeping his son from happiness.

Of course, Raj knew that he, like all the other players, had a predestined role. He was to teach Manny Sharma some humility—and if that humility came with humiliation, so be it. He was to help Ritu in her life. First the contest, then the husband. And he was being rewarded for his good deeds. But it wasn’t just the money; it was knowing that he, not Manny, was in charge of the way this would end. When he was in charge, the good won out. Don’t rest on your laurels, he reminded himself. Destiny was calling.

He turned on his computer and started by changing his e-mail and PayPal accounts. Then he opened a file entitled Wealthiest Indian Bachelors and considered Davinder Shah, son of the pig-headed Minister of Defense, Terjinder Shah. Years of graft had left the family very well off. Davinder, the eldest son, was also enrolled in the Stern School at NYU. Raj had noted his presence among the young men hanging out with Neal Sharma. Raj plugged Davinder’s vital dates into his computer program and printed out his astrology chart. While anyone could run numbers to get a chart, an analysis of the planet positions, the lunar asterism, the ascendants—understanding their relationships with one another was a gift that few possessed. And clearly, Raj knew, he was one of the blessed.

His chart showed Davinder as a weak man, tending to be swayed easily. No great intellect. A bit lazy. Not a great person, petty really. Of course, Raj would find his match. There is, after all, a match for every person. Raj consulted his folder marked Eligible Indian Girls, studying the photo of Geeta. He studied her curves and her look, which was a tad cheap—though he had no regrets about enjoying her wet kiss. He had only chosen her as a runner-up, but he would make it up to her now.

He e-mailed her immediately.

My Dear Geeta,

Good news is coming your way. I have a perfect match for you. Please do visit my office tomorrow at noon. I will discuss specifics and plans with you then.

RK

Then he e-mailed another:

Your Excellency, Minister Shah,

I write to offer my humble services to you. I believe your son may be in some entanglement that does not suit the son of the honorable Minister of Defense. Please advise if you seek my assistance to avoid the agony of such an embarrassment.

RK

Later, as he watched India-Vision in his office, Raj was interrupted by a knock on his door.

Ritu and Neal walked in, arm in arm.

“How do you do, young man?”

“So nice to see you again, Mr. Raj,” Neal said.

“Yes, yes, we did meet at the Miss Little India pageant, right?”

“Yes. And thanks to you, I met Ritu that night.”

“Oh no, these are all events that fate has ordained,” Raj demurred.

“Mr. Kumar,” Ritu said, “Neal and I were married this morning at City Hall.”

“Congratulations, congratulations.”

“We need your advice. You see, Ritu and I, well, we . . .” Neal began.

“We got married . . .” Ritu added.

“Blessings, blessings.”

“. . . without my father,” Neal continued. “Well, he doesn’t know yet and I want to seek your advice to smooth things over.”

“Oh, I see. But your wife is a blessing to your family.”

“Yes sir. But my father—”

“I will tell you, young man, that only a few get to be married to a girl as lovely, honest, and wise as your bride. Treasure her. Once you have children, I guarantee you all will be well.”

“Children?”

“Yes. I know Ritu’s chart. And all happiness unencumbered by obstructions will be yours in this union. Wait till you have good news of a grandchild and then go to India. All will be well.”

“I shouldn’t tell my father then?”

“No. Wait a few months. Then you will have two good things to tell him.”

Ritu looked at Neal and gave him that sweet smile that Raj knew so well.

“Go and enjoy each other,” Raj counseled. “Give it time. All will be well. All will be well.”

Neal reached for his wallet, “Can I give you something?”

“Oh, please. Please . . . it’s my pleasure.”

Neal shook Raj’s hand, and the happy newlyweds left his office.

Raj watched the couple from his second-floor window. As they walked away, arm in arm once again, Ritu turned to look up at his window. She met his gaze for a moment and held it. She nodded slightly and then turned her attention once more to her husband.

He was now alone in his office above 74th Street, with all the hustle and flow of life below. With his posters of Meena Kumari. With his foldout chairs. With his TV and DVD player on a stand. He flicked off the Open sign outside his window.

From his desk drawer he took out the DVD. He needed some pleasure too—life could not only be work. He dimmed the lights and sat on the floor cushion, as he always did to watch. Nothing could interrupt him for three hours. He put on the movie Pakeezah. The music stirred and then there she was. Looking for her love. Full of grace. Dancing her pain away. Her soul unappreciated by the wealthy patrons. She is a courtesan who doesn’t get to be with her love, the prince. The callous king forbids it. She has no one to help her. And Raj weeps for her once again as he hears his beloved sing:

I, silently, o sir, will open the gate.

Darling, slowly shall I open the gate.

Stay awhile, o handsome friend.

O save me from agony . . .

VIERNES LOCO

BY K.J.A. WISHNIA

Corona

It’s never good when you open your front door and the first thing you see is uniforms. Only this time, they were military dress green, not 110th Precinct blue, and lucky for us they wanted the house next door. Bad luck for the Mantilla family, whose oldest boy, Freddie, joined up seeking the fast track to citizenship. And now he’s going to get it—posthumously.

The following Thursday I’m standing with the family as the flag-draped coffin is about to be lowered into a hole overshadowed by the Long Island Expressway and a recycling plant. The last notes of “Taps” float by on the wind, mingling with the Doppler-shifting wee-oo-wee-oo of a passing police siren. Someone’s not at peace with the Lord out there.

A white-gloved finger presses the play button on a boom box, and the crash of angry Spanish ghetto rap rips the stillness to shreds. Freddie chose this music as his final shout-out to the world, and, if I know Freddie, as a final screw-you to all the white boys in his unit who would have gone with “Amazing Grace.” The honor guard salutes stiffly as cars roar by on the overpass.

I go up to the cops who brought Freddie’s uncle here, and ask them to take the guy’s handcuffs off for five minutes so he can hug his family. It takes a moment, but they do it for me.

“You on a case?” says Officer Sirota.

“Friend of the family.”

“Uh,” he grunts. “Say, you know what that’s about?”

There’s a group of mourners dancing around a grave across the street in Mount Zion Cemetery. I tell him it’s a splinter sect of Orthodox Jews who believe that their former leader, Rabbi Aaron Teitelboym, is the Messiah, so every year they gather at his grave on the anniversary of his death to celebrate his imminent resurrection.

“That so?” says Sirota. “How long’s he been dead?”

“Nine years.”

“Nine years? Man, it only took Jesus three days. So I guess that’s one up for our side.”

The lieutenant presents Freddie’s mom, Irene, with the purple heart and bronze star, and salutes her. She presses the medals to her chest, and hugs a color photo of her smiling boy, the sharp-eyed soldier who waved his comrades away from the roadside bomb that shattered his skull and left a smoking crater of that handsome young face. It was a closed casket service.

Too soon, they snap the cuffs back on Uncle Reynaldo and escort him to the squad car. I wait my turn as close relatives go up and hug my neighbor. She’s clutching Freddie’s brother Felipe, who’s already sprouting a teen mustache and getting pretty big for a twelve-year-old.

Felipe wrenches his arm away from her and seeks out the masculine ritual of swapping greetings with his cousin Ray Ray, who I once helped dodge a graffiti rap that could have gotten nasty if the cops had felt like pressing it. Just being caught with “graffiti instruments” is a Class B misdemeanor, and it doesn’t help that in order to get proper respect as a graffiti writer in the barrio, the supplies have to be stolen. Reparations were costly, but worth it, since that dark-skinned Dominican kid is now working on a twenty-one-game hitting streak carried over from his previous season at Newtown High School, and the rumor is that he’s being scouted by the Mets.

That night we climb up onto the roof so Felipe can look at the glittering crown of Shea Stadium on the horizon.

“Yo, Filomena,” he says. “I hear los Mets are gonna put their game on real thick this year.”

“They definitely have a shot at it.”

“Remember the subway series when that cabrón de Yanqui Clemens threw the broken bat at Piazza?”

“Sure.”

“Freddie got some tickets for me and Ray Ray. We was in the upper deck, the three of us doing mad daps all around.” He points at the bright lights as if the exact spot is marked for all time, which I suppose it is, in a way. I know what he’s thinking, but he says it anyway. “Some day Ray Ray gonna be playing center field out there.”

* * *

The next morning, I’m training my new part-time office assistant, a tanned and freckle-faced sophomore at Queens College named Cristina González. They’re putting her through the wringer at that school, making her take two semesters of Composition, which is encouraging since half the college kids I see lie to me on their resumés and think they can get away with writing crapola like, My mother’s a strong women and roll model for all American’s, which doesn’t look too good in a report.

The last applicant didn’t mention his credit card scam and drug convictions when I asked him if there was anything unusual in his past that I should know about. When I caught it on a routine background check, he said, “Hey, in my neighborhood, that’s nothing unusual.”

“You mean, I beat out a convicted felon for this job?” says Cristina. “Gee, thanks.”

It’s hard to find good help for $6.50 an hour, which is all I can afford to pay. But striking out on your own is risky at my age, and I wouldn’t even be able to pay that much if my former bosses at Davis & Brown Investigations didn’t toss a few heavy bones my way, continuing a long-standing American business practice of subcontracting out to cheap immigrant labor like me.

So I’m sitting in my eight-by-fourteen storefront office, directly beneath the flight path of every other jet approaching LaGuardia Airport, trying to debug the Hebrew font we installed for a case involving an Orthodox congregation in Kew Gardens Hills. The font’s right-to-left coding has defeated the security protocols and migrated to some of the neighboring programs, causing system commands to come up randomly in Hebrew.

Oy vey, couldn’t it have at least been Yiddish?

I look up as a man in a light gray business suit who I’ve been expecting knocks on the glass. I buzz the door open for the junior executive, who looks like he’s worried about contracting malaria through the soles of his wingtips from walking on these cracked sidewalks.

“Miss Buscarella?” he says.

“Close enough. It’s Buscarsela.”

He doesn’t seem to be listening as he sits in a chair that was once bright orange and hands me his card, which says his name is F. Scott Anderson, and his title is Assistant Director of Product Security for the Syndose Corporation.

“What can I do for you on this fine spring day, Mr. Anderson?”

He snaps open his briefcase and pulls out a plastic bottle of dandruff shampoo with a blue-green label you can find in any drugstore in the northeast.

“What’s wrong with this?” he says, holding up the bottle.

I check the label and tell him, “That used to be an eight-ounce size, and now you’re selling six and a half ounces for the same price.”

He doesn’t bite. He just places the plastic bottle on my desk and pulls a seemingly identical one out of his briefcase. “How about this one?”

I study it for a moment, and it’s obvious that the blue-green color isn’t as saturated as it should be, and the white lettering isn’t perfectly aligned with the other colors on the label.

“It’s counterfeit,” I announce.

Cristina butts in. “What kind of dumbass would counterfeit shampoo? Ain’t no money in that.”

I’m about to tell her to keep out of this, but Mr. Anderson beats me to it. He says, “Counterfeiting and product diversion cost my company several million dollars a year. The police just raided a store in Jackson Heights and seized 24,000 bottles of counterfeit shampoo. In one store. That’s a tremendous economic loss.”

“To say nothing of the babies who get sick from diluted baby formula,” I say.

He smiles. “Mr. Davis told me that if anyone could find an illicit manufacturing operation in Corona, you could.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment. What makes you think Corona’s the place to start?”

“Because the store owner in Jackson Heights gave the police an important clue. He said one of the suspects had dark hair, a gang tattoo, and listened to Spanish music.”

I wait for more. Nothing doing.

“That’s your clue?” I say, because I practically fit that description myself.

“Well, no. Not just Spanish music, some special kind. It’s in the report. It also said something about the tattoo indicating that he’s Ecuadorian. Anyway, they figure he’s a member of a street gang like the Latin Kings or MS-13.”

Wow, that’s some terrific random profiling there, Mr. Anderson. But the rent’s due, so I try to keep a placid surface. And tell him, “The Latin Kings are Puerto Rican, the Maras are Salvadoran, and they rarely let anybody else in. I don’t know of any Ecuadorians who’ve jumped in with them, but you never know what could happen as the new generation gets Americanized. I’ll check it out for you.”

He gives me the cocksure grin of a man who just bought exactly what he wanted, as always. But after we sign and file away our copies of the contracts, this glorified errand boy looks like he can’t wait to bug out of the jungle before the headhunters get wind of his scent.

I usually meet the reps from the big clients at the cushy offices of Davis & Brown in downtown Jamaica, but I was getting a weird vibe from this bunch so I just said screw it, I’ll take their money, but I want this guy to come to me and have to drag his skinny white ass to the barrio. Let him feel what it’s like to be a stranger, on alien turf. And I must say, I’m awful glad I did that.

* * *

I start with the police reports of the big shampoo bust and other recent crimes relating to counterfeiting, product diversion, and the rest of the gray-goods racket covering the area between Elmhurst and Corona south of Roosevelt Avenue, and Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst north of Roosevelt. That’s right, East Elmhurst is due north of Elmhurst. What do you expect from a borough where you have to know a different language on every block, where pigeons ride the A train to Rockaway Beach to scavenge from the garbage, where you know that Spider-Man lives at 20 Ingram Street in Forest Hills? No, really. He does.

Most of the cases deal with pirating—unauthorized duplication of CDs, DVDs, and computer software—which are of no interest to my client. The counterfeiting is mostly luxury items like watches, perfume, and designer handbags peddled by West African immigrants on fold-up tables, and the occasional case of Mouton-Cadet with labels made on a laser printer that fool the eye but not the fingers (they lack the raised embossments). But five-and-dime products like shampoo and antibacterial soap? Not much. Time to check out the shelves at the local farmacias.

* * *

Latinos take their music seriously, especially on Roosevelt Avenue east of 102nd Street. There’s a music store on every other block, and the cars—from tricked-out pimpmobiles to body-rot jobs with plastic wrap covering the gaping holes where the passenger windows should be—have top-of-the-line subwoofers pumping out bachata and merengue loud enough to compete with the 7 train roaring by overhead. And not one noise complaint is ever called in to the boys at the One-Ten. Though I do think that a spoiler on a battered Toyota Corolla is kind of pointless.

The store owner in the police report described the suspect’s nationality based on his choice of music and a tattoo of the Ecuadorian flag on his left bicep. But the only music style around here that is exclusively Ecuadorian is pasillo, which is too old-fashioned and sentimental for any self-respecting gangbanger to listen to. He probably meant reggaetón, the Spanish version of gangsta rap, which crosses ethnic borders in all directions, to the dismay of proud parents everywhere.

And the flag is not a “gang” tattoo. Most people don’t know the basic difference between the Colombian and Ecuadorian flags, which boldly fly yellow, blue, and red from second-floor windows and storefronts. (And to anyone who complains about Latinos in the U.S. flying the flags of their homelands, I dare you to go down Fifth Avenue on St. Pat’s Day, or to Little Italy during the Feast of San Gennaro, and try to take down the flags. See what happens.)

I stop by a few farmacias and botánicas and find a number of Syndose knock-offs, including a tube of minty toothpaste with the brand name Goldbloom misspelled Goldvloom, a mistake that only a Latino would make.

The panadería and ferretería—that is, the bakery and hardware store—are displaying handmade posters of Ray Ray in his Newtown High uniform, with his full name, Raymundo Reyes, keeping track of his hitting streak, which after yesterday’s ninth-inning blooper now stands at twenty-two games. Go, Ray Ray.

We take our sports seriously too, although soccer’s the favorite among Ecuadorians. It didn’t get much press up here, but a coach back home was shot when he didn’t select the ex-president’s son for the Under-20 World Cup in Argentina. Yeah, in case I haven’t mentioned it, Ecuador’s major exports are bananas, cocoa, shrimp, and unstable politicians, which is why so many of us come here hoping to catch a piece of the American dream. And sports offers a way out for many, even if it remains a distant dream most of the time. Either way, the bright lights of Shea Stadium cast a long shadow over the neighborhood.

Interviewing the store managers yields a range of responses. One Salvadoreño says the cops told him not to discuss the case without the state attorney general’s consent, but he won’t give me a name or a badge number, or sign a statement to that effect, even though I tell him it’s a bunch of tonterías. You know, B.S., but even the legal immigrants don’t want to tangle with the authorities when their citizenship applications are pending.

Another place is staffed by sullen teenagers making minimum wage who don’t seem to know anything but one-syllable words, and the next place has employed some fresh-off-the-boats who are still having trouble telling the difference between five- and ten-dollar bills. Then I hit a place on 104th Street where the manager talks a Caribbean mile-a-minute about beisbol and the pride of Corona, but he clams up when I ask about the antibiotics in the faded yellow boxes.

“How’d they get so faded? You leave them lying out in the sun?”

Dead air.

I make a show of flipping through my notes, writing a few things down very slowly.

“They’ve just been on the shelf a long time,” he says.

“Then it’s probably time to replace them,” I say, picking up one of the boxes. The expiration date is two years down the road. I mention this. “They can’t have been here that long.”

More silence.

I like the silence. It tells me a lot. “I’ll be back,” I say.

Next up is a drugstore run by a Colombiano whose attitude is: It’s the same stuff for half the price, so his customers buy it. What’s the big deal?

The next guy’s a compatriota, a paisano, an Ecuatoriano like me, who turns into a walking attitude problem when he accuses me of helping the big gringo corporations protect their money instead of going after the real criminals, like the hijos de puta who charged a couple of hundred would-be immigrants $5,000 each for a boat ride to Florida, then left them floundering in rough seas about 200 miles from the coast of Mexico; or the sinvergüenzas who hire day laborers and abandon them without pay in the middle of Nassau County because they can’t go and complain to the Board of Labor; or the perros at the Hartley Hotel in midtown Manhattan who laid off one-third of their employees after 9/11 and told the rest of them to work double shifts if they wanted to keep their jobs, because business was bad. So they were just using 9/11 as an excuse to run the old speed-up.

A ring on my cell phone interrupts this tirade. It’s Felipe, and he must be in big trouble if he’s calling me instead of his mamí.

His school is only a few blocks away, so I can fit it in. I head over on foot, crossing under the El tracks as the train rattles by, thinking about the changing seasons, time passing, and my own parental obligations. Yeah, my generation was supposed to be different. I never thought that my daughter would be growing up in an era when rock stars are dying of old age, or that I would come to know the joys of having a teenage daughter who goes from manic to suicidal on an hourly basis. It all started a few years ago when she was in eighth grade. We had ten minutes to get to some school function, and Antonia was in the bathroom putting on makeup. I asked her, “Do you want to take anything to eat? Some fruit? A sandwich?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t have time,” she replied, in that universally adolescent don’t-you-know-anything whine that drives parents up the wall. And I knew right then that my daughter had reached the age where makeup is more important than food. God help me. And after all these years, I can still recite Green Eggs and Ham word-for-freaking-word.

* * *

Every school cafeteria in the country smells the same, a uniquely American blend of rotten apples and plastic, evaporating floor cleaner, ripening half-pint cartons of milk, and other food garbage. No wonder the kids all live on chips and soda.

The halls are filled with thirteen-year-olds plugged into the current fashion of low-slung jeans and hip-hugging thongs. I never thought I’d use this expression, but in my day, it took some work to see a girl’s panties. Now it’s pretty much on display, and all I can say is that, fortunately, pimples and braces are God’s way of saying you’re not ready for sex.

And you know you’re in a public institution when you pass a classroom with a sign taped to the blackboard saying, Do Not Tape Anything to This Blackboard, which is clearly a test of the logical skills needed to survive in the absurd bureaucracies of the information age.

Felipe is sitting by himself in a tiny interrogation room in the assistant principal’s office.

“Are you his guardian?” asks the secretary, whose plastic ID plate says her name is Evelyn Cabezas.

“I’m the person he called.”

“Do you know why he’s here?”

“No, but I’d like to hear it from him first.”

She makes me sit across from Felipe like a court-appointed lawyer with a three-time loser, then she leans on the doorframe with her arms crossed.

“Dime lo que pasó,” I say.

Ms. Cabezas interrupts. “I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed to speak Spanish to the kids inside the building.”

“Why not?”

“The principal sent out a memo saying that the under- achieving students bring our test scores down and we’ll lose funding. So, no Spanish. English only.”

“What about the parents who don’t know enough English?”

“Hey, I just do what they tell me, like when they had us opening the mail with rubber gloves during that whole anthrax scare.”

I don’t push it. I just ask what happened.

“I didn’t have my homework,” he says.

“You didn’t call me in here for that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the third time this week.”

“And now you’re in trouble. Tell me why.”

“I got mugged.”

“Mugged? A couple of hard cases said, ‘Forget the cash, we want the English homework’? Try again.”

Same sentence, he just changes a crucial verb: “Okay. I didn’t do my homework.”

“Why the hell not?”

He gets all tight-lipped, like he’s taken a vow of silence, but I’m not the one looking at serious detention time, so I just sit there letting the emptiness fill the silence until he says, “Ray Ray and his crew was hanging with his primo who works at the gas station, gearing up for some mad viernes loco action.”

He means those crazy Fridays near the end of the school year when kids push their parents’ tolerance to the limit.

“You know Ray Ray, he got that pretty-boy face, always looking all ghetto fabulous. He’d go up to Deirdre, the boss, and just put his game on her fat, ugly self. Yo, we be doin’ some crazy stuff.”

“Keep talking.”

“Man, we be a-capellin’ and buggin’ out. He had us laughing up a lung, smoking the sheba with his primo.”

“You were smoking in a gas station, pendejo? Let me get this straight. You went out and partied with your friends the night of your brother’s funeral?”

“Well, Ray Ray had a game that day. And we always party after a game.”

“So it’s sort of like a tradition.”

“Don’t tell my mom, okay?”

“Don’t put me in that position.”

“I mean, this is like confession, right?”

“Go on.”

“Ain’t that what Jesus said?”

“I’m thinking Jesus would be kicking your ass right about now.”

“It don’t say that in the Bible.”

“Sure it does. Check out chapter forty-one, verse three: And thou shalt kick the asses of all those that offend thee. So what did you do next?”

He tells me they went on a shoplifting spree and got away with a few bags of chocolate chip cookies, a six-pack of Bud Light, and a couple of sixteen-ounce bottles of Coke, which proves what a bunch of idiots they are. I mean, if you’re going to boost the merchandise, at least grab something worth stealing.

So he didn’t do his homework because he was busy emulating Ray Ray, and he doesn’t want to roll over on his cousin and—at this point—his primary male role model. What am I supposed to say? Some platitudinous crap he won’t listen to? Still, it falls to me to be el malo de la película and teach him a life lesson. So I tell him, “Listen chico, you better not do anything that freaking stupid ever again. And if you’re going to hang out with older kids, you better make damn sure you do your homework first, you hear me? . . . I asked if you heard me.”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“Good, because you’ve still got a lot to learn, hijito, and dropping out of high school is a joke in a world that has no sense of humor, unless you’ve got some rich celebrities in the family I don’t know about. You think the cops are going to give you some special treatment when you screw up? Let you off with a warning?”

“Hey, you got Ray Ray off.”

“Is that a reason to start a Juvenile Offender record? ’Cause maybe the judge won’t be so kind-hearted next time. And I’m going to give your mamí the same message. After that, it’s up to her. I’ve got my own kid to raise.”

I’ve also got to have a little chat with the pride of Corona.

* * *

But all that has to wait. Something was clearly hinky about the pharmacy with the faded-yellow antibiotics. It takes a couple hours of expensive online searching, billable to my deep-pocketed clients, but I find it. Late last year, a sixteen-year-old boy died of septicemia—a galloping blood infection that rode right over the diluted antibiotics the curandera bought for him. At first, the cops thought it was a drug overdose, but the autopsy didn’t turn up any known street drugs in his system. By all accounts, he was a good kid who studied hard, kept his grades up, and made the varsity wrestling team. He lived about three blocks from the pharmacy. There’s no visible connection, but a dead teenager gives me all the motivation I need to stop playing nice and kick it up a notch or two. This goes way beyond watered-down baby formula.

The victim’s name was Edison Narvaez, which sure sounds Ecuadorian. His parents found him in his bedroom. He had already turned blue. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. My heart goes out to them for having to come face-to-face with every parent’s worst nightmare. It’s a professional hazard, I guess. I feel the urge to pull the plug on all the technology, stop traffic, and run home to hug my daughter for the rest of the afternoon.

But I have to swallow my maternal instincts and check the police report first.

It’s impossible to find out what the victim’s parents actually said, because the detectives didn’t know any Spanish, and the report isn’t even signed. I could talk to the Narvaez family myself, though I wouldn’t want to put them through that unless it’s absolutely necessary.

But I do know someone else I can lean on.

* * *

“Where’d you get this?” I say, holding the yellow box under the pharmacist’s nose.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I mean, a guy who worked here during the holiday season handled it, but he was gone by the end of December.”

“He only worked here for one month?”

“Yeah.”

“And you let him handle bulk orders of prescription medicine?” I’m not letting him get an inch of breathing room.

“He said he had a source, and the price was right.”

“What was his name?”

“José.”

“I’m running out of patience here.”

“We all called him José.”

I turn on my patented X-ray eyes and burn a hole clean through the back of his head into the wall behind him. “Do you have a pay stub?” I suggest.

“We paid him in cash.”

“Of course you did. Did he fill out a job application? A health care plan? Anything with a name and address?”

A customer comes in and starts browsing around the lip glosses, which breaks my hold on him for a moment. So I use the opportunity to dig out the camera and snap a bunch of time-stamped photos of the counterfeit merchandise in close-up, medium, and a really nice wide-angle shot with him in the background. Then I take out a couple of quart-sized Ziplocs, double-bag a handful of the fake medicine as evidence, and stuff it in my bag.

The customer makes a choice, pays for it, gets her receipt and change, and heads out the door. The pharmacist’s hands are trembling slightly as he opens a drawer and pulls out a file folder full of invoices and crumpled sheets of pink and yellow paper. He goes through them one by one, wetting his fingers for each sheet, trying to get a grip or else maybe buy the time to come up with a plausible story. Another customer comes in, but I don’t take my eyes off the pharmacist for an instant. Finally, he produces a coffee-stained job application form.

I grab it and smooth it out on the counter. Antonio José de Sucre. Someone’s got a sense of humor, because that name belongs to the heroic general on Ecuador’s five-sucre note. Other warning signs that a legitimate employer should have spotted include out-of-state references with no phone numbers and a list of previous jobs with companies that went out of business years ago. But the price was right, I guess.

There’s an address that’s got to be a fake, and I wouldn’t put too much faith in the phone number either. “This number any good?”

He’s having trouble concentrating.

I repeat, “Did you ever call him at this number?”

“I guess I might have. I don’t remember.”

“Don’t you remember anything? Because you’re not getting rid of me until you give me something. You know that, don’t you?”

The woman gets in line behind me with a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of baby shampoo. I think the shampoo is one of the fakes. He says, “Let me take care of this customer first.” Buying more time, the bastard. When the woman’s gone, he says, “I just remembered—some of the cartons the medicine came in might still be in the storage room.”

Sounds almost too good to be true. I’ll follow this guy, but I’m not going to turn my back on him. I open my jacket so I can get to my .38 revolver quickly as we go down the back stairs to the storage room. Then we toss the place until we find a couple of boxes with the Syndose logo on them. The shipping labels have been torn in half. Another red flag. Who gets a delivery and tears the shipping label in half? Not the whole thing, just the return address.

“Tell me something. Did this guy have a tattoo of the Ecuadorian or Colombian flag on his left bicep?”

“I don’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“It was Christmas and we couldn’t afford to keep the heat up high, so we were all wearing long-sleeved shirts and sweaters.”

“It seems like you can remember things if you try.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to send this guy to a place where he can’t choose his neighbors.”

“I mean about me.”

“That depends. Maybe we can swing a deal if you cooperate.”

“I’m cooperating.”

“Yeah? Well, I know another word for it.”

* * *

The phone number’s no longer in service, but a quick search turns up the previous owner’s name, Julio Cesar Gallegos, which just might lead somewhere. A lot of career criminals in my culture favor such grandiose names, as if they stand to inherit the power of the name by sympathetic magic. The biggest one, of course, being Jesús. I mean, there are a lot of Muslims named Mohammed, but nobody names their kid Allah.

The name, it turns out, doesn’t connect to an address in any of the usual places—motor vehicle and property records, bankruptcy court, government benefits—and I’m starting to get a feeling about this guy. Seems like he only used the name once to get the phone. Nobody makes themselves that invisible unless they’re working hard at it, and the kind of swagger he showed on the job doesn’t sound like a timid illegal trying to stay off the radar. I don’t give the street gang theory much credence. The pandillas are into curbside extortion, jacking cars, and drug dealing. They might have a piece of the street action on this, but staking out a one-month undercover in a local pharmacy seems a little beyond their scope. No disrespect.

But I figure if he is my guy, he’s got to have had a brush with the law at some point, even if it’s just a speeding ticket. I do a county-by-county search of the tri-state area and come up with nothing. I finally catch a break and match his name with an accident report that gives a recent address on Queens Boulevard, a wide thoroughfare that more than seventy people have died trying to cross in the last ten years, giving it the catchy nickname of the Boulevard of Death.

I call with a pretext about an insurance payment from the accident, and a woman named Gloria confirms Gallegos’s existence by telling me that he’s not in right now. But people will tell you anything if they think it’ll lead to money, and she practically offers to FedEx me a sample of his DNA. She says he’s watching the game in a bar a couple of blocks from the stadium. She doesn’t know the exact address, but it’s under the elevated tracks, which means from what she’s told me that it’s on Roosevelt Avenue east of 108th Street. I know the place.

* * *

The setting sun paints the store windows with an orange glow that transforms them into heavenly palaces for about a minute and a half. Dueling sound systems thump out bachatas from storefronts and apartment windows, while men in sweat-stained T-shirts hang out on the steps, laughing and enjoying the end of another work day with bottles of cerveza Pilsener, a taste of the old country. The hardware store owner is changing the numbers beneath Ray Ray’s dark Dominican features to include the results of today’s game, showing that he’s just extended his hitting streak to twenty-three games, while the 7 train shakes the sidewalks as it thunders on toward Flushing.

The big blue-and-orange Mets banner tells me I’m in the right place, and only one of the guys hunched over the bar matches the description I extracted from the fast-talking pharmacist. There’s a spot next to him, opposite the big color TV. I slide onto the empty stool as the Mets take on their archrivals, the Atlanta Braves. Glavine’s on the mound, facing his old teammates. Top of the third, one out, no one on. Both teams scoreless.

The bartender comes over and asks me what I’ll have.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“You gotta have something if you’re gonna sit here.”

“Oh, I’ve got to pay rent, huh? Okay, I’ll have a seltzer with a twist.”

He doesn’t try to hide his annoyance with me for ordering something so girly-girly and cheap, and unlikely to result in a big tip. I keep a close watch to make sure that’s all he’s giving me, and leave a few extra bills on the bar.

The batter pops up to center field, and Beltran gets under it with plenty of time.

“Así se hace!” says my neighbor.

“Vamos Carlosito!” I chime in.

He looks at me. I toast him with my seltzer. He returns the salute with his beer.

“Do I know you?” he asks.

“You’ve probably seen me around. I think I’ve seen you around too. How’s it going?”

“Me? Just trying to get through the day.”

“It’s good to set realistic goals.”

Díaz comes up for Atlanta. He takes a few practice swings, then gets into his stance. Glavine throws low and inside. Ball one.

“So, a qué te dedicas?”

He says, “Oh, this and that. Y tú?”

“I’ve got my own business.”

“Uh-huh. Doing what?”

“I’m a private contractor.”

Glavine shakes his head. Lo Duca spreads three fingers and taps them against his right thigh, pinky extended. Glavine takes his time, then fans the guy with a devastating curveball.

“Yeah!” My guy pumps his fist in the air, and his T-shirt sleeve slides halfway down his bicep. I gently slide it the rest of the way. No tattoo.

He looks at me. “You like that?” He can’t resist making a muscle for me. “Want to see more?”

“That depends. Is your name really Julio César Gallegos?”

His face darkens. “Hey, what is this?”

“Well, it started out as a counterfeiting case, but I think it’s turning into a homicide investigation, although a good lawyer would probably get the charges reduced to second-degree manslaughter.”

He goes hard on me and swallows the stale beer at the bottom of his glass, then says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“And I always know I’m getting close when the guys I’m interviewing start thinking about what they’re going to say in court. Uh, your honor, my client’s remark, ‘I’ll blow his fucking head off,’ was taken out of context,” I say, mimicking a typical mob lawyer, then wave it all away like bad smell. “Give me a break.”

“You got nothing on me.”

“I also know I’m getting close when they start talking in clichés.”

“This is entrapment.”

“I’m not the law, dude. I told you, I’m a private contractor.”

I give him a brief rundown of my activities for the past few hours, solidly connecting him to a shipment of counterfeit medicine at the pharmacy on 104th Street and implying an equally strong connection to the death of Edison Narvaez, with suspicion of possible intent, unless he comes clean with me.

“Now, what do you know about the stuff that killed that boy?”

“It’s always the one you least suspect, right?” he says, trying to make it into a joke.

“That would mean Brigitte Bardot did it. She’s pretty low on my list of suspects. No, I’m looking for a guy with a tattoo of the Ecuadorian or Colombian flag on his left arm.” I let him catch a glimpse of the .38 under my jacket. Díaz connects and sends the ball sailing over Delgado’s glove, but Chavez gets to it quickly and holds Díaz at first. While the place erupts with cheers, Gallegos looks at his shoes and says the words very quietly, “It’s the Ecuadorian flag.”

I nod. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I knew one of these days someone like you would be walking through that door.” He looks around. “No cops, all right?”

“Aw, shucks. And I just called them.”

“What the fuck did you do that for?”

“Yo, buddy. Your language,” says the guy two stools over.

“Yeah, it’s English. What the fuck’s your problem?”

“Settle down, guys,” says the bartender.

I tell Gallegos, “You’ve got about three minutes, unless you give me some sugar, comprendes?” I’m making that up, but screw it—it’s working. The next batter hits a hard one up the middle and Reyes stops it cold to end the inning. That’s José Reyes, hometown: Villa González in the D.R.

Gallegos says, “We could have worked something out.”

“Before all this, maybe. Not with the Narvaez kid dying from tainted meds, or whatever the hell you guys sold him. Tell me where to find him.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Do you hear sirens?” That’s kind of a trick question, because you always hear sirens in this part of Queens. “Look, if you point me to someone else further up the ladder, I’ll leave you out of it.”

“I’ve been wanting to get out of the life,” he says. “’Cause me and Gloria are gonna get married, and we’re planning to have babies.”

“You can plan to have babies? That’s news to me.”

“I want immunity.”

“Then tell me something that’ll take the focus off you, hermano.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

* * *

The lights are on at Shea as twilight turns to darkness, and we can hear the fans cheering in the distance as a ring of cops closes in on a clandestine warehouse near the boat basin off Willets Point Boulevard. The police find what they’re after: a conveyor belt, pill counters, stacks of empty bottles and jars, state-of-the-art printing equipment, boxes of fake labels, crates of ready-made knock-offs from Pakistan, Vietnam, Malaysia— talk about the effects of globalization—drums of raw chemicals from Colombia and China for mixing up everything from cough medicine to horse steroids, as well as invoices, account books, and a list of contact names, including delivery boys.

Ray Ray’s name is right in the middle of the list.

They’re willing to let me talk to him first, but Ray Ray’s out celebrating his twenty-three-game hitting streak, and by the time he comes home from his viernes loco a couple hours later, the cops have gotten a warrant, stormed right past me, torn up his room, and are tramping down his front steps with their arms full of cases of counterfeit steroids. And I have a sick feeling that the lab is going to find significant traces of the active ingredient in Edison Narvaez’s blood samples.

“What the—” he starts to say, but he knows what’s going on.

I tell him, “I was on my way over to talk to you, but I guess it’s too late for that now.”

They read him his rights under the harsh lights of Shea while the fans cheer somebody’s throw-beating play. The cheers that he’ll never hear. And I can just imagine Felipe when he finds out tomorrow. When they all find out: “Dime que no es cierto, Fil.”

Which translates roughly as, “Say it ain’t so.”

OUT OF BODY

BY GLENVILLE LOVELL

South Jamaica

Phisto remembered it like it was yesterday. The first time he saw a dead body. It was in the embalming room of his father’s funeral home. He was almost twelve years old, already bored with school and given to playing hooky, cruising around in stolen cars with his new friends from a Bloods gang that controlled the Baisley Projects.

That day the police had stopped them in a stolen green Caddy on Archer Avenue and had taken the older boys off to jail. He later found out the only reason he’d escaped a trip to the lockup was because one officer had known his old man. Turned out the tough-love cop wasn’t doing him any favor by not taking him to jail.

The cop drove him home and he almost bluffed his way out of trouble. But the guy refused to release him without first speaking to his parents. The house was empty that afternoon. His mother had died earlier in the year, and soon afterward, his eighteen-year-old sister ran off with the pastor who conducted his mother’s funeral.

The cop took him down to his father’s funeral parlor over there on Guy Brewer Boulevard about a mile away from where they lived on 178th Place, a quiet leafy neighborhood of one-and two-family homes dense with Caribbean immigrants like his father who’d settled there in 1960.

Phisto had never visited the funeral home until that day. He knew what his father did for a living. He knew that his father buried people. And made a pretty good living from it, evidenced by the latest appliances and new furniture they had in their one-family brick house, but it was never talked about in his company.

While the officer explained to his father why Phisto had arrived there in the back of a patrol car, his father showed no emotion, merely nodding and shaking his head. Moments after the blue-and-white drove off, his father exploded, displaying a temper that Phisto had heard his mother talk about but had never seen before.

His father took him down into the basement and ordered him to strip. Defiant, Phisto grabbed his crotch, aping the bad-boy posturing he’d picked up on the street. With this bluff, he tried to walk away. His father grabbed him in a choke-hold and slammed him to the ground. Phisto was surprised by his father’s strength. The slightly built man from the island of St. Kitts, though no more than a few inches taller than his son, was well-muscled with surprising power in his upper body from cutting sugar cane and working construction in his youth. With a piece of electrical cord, he tied his scrawny son to a chair next to the dead body he was preparing for burial and proceeded to rip Phisto’s clothes from his body until he was naked in the cold room.

Then the mortician went back to his work. The smell of embalming fluid soon filled Phisto’s lungs. The prickly odor knifed through his toughness and singed his palate until he puked all over himself. His father paid no attention to him at all. Singing cheerfully and going about his business, stepping over Phisto sitting there in his own vomit, admiring how craftily he’d restored the young woman’s face, mutilated by a jealous boyfriend after he’d killed her.

With nothing left in his stomach, Phisto leaned against the table leg. He was weak and bleeding where the wire chafed his wrist. Slime dripped from the corners of his mouth. From where he sat he could see the blood and fluid draining from the woman’s body, flowing down into the waste receptacle.

He glanced at the corpse’s face and felt a strange relief, a sort of bonding with something outside of himself. Quietly, as if he’d somehow acquired the facility to remove his spirit from his body, he stared at the pathetic little boy with spittle drooling from his mouth, trembling at his father’s feet. He saw himself, the pathetic little boy, rise up and walk over to his father and put his arm around the man’s shoulder and whisper, Thank you.

Then he headed out of the room, pausing at the door for one final glance at the sniffling kid sitting in vomit.

Phisto stored that dead woman’s face in his mind, embracing that stillness characterized by death as a part of himself. By the time his father released him two hours later, the smell of vomit and the sickly odor of embalming fluid had disappeared from his senses. He wasn’t even aware of the cold anymore. He could’ve sat there for another two hours as comfortably as if he were lounging poolside at the Four Seasons in Miami.

Years later, he came to realize that in those two hours he sat in that frigid room while his father worked on that body, he’d formulated the virtue that would rule his life: Feel no pain or remorse.

In 1984, he quit school at sixteen and started selling weed. In three months he had moved onto powder, making as much as $8,000 off an ounce. He struck a deal with some Colombians and by the end of the year was flipping $100,000 a week with rock houses in South Jamaica. In two years, he controlled the large housing projects which dominated the two sections of the southside. But he knew that this game wasn’t going to last, so he started taking business classes in sales and real estate. By the time the crack craze was over, he’d amassed a fortune and an army, and while maintaining his stranglehold on the drug trade, exporting to as far away as Texas, he had diversified his holdings into real estate in Atlanta, Miami, and the Caribbean.

People saw him as a drug lord. A gang leader. A killer. A psychopath. He laughed whenever he read those kinds of descriptions in the news. America worshipped psychopaths and other miscreants in the name of business. Just pick up Business Week or the Wall Street Journal or any major business magazine and you found profiles of men who ran businesses, who on the surface appeared to be legal, but with a little digging were discovered to be looting the companies, stealing employee pensions, and knowingly selling products that killed people. The newspapers and magazines lauded those muthafuckers as visionaries, but condemned people of a similar personality profile like himself, who did business on the margins of society. Ain’t that some shit.

Was he any different from the CEOs of big corporations in this country? He was just as charismatic, as visionary, as tough as a Steve Jobs. In fact, you could say he was tougher. He had never operated any business at a loss. If his businesses were listed on the stock market, the share values would rise every year. His underlings worshipped him just as shareholders worshipped the Bernie Ebberses or Jack Welches of the world. He did whatever he had to do to get the job done. Just as they did. And just as they were celebrated and applauded by their peers and profit-worshippers for their willingness to take chances, to be aggressive and visionary, so was he by the many people who depended on him for their survival.

There were two codes he lived by. They were ruthless, but effective. His first motto: Snitches must die. The silencing of witnesses was the rule he lived by and everyone in his orbit, including all the Baisley Projects, paid heed. Neither the NYPD nor the Feds had ever built a case against him.

The second motto: Accept no disrespect.

Which was why he had no choice but to put down Fred Lawrence in view of everyone in the playground in Baisley Pond Park. It was as necessary as any CEO firing a junior executive who disrespected him in public. As much as he liked the youngster, if he let the upstart get away with this, the mystique of being Phisto Shepherd would be destroyed. Forever. The youngster had stepped to him in a way that no one in their right mind should be tempted to do. And bragging on top of it. You disrespect Phisto and walk around bragging? That’s asking to be cut down. There’s no surer way to commit suicide than to disrespect Phisto Shepherd and brag on it.

When Phisto claimed a woman, she was his for life. Only when he said the relationship was done could the woman walk away. And until such time, all other suitors were expected to wither way, to drop into the gutter like rats running from the exterminator. This young pup, Fred Lawrence, had laid some pipe on one of his women and then told the world that the girl had begged to be his bitch. Said she would give up Phisto and all his money for another night with him.

Phisto had reached a point in his life where he seldom handled disputes personally. There were any number of young guns in his organization he could call on to quash a beef. Of any sort. If the resolution needed to be quick and permanent, he had enough specialists for every day of the week. If gentle nudging or mediation was required in a sensitive matter, there were people who could be trusted to be discreet.

But he had to show the world that he was still Phisto Shepherd. That the Phisto who survived his father’s beat-down, who remade himself into a fire-breathing dragon to create the baddest outfit in Queens, wasn’t finished, as many were beginning to whisper on the street after word got around that Fred the baller had fucked Phisto’s woman. He’d taken on the dreaded Jamaican Shower Posse for turf and sent them scampering back to Miami. He’d ordered the hit on a corrupt cop who tried to shake him down, and he’d gotten away with it. Why hadn’t this youngster heeded his warning? When the message was conveyed to the kid, he’d signed his own death warrant with a laugh.

Once in a while, even with the large army at his disposal, Caesar still had to go out and slay somebody to remind his soldiers why and how he became Emperor. This one wasn’t a head-cracker. The youngster had to be bodied, and he would do it himself.

Fred Lawrence was a talented young baller who’d just finished his senior year at LSU. Some pundits thought he was sure to be drafted by the NBA. Maybe not a first-rounder, but definitely a second or third. He was that good. Phisto had seen him play and didn’t like the kid’s game as much as others did. Not enough range on his jumper, but the quick first step and the physical nature of his game reminded Phisto of Stephon Marbury. Fred could have gotten his shot.

That is, had he not come back from Louisiana thinking he could spit in King Kong’s eye. Thinking he could steal Fay Wray and not suffer the consequences. Thinking his dribbling skills would get him a buy after dissing Phisto.

Like everyone else who tried to fuck with Phisto’s program without considering the consequences, the young man had to pay. The beating and humiliation Phisto took from his father that day in the mortuary taught him never to bluff. Once you bluff you have to back down. And when you back down you lose respect.

His core crew had advised him to let the matter drop. Why knuckle up with this young stud? But he knew they were begging for the youngster’s life simply because they were in love with his game. Phisto knew they converged on the park on Saturdays and Sundays, just like everybody else, to watch the muscular youngster play. Everyone on the southside loved this young man, wanted to see one of their own make it in the NBA. Putting the grip on him wouldn’t go down well with the residents.

Nevertheless, Phisto’s code was his code. The situation reminded him of when his father was shot to death on 121st Avenue during a robbery in 1995. By that time his father had disowned him and he and the old man hadn’t spoken in more than ten years. But everyone in the neighborhood knew this was Phisto’s father, and accorded him due respect. Phisto found the young killer, and in sight of other customers spaded him as he sat in the barber’s chair. Phisto was arrested the next day. But the case never made it to trial. The man who had identified him to the police was Bobby Tanner, a retired postal worker. Tanner got a bullet in the back of the head for his trouble. Word soon got around that Bobby Tanner got tagged for snitching. The next Sunday, Phisto visited the church where another of the witnesses worshipped. The bloated man saw Phisto’s six-foot, 275-pound frame blocking the sidewalk and, fortunately for him, fell down in the street from sheer fright. No one ever appeared in the grand jury to finger Phisto.

Contrary to what his advisors believed, Phisto didn’t actually want to put the youngster under at first. He would’ve let the matter go had the young stud not been stupid enough to woof that he had more dog in him that Phisto. After that, his hands were tied.

That summer evening, the sun had left a band of endless purple across the sky. An unusually high wind curled the young tree limbs and stirred leaves and dust in the park. It blew hard and heavy against the houses on Sutphin Boulevard, rattling the sign on the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Baisley Boulevard.

A storm was coming. Colored balloons, left over from an abandoned family picnic, hung from tree limbs. Yet the approaching inclement weather wasn’t enough to delay the fitness fanatics doing laps around the track, or to arrest the pick-up game on one of the three courts behind the racquetball wall.

The few daring souls on the sidelines that evening who’d scoffed at the looming bad weather witnessed a near flawless performance from Fred Lawrence on the court. The perfection of his long lean body, snaking through small spaces, piercing the tough wind and a tougher defense, twirling and swerving around defenders with precision, left most people shaking their heads in disbelief.

Fred scored on a driving, twisting lay-up off the glass, using a classic crossover move that left his defender flat on his back. The small crowd screamed. Fred ran back down the court pumping his fist in the air, yelling, “You forgot your jock, bitch!”

The next time down the court, Fred took a pass on the wing and without breaking stride elevated past a closing defender for a rim-rattling dunk.

People were whooping and hopping up and down and spinning around in circles of disbelief.

“Did you see that?”

“No he didn’t!”

“Replay! Replay!”

“Jordanesqe.”

“Better than Jordan.”

Phisto’s black BMW pulled up on 155th Street behind a white Explorer. The doors of the truck were open and Jay-Z’s latest joint was blasting full force. Phisto wanted to tell the idiot to turn his music down, but decided to ignore the disturbance and walked the short distance across the grass to the courts.

There was a hush as Fred got the ball back on a steal. He veered left and was met by an agile defender. He slipped the ball between his legs and dribbled backward, looking for another opening. Shifting the ball from side to side, through his legs, and then a glance to his left as if searching for someone in the crowd. Everyone knew what was coming. Fred jabbed to the right and the defender bit on the fake. The elusive youngster changed direction and in a split second flew by his defender for another dunk.

Oh, the ecstasy of the crowd. Fred soaked up their response for a full second, posing under the rim.

And then, praack! praack!

Heads jerked around. Too loud for a firecracker. Too close to be the backfire of a car. People scattered when they saw Fred stumble and fall to the ground. Even his friends on the court ran and left him.

Seconds later, only five people were left. Phisto handed the .45 to someone in his three-man posse to dispose of it. He walked over to the only person who hadn’t run away.

“Do I know you?” Phisto said.

“I don’t know.”

Phisto took hold of the man’s face, digging his fingers through his scraggly beard into his jaws. “Do you know me?”

“Yeah, I know you.”

Phisto laughed. “Why didn’t you run away like the rest?”

The man hesitated. “Why?”

Phisto’s eyes screwed up and he lifted the man’s dark glasses from his face. “What’d you say, muthafucker?”

“Why? I didn’t think the game was over.”

Phisto laughed. “You think you’re funny.”

“I mean, he was so amazing, the way he defied gravity. I thought he was Superman. I thought he would get up and fly above that rim again.”

“He was amazing, wasn’t he?” Phisto said.

“Yeah. Amazing.”

Phisto said, “Did you see anything else here?”

The guy took his sunglasses from Phisto’s hand and put them back over his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Exactly. That’s what I mean,” Phisto replied, turning away. “You better bounce. Cops gonna show any minute.”

“I am a cop,” the man said.

Phisto turned slowly, his face scarred with a dark smile. “For real?”

The man adjusted his dark glasses and smiled. “Just fucking with you.”

Phisto relaxed. “I should kill you for fucking with me.”

“Actually, I wasn’t. I’m really a cop.”

The man opened his jacket. An NYPD detective badge hung from a chain around his neck. Phisto also noticed the 9mm stuck loosely in his waistband.

Phisto gauged the distance between him and the man. “You gonna arrest me?”

“No.”

“If you ain’t gonna arrest me, what you gonna do?”

“Shoot you between the eyes.”

Phisto laughed.

The man wriggled his fingers. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re gonna shoot me between the eyes?”

“Yeah.”

Pointing at the dead baller, Phisto said, “For him?”

“No.”

“Is this personal?”

“Remember the cop you ambushed in that crack house?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He had a son. That son became a cop.”

“And that son . . .”

“Would be me.”

Phisto turned to the member of his crew holding the .45. “Shoot this muthafucker.”

Nobody moved.

Phisto made a quick grab at the .45. His hand closed on the grip and that’s when he felt a jolt to his chest as if he’d been kicked by a mule. He bounced against the white wall of one of the racquetball courts and slid to the ground on his back.

Phisto had often thought of what this moment would be like for a person. The moment that separated life from death. Was there some brilliant light to illuminate your path into the next world, as some people claimed who’d had so-called near-death experiences? Was there such a thing as coming close to death? He knew what death looked like. His father had made sure of that.

He looked up and saw streams and streams of white clouds. And then he felt a strange relief swell in his chest, a sort of bonding with an energy entering him. A sadness overcame him and he wanted to cry. He saw the faces of his crew and knew that he’d been betrayed. By one or all of them. He also knew it didn’t matter anymore. The light was approaching fast.

LIGHTS OUT FOR FRANKIE

BY LIZ MARTÍNEZ

Woodside

Frankie tapped his foot and wished the clerk would hurry up. How long could it take to scan a couple of items and punch the keys on the cash register? He lifted his baseball cap and wiped the sweat off his forehead, then slipped it back on, pulling the bill lower. The heatwave was taking its toll on everyone. The air-conditioning inside the store helped a little, but the customers still looked like they were wilting.

Finally, the cashier got her act together. She handed him the transaction slip and her pen. He scribbled Gerry Adams in the signature space. In the past, Frankie had passed himself off as Billy Clinton, Charles Prince, and Johnny Depp. The cashier counted out crisp currency and gave it to him along with a command to have a nice day. Her name tag read Rochelle.

“Thanks, Rochelle,” he said, and asked her for the receipt. She stared vacantly at the piece of paper. “Oh. Sure,” she said, then handed it to him and wandered off.

Frankie glanced around the customer service desk. What a misnomer. The three clerks behind the counter were doing anything but servicing customers. One was chatting on her cell phone with her back to the store. Another was deep in thought, staring intently into the middle distance. The third mindlessly folded and refolded the same article of clothing. He spied a roll of thermal cash register tape sitting out on the counter. Somebody had probably started changing the tape and then forgot about it midstream. Nobody was paying any attention to him, so he swiped the tape and tucked it into the white plastic bag. He was sure he could find some use for it.

He hopped into his black SUV and merged into traffic on Northern Boulevard. He headed toward his next stop near the Queens Center Mall. Most of his NYPD colleagues worked extra jobs on their RDOS. Having regular days off gave them an opportunity to land good gigs like guarding one of the Commerce Bank branches. Stand there for eight hours in uniform, flirting with the tellers. Nice.

Frankie sighed and looked at the list his wife had made for him. This was how he spent his RDOS—running from store to store. He thought about his wife and their two kids and sighed again. For the millionth time, he questioned the way his life was unfolding. Shouldn’t he try to land a private-pay job with a bank for his days off? Or maybe with a store? He grimaced. It was only July, but the kids would need new school supplies soon, and then Christmas . . . Always something.

He pulled into the left lane on Queens Boulevard and waited for the light to change. One of the guys in the livery cab that sailed through the light on his right looked familiar, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to think who it might be. The memory came to him just as he pulled into the Marshall’s parking lot.

On his first day in the Police Academy, Frankie had buddied up with three other recruits: Thompson, Edwards, and . . . the third guy’s name escaped him. The group had coffee before classes, studied together, and ate lunch in a diner two blocks from the Academy. The man in the black car reminded Frankie of the last member of the Fearsome Foursome. (How young they’d been! That name had sounded so cool at the time.) He was a lanky, raw-boned shit-kicker from the hills of West Virginia. The guy had heard an ad for the NYPD on his short-wave radio and had spent a day driving northeast to take the test. Everybody thought he was stupid because of his hillbilly accent, but Frankie copied his homework every chance he got.

Williams—that was his name. Frankie must have been the first Mexican-American Williams had ever seen. Right off the bat, the guy made a remark about Frankie’s nose. Frankie, who thought his nose was regal, like the profile on the statue of an Aztec warrior, was slightly insulted. “What do you know?” he’d asked Williams. “Your last girlfriend was probably a sheep.”

The other guys chuckled, but Williams took it seriously. “We never had no sheep in our family,” he said. “I had an uncle once, kept goats. He was pretty tight with one of them— called her Priscilla.” He looked puzzled when the other three recruits doubled over with laughter. He must have figured he’d made a slight miscalculation because he tried to backtrack. “I don’t think he was improper with Priscilla or nothin’,” he protested. “They was just real good companions.”

Frankie could hardly catch his breath, he couldn’t stop laughing. “They never got married, huh, Williams? Your uncle and his goat?”

“That’s disgusting,” Williams said. He refused to speak to the other three for the rest of the day.

One of the guys found out later that Williams had a degree from some Bible college, but it was too late. He’d earned himself the nickname Officer Goatfucker. Nobody called him that anymore. He was a captain now, working out of the 115th Precinct. Now they called him Captain Goatfucker. Behind his back, of course.

Frankie smiled, thinking about the old days. Fifteen years had slipped by. He sometimes regretted that he didn’t have more to show for the time besides a few gray hairs and occasional heartburn. He’d been so naïve when he first came on the job. Thought everything was the way they showed it on TV. Boy, did he know better now.

* * *

Frankie pushed open the heavy entrance door to the store and made a beeline for the customer service desk. “I’d like to return this merchandise,” he told the clerk, and handed her a receipt. This one’s name tag said Shaquanna.

She gazed blankly at the clothing he pulled out of his shopping bag and lifted her electronic scanner. She passed it over the tags and pressed a key on her register. “A hundred and eighty-six dollars. Would you like a store credit?”

“Cash, please,” he said.

She ripped both layers of register tape off and held them together with her thumb and forefinger. Her nails were painted tomato-red and had rhinestones embedded in the polish. “Fill out your name and address and sign on the line here.” He scrawled on the paper and handed it back. The clerk pressed a button on the register with her long, fake fingernail. There was a noise like a lawnmower starting, then everything went dark.

Silence enveloped the store for a long moment, then shouts erupted. Frankie’s first thought was another terrorist attack. He’d spent 9/11 pulling people out of the World Trade Center. A part of him had been on edge ever since, always halfway expecting a repeat performance. His heart raced into fourth gear. He whipped out his phone, praying that the cell towers were still relaying calls.

“Seven-three Precinct,” a voice snarled. Frankie never thought he’d be so glad to hear PAA Malloy’s nasal twang.

“Hernandez here. What’s going on?”

“I’m busy. Whadaya mean, what’s going on? With what?”

Lovable old Malloy, the best police administrative aide in the department. Frankie gritted his teeth. “With the lights. The lights are out. Is it citywide? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know nothin’ about no lights out. We got plentya light here. Whyn’t ya come in and use the lights here? Maybe you could see to make out the reports right once in a while. Say, is that it? I gotta get back. Somebody has to do some work around here.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, “that’s it.” He pressed the End Call button.

His heart downshifted to third gear. The chaos that had threatened to erupt calmed to a dull murmur. Late afternoon light streamed in through the front windows, diluted by the grime. Drawn like moths to a flame, shoppers swarmed in the sunlight, their intended purchases clutched uncertainly to their chests. Store security was already in action. Uniformed guards gathered with the store managers near the exits to make sure no one took advantage of the power outage to sneak merchandise past the electronic monitoring pedestals.

Electric signs on businesses across Queens Boulevard were illuminated, so maybe it was just the store’s system that had given up the ghost. That’s why the PAA at Frankie’s Brooklyn precinct didn’t know anything about it. He smiled grimly, gently chiding himself for jumping the gun and heading right to thoughts of disaster. He turned back to the cashier. “Uh, what about my refund?”

She looked at the cash register without focusing. “It won’t open without electricity,” she said.

“I understand that,” he said slowly, patiently. “How can I get my money?”

“We’ll mail it to you, I guess.” She consulted the tape where he’d identified himself as Colonel Parker, with an address at 12 Finger Lickin Lane in Fried Chicken, Kentucky. “You’re from Kentucky?” She squinted uncertainly. “They got mail there, I guess. We’ll send it to you.”

A knot formed in Frankie’s stomach. “I need it now,” he said.

She shrugged. “I can’t give it to you. Hey, I got kids. I better pick them up from day care.” She shuffled off, leaving Frankie standing at the customer service counter by himself in the dark.

Fuck! Who would have thought giving a wrong name and address would come back to bite him in the ass? No cop in his right mind handed over that information to strangers. Now he was out the money and the merchandise. He glanced behind the counter, but efficient old Shaquanna had hustled his returns to the back, so he couldn’t even take them with him.

The crowd thinned rapidly as people poured outside. Maybe he could find the manager. And then what? The guy would grab the money out of petty cash and hand it over to Colonel Parker? Shit. Frankie cursed himself silently. He’d just fucked himself out of almost two hundred dollars.

He got back into his family-sized gas-guzzler and took off to finish the rest of the errands on his wife’s list. Her family came from the Mexican state of Puebla. Frankie’s family, which hailed from the West Coast state of Jalísco, secretly looked down their regal noses on Puebla, which they considered to be the asshole of Mexico. (When you looked at Puebla on the map, it really did look like the end of the long intestine, which made Oaxaca and Chiapas and a few other states the shit end of the country, as far as Frankie’s parents were concerned.) Frankie himself didn’t really have an opinion, having never spent more than a few school vacations in any part of Mexico. All he knew about the people from Puebla was that the food they cooked in the local Woodside restaurants wasn’t as good as his mother’s.

He had to admit that his wife came from a long line of savvy politicians. In Mexico, that meant that they stole with both hands and lied out of both sides of their mouths. Some of the family had emigrated to the States, where they continued the family tradition by becoming involved in New Jersey politics.

María was a perfect blend of North and South. She ran their little tribe with an iron fist, the way the matriarchs in her lineage always had. And she was clever, much like the rest of her family members. She had a number of friends, but the relationships were always transactional, rather than emotional. María had no interest in socializing with anyone who didn’t trade in the currency of favors. If she couldn’t get something on somebody, she wasn’t interested in pursuing the friendship.

Of course, she had plenty to hold over Frankie’s head. She was also bewitching. She would dazzle you with her smile and enchant you with her personality. Once in a while, Frankie caught glimpses beneath María’s charming veneer to a heart of stone. Other times, he thought he must be imagining things and that she was the best thing to ever happen to him. Occasionally, he thought that if it weren’t for María, he could have had a much different—probably better—kind of life.

He followed the directions on his list, the chores taking him out to Nassau County, on Long Island but close to the Queens border. He listened intently to the radio, changing stations to catch any news about the power situation. The oppressive heatwave that was plaguing the New York Metropolitan Area was taking its toll. A blackout was focused mostly in western Queens, caused by excessive demands on the power grid. Too many people in illegal apartments running extra air conditioners. Astoria, Woodside, and Sunnyside bore the brunt. But, the announcer said, residents in that area shouldn’t feel too badly—people in other areas of the city were also suffering.

Frankie felt much better hearing that. Wow, other people were suffering too. Yippee.

His wife called his cell to report that their lights were still on, but their neighbors’ houses had lost power. “Thanks for the update,” he said. “Does that mean you’re gonna cook dinner?” She hung up on him.

On his return trip to Queens, he was going against rush-hour traffic, but the cars still crawled. He decided to stop on the other side of Woodside before heading home. He owed Tía Alba a visit. He lived only a five-minute drive away, but didn’t see her as much as she wanted. He parked outside Seán Óg’s, the Irish pub on Woodside Avenue. It was 8:30 and the darkness was settling in slowly. He loved the way the day took its time ending during the height of summer. The extended daylight brought back memories of riding his bike at dusk and playing ball with the other children. Remote, simpler times, when the most important decisions he made revolved around which kids to torment for the day.

Most of the businesses on Woodside Avenue were dark, but a few had lights. Weird how the power grid worked, skipping over certain places but hitting the ones next door. He briefly wondered whether someone got paid off to keep the lights on in certain places. Nah. That was too paranoid, even for him.

The big wooden sign on the side of Seán Óg’s read Drinking Consultant. He wondered about that every time he saw it. He could picture the scene inside: A guy walks up to the bar, says, “I want to consult you about drinking.” The bartender says, “Yes, sir, what would you like to drink?” Frankie wondered if the consultation cost fifty bucks an hour, like a shrink. Probably, he thought, if you downed the booze fast enough. Then again, you’d probably wind up lying down in Seán Óg’s, just like at a shrink’s, you drank enough. He remembered when the place was some other Irish joint where you could bet on soccer games and horse races. Of course, the son of a bitch running the place taped the soccer games and got suckers to bet on the losing team when he rebroadcast them, but it only took a couple of losses for people to wise up. The guy went out of business years ago, go figure.

Frankie’s family had been among the first wave of Latinos to settle in Woodside. He’d gotten his ass kicked a few times before the other kids in the Irish working-class neighborhood accepted him. It helped that his family was Catholic. Also that his old man brought them here when Frankie was young enough that he didn’t grow up speaking with an accent. His pop, on the other hand, had the whole Señor Wences thing going.

Now, of course, it didn’t matter. Aside from a few old, entrenched Irish families, the neighborhood was predominantly Latino. Not too many Mexicans, but a few here and there. Mostly Dominicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, some Puerto Ricans. Plus your Indians, Pakistanis, and Koreans, of course. Most of those were in neighboring Jackson Heights, but a lot of them had slipped over into Woodside. And now the Russians were discovering the neighborhood. Not to mention the blacks who were swarming into the projects the next block over from Frankie’s house.

He glanced up Woodside Avenue and suddenly felt old. He could remember when almost every business had been something else. Except the Astoria Federal Bank. They’d been annoying people in the same spot for years. A fee for this, a fee for that; I’m sorry, sir, we’ve misplaced your records . . . He couldn’t think of a place that gave him more heartburn than that bank. Well, maybe the DMV, but it was close.

Get a grip, Frankie told himself. He knew his thoughts were careening crazily because he had to go see his aunt. She wasn’t his real aunt, of course; that was just what everybody called her. At the corner of Woodside Avenue and 62nd Street, he glanced at the building on his right. The lights dotted the windows of The Jefferson. It figured Tía Alba’s building would still have electricity. She would keep the power on through sheer force of will. He stepped into the vestibule and took a deep breath. He pressed the buzzer for her apartment. After a pause for whoever was manning the door to look at him through the camera, he got an answering ring. He dragged himself up the three flights, prolonging the inevitable.

Tía Alba threw open the door. “Ay, Paquito!” she squealed. “Ven acá!” She held her arms open. Paquito was Spanish for “Frankie.” He hated to be called Paquito. His aunt smelled of lavender water. He was mildly allergic to the scent and felt his nose tickle uncomfortably. He hated lavender water. He embraced her quickly and stepped back.

“Come in, come in,” she said. “Sit down. I have some empanadas heating up.” She bustled toward the kitchen.

“No, gracias, tía,” he said. “I’m not hungry, really.” He patted his stomach to indicate how full he was. He hated her empanadas.

“Okay, some coffee then, sí? You’ll have some café conmigo?”

Sure, he would have coffee with her. Her coffee was tolerable. Besides, it would take her a few more minutes to pour.

But no, she was back instantly with two steaming cups. “Just perked,” she said. She still used a stovetop percolator, rather than a coffee machine, although God knew she could have had a new one every week. She claimed the machines didn’t brew the coffee properly. “I knew you were coming.”

This prescience was less a function of her mind-reading abilities and more the result of the phone call he’d made to her in the morning before leaving the house, telling her he planned to stop by later.

And now it was later, and he owed her money, and he didn’t know how to tell her he didn’t have it.

She got right to the point. “What did you bring me?” She beamed at him.

“Well, listen, tía, it’s like this . . .” he started.

Her face darkened like a storm cloud. “Don’t tell me any stories, Paquito. I’m not in the mood for stories. Just give me what you owe me.”

Don Pedro stuck his head out of the back bedroom. “Trouble?” he asked. He and Tía Alba had been together for longer than Frankie could remember. Hardly anyone saw him unless something bad was about to happen. Don Pedro had an uncanny sense of when things were going to shit.

“No, no trouble,” Frankie croaked.

“Depends on what you mean by trouble,” Tía Alba said. “I think Paquito is a little short today.”

Don Pedro hauled his bulk into the living room. “Short? How can that be?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

“Well, listen,” Frankie said, looking up at the big man. Don Pedro towered over everybody, especially when he was standing and they were sitting. “I ran into a little trouble today. Because of the blackout.” He shrugged, letting them know that he could hardly be held responsible for the vagaries of Con Edison.

“No excuses, Paquito,” Don Pedro said. “We don’t tolerate excuses here. You know that.” He sounded almost regretful.

“I have almost all of it. Here,” he said, and pulled out his wallet. “I owe you another two hundred. Less, even.” He handed over a fat wad of bills.

Tía Alba counted them quickly. She shook her head. “Two hundred dollars. That’s not acceptable.” She brightened, as though struck with an idea. “Why don’t you go down to the bank and get the rest?” She turned to Don Pedro. “Walk him down to the ATM. You could stand to get a little air. You’ve been inside all day.”

“That’s a fine idea. Come, m’ijo.” He beckoned toward the front door.

“I . . . I can’t,” Frankie said. He swallowed hard. “I don’t have that much in my account.”

Don Pedro loomed over him. “Listen, cabrón, you better figure out a way to get the two hundred. Or we’ll have to figure it out for you, comprende?”

“I don’t have it,” Frankie repeated. A voice in the back of his head told him he was being ridiculous. He had an NYPD shield in his pocket and a gun in a holster. He had nothing to fear from this lug. The voice of reason cut in and told the other voice to shut the fuck up. He cleared his throat, started to explain.

Don Pedro got red in the face, but Tía Alba spoke calmly. “It’s all right, Paquito. These things happen. Don’t worry, Pedro, we’ll work it out. Paco’s a good boy. We can make some arrangement.”

Don Pedro looked like he wanted to arrange Frankie’s face in a new configuration, but then he nodded. “As always, you are right, Alba. I will leave it to you to work something out with the boy.” He wandered back into the bedroom.

“Now,” she said, “what can we work out?” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I know! We are in need of a guard. You will be the guard.”

“A guard? You already have a security system here.”

“No, no. More of a . . . bodyguard. Yes, a bodyguard.” She nodded. “It’s settled. You will go down to the second floor and make sure that everything is all right with our guests. Then we will be even.”

“Oh, no, tía. Not that. I can’t . . .”

She clapped her hands. “You can, and you will.” She checked her watch. “Starting now. And you will come here every night this week. Then I will see you next week, as usual,” she said, beaming again. “Now, come. I will bring you downstairs.”

Frankie trailed her down the flight of steps, feebly protesting the whole way, although he knew it was useless. If only he had been able to get that refund, he wouldn’t be into Tía Alba for the two hundred. He’d started out working in this enterprise at his wife’s insistence. At first, it had been a way to earn easy money, just a simple method of stretching their budget a little further. Somehow, he’d wound up behind the eight ball, into Alba for more money each week. It reminded him of that Tennessee Ernie Ford song “Sixteen Tons”: Another day older and deeper in debt . . . And now he did indeed owe his soul to the company store.

That store, in this case, was Tía Alba and her merry band of fences, who specialized in moving hot—or at the very least, lukewarm—goods. He had a sneaking suspicion that the profits somehow got sent back to the land of the camel jockeys and the home of the ragheads, but his ass was so deep in the alligator pool that he was in no position to do anything about it, even if he knew for sure, which he didn’t. He made damn sure he didn’t. Which was another reason he didn’t want to go downstairs.

He stopped his thoughts as Alba led him into her other apartment on the second floor. The place was jammed, mostly with women, but quite a few men swarmed around as well. It had the feel and sound of a casbah or bazaar. Merchandise was selected, haggling ensued, and deals were finalized. A Middle Eastern–looking man in Western dress approached Alba. She made the introductions quickly, calling the man Mohammed. She turned Frankie over to him, saying, “Mohammed will show you what to do. Now you visit me again tomorrow night before you come down here.” She squeezed his cheek before she left. Hard.

Frankie rubbed his face. Mohammed’s hands snaked over Frankie’s torso and legs expertly. Before Frankie could smack the guy, Mohammed said, “Ah, you are armed. It is good to be prepared. Come, I will show you what to do.”

Frankie glared at him, but what choice did he have? He followed Mohammed to a stool next to the front door. Frankie was to sit there and guard the place for the next four hours.

I can’t stand this, he thought. What am I doing here? His life started flashing in front of his eyes. Was he dying? Or just wishing he were dead? He knew that was a sin, but at this point, what was one more? He pictured María at home, working comfortably at the laptop, using the scanner like a pro, churning stuff out of the color printer like a one-woman Kinko’s.

He sighed and tried to pretend he was on a shit-fixer—a post in the bowels of some shithole in Brooklyn where you got sent if you fucked up. Well, that was apt. He’d ridden out a couple of assignments to shit-fixers in his time, and he supposed he could do it again. Of course he could. He pulled himself up taller. Just another . . . he glanced at his watch . . . three hours and thirty-eight minutes to go. He opened the door to let a stout Dominican woman with three gold teeth leave. She waddled out with a bundle of clothing wrapped in string. Frankie spotted the store tags still hanging from the items.

As soon as he closed the door, the buzzer rang. Mohammed appeared and inspected the visitor through the closed-circuit TV system. He nodded to Frankie. “It’s okay, my friend. You can let her in. She is good customer.” He disappeared into the throng, calling out, “Ladies, ladies! No fighting. We have plenty for everyone.”

There was a smart rap at the door. Frankie peered through the peep and saw the same woman who had just been spotted on the CCTV. She was a petite Latina wearing jeans and a red T-shirt with a denim vest that had embroidered flowers on it. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He didn’t know why, but his cop intuition kicked in and told him something was wrong.

She tapped on the door again. Mohammed appeared, glaring at Frankie. “Let her in, my friend. That is what you are here for.” Before Frankie could protest, Mohammed opened the door and ushered the woman in. “Hello, my friend,” he said to her, taking her hand between both of his. “We have fine selection today. Check it out.”

The woman smiled at him. Frankie noticed she had good white teeth. No gold. The alarm bells clanged in the back of his skull. He looked for Mohammed and spotted him bent over a clothing rack in the back, making a deal with a heavyset lady in a purple pantsuit.

Frankie tucked his hand in the crook of Mohammed’s elbow and pulled the man upright. “I am making deal,” Mohammed spit at him. “You go back to door.”

Frankie pulled the man roughly out of the crowd. “I need to talk to you,” he hissed. “There’s something about that woman that’s not right.” He indicated the newest arrival by lifting his chin in her direction.

Mohammed glanced her way. “She is good customer. She has shopped here many times before. You go back to door.” He shook Frankie off and lost himself among the shoppers.

Frankie stood there for a moment, unused to people ignoring him. He headed back to the door, thinking to let Tía Alba know what was going on. She was a businesswoman, yes, but she was also smart. She obviously ran the show, and she would be able to straighten out Ali Baba.

He whipped out his cell phone, ready to ring her upstairs. Before he could press the button, however, the door flew open. “Police! Put your hands up!” A sea of blue uniforms fanned out, screaming the order a second time in Spanish. “Policía! Manos arriba!”

As one, the female shoppers let out a high-pitched wail. No doubt they were all illegals worried about being sent back to their countries on a bus. Frankie could have told them not to worry about it. They’d be out of Central Booking and on their way back to their Queens apartments before the cops finished the paperwork for the bust. The women were crying and screaming. All except one. The petite brunette in the flowered vest had whipped out her gun and was herding the others back against the wall.

He knew it! No one in her right mind would be wearing an extra layer in this heat—unless she needed the vest to conceal her shoulder holster. The vest, plus the fact that she had good teeth, were the clues he’d picked up on subconsciously. He’d known she didn’t fit in with the rest of the women. Fat lot of good it had done him.

He felt a gun pressing in the small of his back. A man yelled, “Hands up!” into his ear.

“I’m a cop!” he shot back, and reached for his shield.

“I know who you are,” the voice said. Hands reached for his gun and slid it out of his holster. He felt the sweat slide down his sides. Now he was naked.

“I’m a cop!” he said again. The same hands spun him around.

“I know who you are,” the man repeated.

Frankie’s eyes flew open. “Captain Goatfucker!” He winced at his own stupidity. “Er—ah—I mean, Captain Williams. How the hell are you?”

“Better than you, Frankie, m’boy,” the captain said as he snapped the cuffs around Frankie’s wrists. “Better than you.”

“Hey, Williams, whadaya doing here? It’s me, Frankie. From the Fearsome Foursome, remember? I’m on your side. One of the good guys.” He tried a weak grin.

“Oh no, Frankie. You done crossed over to the other side a long time ago.” Williams shook his head. “My Organized Retail Crime Task Force has been watchin’ you, m’boy. We got videotapes, still photos, receipts with your fingerprints on ’em—you name it, we got it. Your ass is fried.” He made a kissing noise. “You can kiss that pension goodbye.”

Frankie felt dizzy. “But—but my kids. My wife . . .”

“Tsk, tsk. You should have thought about your family while you were committing fraud.”

Frankie wanted to throw up. The cops were hustling the wailing women out the door. He was gratified to see Mohammed trussed up like a chicken in ankle cuffs and handcuffs— the guy should have known better than to fight a cop, Frankie thought. Meanwhile, he was standing there with his hands behind his back like some two-bit perp. “Come on, Williams. We can work this out. You’re a cop, I’m a cop . . .”

“Oh no, that’s where you’re wrong, Frankie. You’re no cop. Not no more. Least, not when we get through with you. I’d say you were the next candidate for protective custody.” He squinted at Frankie. “’Less you wanna go straight into population and spend your days playin’ Drop the Soap with the Bloods and Crips.” He grinned sorrowfully.

Frankie scrambled frantically for the magic words that would get him out of this mess. “No, hey, look, you came in here to make a bust, I’m a cop, I’m helping you out . . .” he tried.

Williams shook his head. His voice became businesslike. “No good. You’re caught, Hernandez. Game over.”

“Williams, please. For old times’ sake?” Frankie was disgusted with himself for pleading, but he was out of options.

Williams gave Frankie a pitiful glance. “I’ll tell you what I can do. For old times’ sake.” Frankie looked at him eagerly. “I’ll let you ride in the back of the RMP instead of the van with the rest of the perps.”

Williams handed Frankie over to the small female officer with the vest. “Guzman, bring this one in. Let ’im ride in the back of your car.”

Officer Guzman wrinkled her nose as though smelling something rotting. But all she said was, “Yes, sir.”

As she shoved him out the door, Frankie turned back and yelled, “Fuck you, Goatfucker! Chinga tu madre!”

Guzman clucked her tongue at him. “That’s no way to talk. Captain Williams would never do that to his mother. He’s a very religious man, you know.”

“I want my delegate!” Frankie snarled. “Call the PBA and tell them to get my delegate down here pronto.”

“Don’t worry,” Guzman said. “We’ll make the call once we get to the precinct.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “Although the way I hear it, the delegate’s not gonna be able to do much for you. Your wife’s already down there, singing like a canary.” She glanced sideways at him. “Course, if you wanna tell me about it, I can maybe work out a little something for you.”

Frankie wanted to cry and scream and throw up, all at the same time. How could she think he’d fall for that trick? He’d used it often enough himself—get a perp to talk by pretending his confederate was giving him up. But what if it was true? What if María was selling him down the river even while he was being hustled into the backseat of the RMP? He wouldn’t put it past her. The blood of generations of corrupt Mexican politicians ran through her veins. She had probably learned how to sell out her partner while other kids were playing hopscotch.

Within ten minutes, Frankie was being hustled toward an interrogation room in the 115th Precinct. Jackson Heights was just a stone’s throw from Woodside, so it didn’t take long. As he passed one of the other interrogation rooms, he glanced inside and saw his wife sitting at a table, chatting with a bunch of detectives. Her jacket was draped over her shoulders in defense against the air-conditioning, and she warmed her hands around a steaming paper cup of coffee.

“María, you bitch!” he screamed as he passed the window.

Guzman shoved him into the next room and plunked him into a hard chair. “You wanna tell me about it?” she asked, pulling out a notebook.

“You bet,” Frankie said. “It was all her idea.”

Guzman held up her hand. “You sure you don’t want to wait for your delegate before you talk to me? You don’t want me to Mirandize you?”

“Hell no!” Frankie replied. He missed the small smile that curled up at the corner of Guzman’s mouth for a fleeting moment.

“Okay, then,” she said. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

* * *

Officer Guzman opened the door to the neighboring interrogation room. “Thanks for coming down and waiting, María,” she said. “I’m sorry. It doesn’t look too good for Frankie. He’s confessed to a lot of crimes, and he didn’t wait for his delegate before he talked.”

María shook her head. “My father told me not to marry him, but I thought I knew better. What am I going to tell the kids?”

Guzman patted her hand. “I know it looks tough now, but you’ll make it through. Can you take your children to your parents’ house tonight? It’s only a matter of time before the press comes knocking on your door.”

“That’s a good idea, thanks. Does Frankie want to see me now?”

“I don’t think that would be for the best. You can see him once he’s booked.”

María stood up. “Well. Thanks for everything.”

“You’re welcome. And it will all work out. You’ll see.”

You bet it will, María thought.

As she slid behind the wheel of her car, she mentally ran through the contents of her home office. She had packed up the laptop, scanner, and printer and stashed them in the trunk of her car as soon as Roberta Guzman called. She’d had a mental escape plan in place since the day she and Frankie had gotten involved in what she thought of as “refunding for profit.”

Her family and Roberta’s had been close for at least two generations, but the two women hadn’t seen each other very often since Roberta went on the job. She had let María know that she would have to take a step back because she was going to play it straight. (Roberta’s family had treated her like the proverbial black sheep—What’s wrong with the girl that she isn’t open to taking bribes? How could we have gone so wrong?)

María only pretended to understand her friend’s choices. She heard about Roberta’s successes in the department through her parents and aunts and uncles, but like her relatives, she always puzzled over why her longtime friend would work harder than she had to.

Well, no matter. She’d held Roberta’s marker from when they were teenagers. María held the key to a moment of youthful indiscretion on Roberta’s part, and Roberta owed her for keeping her mouth shut. She knew she’d collect on it someday, but she’d always hoped it would be for something bigger than this harmless little scam.

She fingered the tickets in her handbag. Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., she and the kids were taking off for a long-overdue vacation to visit relatives in Mexico. Depending on what happened with Frankie, she might just stay there.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

August 30, 2006

Jackson Heights, N.Y.—Roberta Guzman, an NYPD spokeswoman, revealed today that Francisco Hernandez, the police officer who was arrested last month on multiple counts of fraud and was to be prosecuted under the Federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations) statute for conspiring with al-Qaeda terrorists to resell stolen merchandise as part of a fundraising scheme, has committed suicide while in protective custody at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center. “Mr. Hernandez appears to have wound a bedsheet around the top bunk in his cell and used it to strangle himself,” Guzman reported at a press conference late yesterday afternoon.

Other members of the alleged fraud ring include Alba Terremoto, Pedro Volcan, and Mohammed al-Yakub, who is also suspected of having links to al-Qaeda and is charged with funneling profits from illegally sold merchandise into terrorist activities.

CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

BY JILLIAN ABBOTT

Richmond Hill

Ramzi Saleh wondered how this nation had become the most powerful in the world. The despicable little urchins who turned up to harass him at Richmond Hill High, where he taught math to ninth graders, were indifferent to his lessons. They cheated him of his time on earth.

It was with no little pleasure that he contemplated being an instrument of their demise, those cocksure boys and strutting girls. Now that winter had set in and the sidewalks were treacherous with ice, he was spared the exposed flesh that assaulted him every warm day. What sort of parents let their daughters out wearing less than what would pass for acceptable underwear at home? And the boys were little better. He found their lack of modesty and wayward attitudes blasphemous.

Ramzi pulled the collar of his overcoat tight against a biting wind. Above him, the 7 train rattled by, its brakes screeching as it pulled into the Roosevelt Avenue station. Beneath his feet the sidewalk trembled. Two levels underground, a subway train, maybe the E he’d just gotten off, was pulling up or leaving.

He knew no one here, at least not in person. He kept walking, and soon caught a whiff of fennel as he approached his destination: the paan seller on 74th Street. It seemed that Satan himself had a hand in his being here. How else could he explain the impulse that had propelled him to the E train? He told himself that he was going to pray, but when he got to Sutphin Boulevard, instead of leaving the station and making his way along Jamaica Avenue toward Azis’s mosque tucked away on 146th Street, he’d raced onto the E, which brought him straight here to Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights.

This neighborhood meant peril. At how many points along the way could he have abandoned his quest and gone to Azis’s, or even home to Liberty Avenue? But now his destination was Little India. He stopped outside the paan shop. Why not? He’d resisted for as long as he could, but the first time he’d slid the paan inside his cheek to an explosion of flavor, he’d known he was lost.

He was supposed to avoid his countrymen and spend his time among the gora. Not that Richmond Hill was Infidel Central. But many of the Asians there were West Indians who had lived in the Caribbean for generations before coming to America. The neighborhood was mixed, not exclusive, and while the roti shops had few rivals, the paan could not compete. He should take it home. He should eat it unobserved in his recliner, but he couldn’t.

At times it seemed to Ramzi that America offered nothing but temptation. Could a man be wise, let alone moral, living among such sirens? Was his sophisticated Jackson Heights palate evidence that the Great Satan had corrupted him? Perhaps he should buy two paan? One for now, and one he could put in the fridge for after dinner.

As he pressed toward the paan seller, his worst fear was realized: He recognized a man ahead of him in the line. They had been at camp together in Afghanistan. The fellow licked his lips and inched closer to the booth as if mesmerized by the vendor’s red-gummed grin and nimble fingers as he smeared red kathha and chuna on a fresh betel leaf. The veins in Ramzi’s neck throbbed. Even if the fellow recognized him, they would not acknowledge each other.

His breath quickened. Their time at camp was long ago, and he wondered if this man was part of the same mission? He knew little about his task other than that he was to assimilate and wait. On that glorious day of victory, when, with the rest of the world, he’d watched the Twin Towers fall, he’d hoped his time among the infidels would end. But it was not to be.

The man from camp took his paan, looked around with the sly delight of a thief, and, using his thumb, thrust it inside his cheek and disappeared into the throng.

The paan seller remembered Ramzi. “Meetha paan, no coconut,” he said, his eyes bright with the pride of a man who knows his customers.

Despite his inward panic at being known, Ramzi smiled and nodded. “How do you do it?” he asked. “Every time, your paan is delicious.”

“It is all in the balance of chuna and kathha,” the paan seller said, rolling his head from side to side as he smeared a leaf with his special masala.

The proportion of betel nut to lime paste was crucial to a good paan, but Ramzi came to this fellow for his perfect masala—no one around mixed the spices and chutneys quite like he did. Now he behaved as if Ramzi was one of his regulars. Was that good or bad? To leave one or two footprints might be for the best. Ramzi imagined the Queens Chronicle story following his mission . . . They’d quote this man. A paan seller on 74th Street described Ramzi Saleh as a polite man, quiet and predictable. “He loved my meetha paan, but it was always, ‘Hold the coconut.’” Ramzi smiled to himself. Not a bad epitaph.

He stuffed the folded packet inside his cheek and turned toward the street to watch the bustle of rush-hour traffic nudge by. The heady smells of curry leaves, cardamom, and incense wafted from the many restaurants and swirled around him. In his time at Richmond Hill High, he had not met one child—well, there was one—who was grateful for the education his cover required him to provide. His teaching was scrupulously average, he knew. His biggest challenge: to remain invisible.

He had a talent for teaching. He had been plucked from the rubble of an earthquake, all his parents’ properties ruined, and had been educated by the charity of the Great Satan itself. But it had promised and not delivered. Before the earthquake his family had been among the wealthiest in the village; afterwards they had nothing. When the American aid workers left, he was no longer hungry and ignorant, he was hungry and educated.

When the mujahideen entered his village in western Pakistan as they fled the Russians, he had seen fear in the village elders’ eyes. He had vowed to teach all who wished to learn, so that no Pakistani would ever again know ignorance and hunger, but he was still hungry himself, as were all his pupils. He craved to be the cause of that fear he saw in his elders—he saw the respect it inspired. From the day he joined the jihad, he lost the knowledge of hunger. That was nearly twenty years ago.

Saliva stimulated by the paan built in his mouth and he spat a stream of red liquid onto the sidewalk. Behind him a door opened and Hindi music spilled out to compete with the sounds of traffic. Ramzi’s nose twitched at the blasphemy. Bloody Hindus with their Devil’s music, idolatry, and fuzzy logic. There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah. And yet lounging in the street, chewing paan, and feeling contemptuously superior to Hindus brought a deep comfort and satisfaction to Ramzi. Oddly, it was like going home—his real home, not the squat little one-bedroom, eat-in-kitchen apartment on 115th Street off Liberty Avenue. There were Hindus in Richmond Hill, but not nearly so many. He lingered to drink in the sights of brazen, sari-clad Hindu whores, their faces fully exposed to him, and to the world.

Allah is merciful. He led Ramzi to Azis. Azis had helped him find the righteous path. At the training camp he had learned the art of destruction. The American education taught him that he would always be less than they were. When the time came he would play his part.

The earthquake had taken everything from his parents and denied him his future as a landowner. But this loss left him free for jihad. In due course, the Americans would lose their livelihoods. Husbands would lose wives, though Ramzi wondered if that would cause them pain. He doubted it. In this godforsaken nation, whores were elevated and virtuous women despised. A young girl in salwar-kameez skipped by clutching her mother’s hand. Something about her brought back the image of his laughing sister the day before the kitchen collapsed on her, and a sharp pain stabbed at his chest as if someone had slammed a knife into his heart. Soon their sisters would be taken away: a mass of bloody, twisted bodies and tangled limbs all that remained.

The Great Satan was so naïve—had helped him to immigrate when he had shown them his certificate from the Peace Corps. And now, between his salary as a teacher and his payments from al-Qaeda, he would be able to take another wife, maybe two—virtuous Muslim women to keep his current wife, Fatima, company and produce more mujahideen for the cause.

A group of women wearing saris and salwar-kameez glided by. How much more beautiful and elegant than the jeans and T-shirts of Richmond Hill. He should not have come to this neighborhood. The sight of these glorious hussies stirred long-dormant yearnings in Ramzi and he silently cursed himself for giving into temptation. Tears welled in his eyes, but he steeled himself. He missed his wife and children, and understood he might not live to see them again, let alone take another wife. He had pledged his life to this holy war and would do whatever was asked.

He turned back toward the subway and headed for Azis, exchanging the noise and crush of the street for the noise and crush of Mexicans, blacks, and West Indians packed like sardines into the E. Perhaps there would be word. Perhaps today his long wait would end.

He remembered the anticipation he felt when he first arrived in Queens. Back then, he thought his mission was imminent, and he would take the stairs down from the J train two at a time in his rush to get to the mosque. Always his heart pounded in his chest as he waited for Azis. Was today the day? He would catch Azis’s eye, his own face hot with anticipation, but Azis would shake his head discreetly and lower his eyes. Ramzi waited. He undertook reconnaissance as instructed. He reported to Azis. Time passed. In his daily life he was indistinguishable from every other Pakistani immigrant. Familiar, reliable, recognizable, known by no one.

He knew that he should stop by the mosque on the way home. There was no excuse. He’d be right there at Sutphin Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue. But he felt no enthusiasm, no anticipation. Jihad had become rather like his day job. He went through the motions.

By the time he got to Liberty Avenue it was dark, and the roadway was treacherous to cross. In the shade of the elevated A line, the ice never melted, and if he slipped and fell in his haste to be out of the cold, it wouldn’t be the first time. He turned onto 115th Street and climbed the steps to his front door. In his mailbox he found the usual array of bills and magazines. He clicked his tongue. What a country this was, so many magazines, so much information. The day an issue of the Herald arrived in his isolated village, the men would gather at the tea house and Ramzi would read it out loud. It was never less than six months out of date, but they were hungry for its wealth of knowledge.

The Smithsonian had arrived. He went inside and dropped into his recliner. Such luxury, if only Fatima could see his leather chair. He flipped through the magazine to examine the pictures. Then he read the headlines and breakout paragraphs. He always did this to decide the order in which he’d read the articles. Then he’d put on a pot of coffee, slide back into his recliner, and read every word. Today he broke his routine. Five pages in he found a piece on the science of biological weaponry. The infidel never tired of telling him all he needed to know. He would not rise again until he’d read it at least twice.

* * *

Ramzi Saleh basked in the fortune of having the staff room at Richmond Hill High all to himself. This was a first. The place was always overcrowded and stuffy. Heat blasted from the radiator, and the musty odor of too many bodies lingered. Ramzi headed for the coffee machine, found a clean cup—Praise be to Allah, this is a great day—poured his coffee, heaped in four spoons of sugar and extra cream, and made his way toward his cramped cubbyhole at the back of the room. He raised his mug in thanks for the twenty-five-percent absentee rate due to Monday flu and dropped into his chair. Just as he finished arranging his desk exactly the way he liked it—coffee on the left, pens on the right—he heard the door fly open. Too good to last. The sound of women’s voices reached him over the thump and hiss of the radiator. He identified them instantly. Beryl Johnson was a science teacher; Lucy Gruber a fellow math teacher.

They kept chatting. Perhaps they couldn’t see him back here.

“You’re too ordinary?” Lucy said. “Hello. He’s an assistant manager at Home Depot.”

“Manager. They promoted him just before he left.”

Ah, thought Ramzi, they were talking about Beryl’s husband. What a scoundrel. He’d run out on her two years ago for a girl just six years older than their daughter. Why would he do such a thing? Beryl was a nice enough woman, nothing special, but for an infidel whore she had a good heart. It never ceased to surprise Ramzi the way even the most humble citizens here tried to live like movie stars—to their ruin.

He should speak up, let his presence be known, but the godless fornicators fascinated him, so he continued to eavesdrop. As they loitered by the coffee machine, Ramzi could see their bobbing shadows on the linoleum.

“It makes me sick to admit I went to an online dating site, but what could I do? I was so lonely,” Beryl said, her voice choked with emotion. “I wanted someone to hold me, to be tender.”

“I know,” Lucy replied.

Ramzi detected a catty undertone. Beryl should hold her tongue—this Lucy was no friend, and besides, why would anyone publicize their shame in this way? Living among the godless affected him, moderating his true beliefs. He knew Beryl was contemptible, but he pitied her anyway. He had known her from his first day at this school. He had been bewildered, not knowing where to go and what to do, and Beryl had found him wandering in the corridor.

She took him to his classroom and introduced him to his students. She had a way about her that put Ramzi at ease. He felt he could talk to her about almost anything. An involuntary shudder moved through him as he thought back to that day. He had told her more about himself than he ever meant to. After that, she had adopted him, helping him become part of the school community, helping him to follow his prime directive: Blend in, attract no notice.

“This isn’t the place. We can’t talk here, someone might overhear,” Beryl said.

Ramzi scrunched himself up as small as he could, even gritting his teeth and grimacing like a kid trying to make himself invisible. He didn’t dare look in their direction.

“Look. It’s empty—not a soul here. Come on, you’re going to crack up if you don’t tell someone.”

“I’m so ashamed,” Beryl said between sobs. “When I started it wasn’t so bad. I mean, I thought it was terrible, those boring dates with fat guys. But this one, Mike, he didn’t just rape me, he beat the hell out of me, and then robbed me.”

“You should have said something. When was this?”

Ramzi craned his neck in their direction to hear better.

“The beginning of summer. The marks faded just in time for the start of school in September.” Beryl’s sobs drowned out the wheezing radiator.

Lucy responded with those little clucking noises women make when they comfort each other. The thought of someone raping Beryl brought heat to Ramzi’s cheeks. Who would do such a thing? Beryl’s rape caused him a dilemma. Yes, he knew the infidel whore deserved what she got—she was divorced, a matter of shame for any decent Muslim woman. She had brought shame to her whole family, in fact. Yet Beryl was kind, and raised her children with no help from their father. Though jihad had separated him from his Fatima, she was provided for and had staff to help run the household. If he died in jihad, she would be taken care of, and if, Allah forbid, he fell out with Azis, he had paid a great uncle in Karachi enough to ensure she would disappear and be safe. But no one was there for Beryl. Ramzi struggled for control of his mind. He must banish thoughts of Beryl’s goodness. Her loneliness presented him with an opportunity. Her fate was in Allah’s hands.

“But what was the alternative? I was lonely. Do you know how many single women there are out there? I didn’t stand a chance. Who’d look at me?” Beryl said, a bitter edge to her voice.

Ramzi had looked closely at Beryl when they first met, and he liked what he saw. Though a bit older than he, she was still a handsome woman. Rich, black hair (although he knew it was probably dyed, as all of the women in this country colored their hair), complemented by deep blue eyes. A soft face, lines around the eyes and mouth. To him the lines indicated character.

Beryl had a lush figure, and this was so much more appealing than the skinny, barren women so highly prized here. American women were either stick-thin or waddling giants. The women of Islam were robust and fertile.

Beryl blew her nose loudly, bringing Ramzi back to the present. He struggled to keep his breath even, to remain undetected. Before either spoke again, the school bell went off. The room would be crowded within minutes.

“Come on,” Lucy said. “Let’s get out of here.”

He heard the door flung open. Teachers flooded into the room, talking, laughing, heading for their desks. Ramzi, with two free periods back-to-back, waited until the room filled up to slip out.

* * *

Ramzi kneeled on the carpet in the corner of the large prayer room at the mosque. Azis, his imam, kneeled next to him, smiled indulgently, and took Ramzi’s hand in his. The warmth and strength of Azis’s touch comforted Ramzi.

Ramzi guessed the imam was in his mid-forties, the wiry black beard showing streaks of gray. Azis’s leathery skin fit tight over his facial bones, a result of early deprivation, a testament to years of living in the harsh light of Pakistan’s mountains. He had a cruel mouth and Ramzi was pleased he could not see Azis’s eyes. The times when he had, he’d been unnerved by the black void that stared back at him. Warm hands, cold heart.

“I’m confused,” Ramzi said, searching the room with his eyes. It was empty but for the rich, blood-red carpet and three low squat desks along the opposite wall. The faint odor of working men emanated from the worn rug.

Azis stroked the back of Ramzi’s hand with his index finger. Ramzi watched this, and for the first time in his life he felt uncomfortable with the physicality of it. Among the people of the Great Satan, when one man touched another it led to the abomination of homosexuality. But in Pakistan, men never hesitated to express their affection and concern for one another in this way. Watching Azis’s hand, Ramzi wondered if this was how Adam felt once he had eaten from the forbidden tree. The Great Satan corrupted all that was good, even to the point of undermining the purity of his contact with Azis.

“If your feelings for this woman are strong, you should take her,” Azis counseled, “but remember that Americans pride themselves on turning their wives and daughters into whores, and that any goodness you see in her is an illusion. This woman, the Jew, Beryl, is a whore.”

Ramzi glanced then at Azis. Being an imam had freed Azis from the need to assimilate. The infidel seemed to expect him to retain his ethnicity, and he hadn’t disappointed. His perfectly white turban was arranged so skillfully it appeared to be an extension of his brow. Azis wore a long beard which extended to his ears. He shaved it almost to the edge of his jaw line, leaving his face exposed and causing the beard to jut out at an angle from his chin that gave Ramzi the impression that Azis’s face grew out of his facial hair instead of the other way around. Azis shifted slightly and the glare left the bifocals he habitually wore. Ramzi saw that Azis was contemplating him fondly.

Ramzi turned his hand over, allowing him to wrap his fingers around Azis’s. Why had he doubted? He let his breath out and with it went his anxiety about Beryl. Allah is all-knowing. Azis was wise indeed. Richmond Hill High bragged at its role in producing fallen women. Mae West and Cyndi Lauper were two of its proudest alumni. He need not fear becoming too involved with the hussy, Beryl.

He smiled at Azis, who smiled back.

“You came to me with the idea to take this Jew woman. It is a good idea. It will deepen your cover, and I see in your eyes you know it is right. Now that you are sure, there are things I must tell you, things you need to know about these fornicating She-Devils . . .”

* * *

A week later, Ramzi waited by the staff room door. “Heading out?” he asked, trying to sound casual when he saw Beryl. He fell in with her as she left for the day. When he pushed the door open for her, his jaw was tight and his stomach fluttered. It was ridiculous; he was forty years old, after all. Beryl wore a tight skirt and a low-cut blouse, and as she sauntered along beside him her coat flared open revealing cleavage. Ramzi looked away discreetly. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“Not bad. How are you doing with 9B? Have they settled down?”

“Yes, thanks to you. You told me to get on top of Kasan and you were right. Once he was under control the others fell in line.”

Beryl grinned. “He’s a tough customer that one. Way too big and strong for his years. His father is in the Russian mafia.”

Ramzi raised his eyebrows and shook his head as if he were shocked, although he knew all about Kasan’s connections.

Beryl’s heels clicked pleasantly to the end of the hallway and then stopped as she paused inside the door to do up her coat. Their eyes met and Ramzi smiled at her. He felt a pang of guilt. But why? Beryl was an infidel hussy, and he had Azis’s dispensation. Ramzi opened the outside door and held it for her. As Beryl passed him, he caught a whiff of perfume. It brought to mind lilacs and spring.

The air was frigid, turning their breath into clouds of vapor. Azis’s warning haunted him. He caught himself staring at Beryl. He blushed and forced himself to focus on the ground as they walked in silence to her car. The moody sky threatened snow, and it would be dark by 4:30 p.m. Beryl drew her scarf tight around her neck. Her cheeks, ears, and the tip of her nose had turned red; her beauty made him ache. If her husband were a real man, if he’d stuck by his wife, then Ramzi could never have contemplated using her in this way. The thought that it was Jeff’s fault, not his, comforted him.

Taking a woman would help deepen his cover. Handled correctly, it would make him even more invisible. Beside an American woman, his surveillance wouldn’t draw suspicion. And there were other benefits. He could go to the beach and to the Museum of Natural History and all the other places in New York he wanted to see, but felt too conspicuous to go alone.

Beryl pushed the key into her car door. It was now or never. He cleared his throat.

“Beryl, would you do me the honor of accompanying me to dinner and a movie this Saturday night?”

She looked confused, then slightly amused—he had been too formal, he knew. He had met Fatima on their wedding day; today was the first time in his life he had asked a woman out. He was more nervous than he expected to be and cursed himself for this.

She smiled. “Dinner and a movie. Why not?”

It was all Ramzi could do not to high-five her.

* * *

Ramzi swept inside the mosque amid a flurry of coats and scarves and wet umbrellas. Azis stood against the wall surrounded by his followers. Ramzi tried to control his expression. He wanted to appear his usual calm self but his emotions were in turmoil. He raised his eyebrows in inquiry when he caught the imam’s eye. Azis shook his head and lowered his gaze.

Back on the street, Ramzi realized Beryl’s acceptance had left him cranky. A woman her age shouldn’t be dating at all. Azis had not only approved his plan to take a woman, he had encouraged it. But now Ramzi no longer wanted to go through with it.

The wind picked up, and icy needles attacked his exposed cheeks. He moved quickly and almost went flying when his foot hit ice and shot out in front of him. By the time he got to his apartment, he was moving at a steady trot. He paused on his stoop, ripped open his mailbox, and flipped through the contents. He sweated and his legs twitched from the run. What must it feel like? His breathing didn’t slow even though he’d been still for several minutes. To his eternal shame, there was movement in his trousers. He must complete his mission and leave this country. But first, dinner and a movie with Beryl.

* * *

Ramzi squeezed Beryl’s hand. To think he’d once dreaded dating her. She had become as familiar to him as his leather recliner. Today she wore her cobalt-blue jacket open, revealing a long-sleeved T-shirt that looked perfect with her jeans and sneakers.

He parked on Utopia Parkway near the off-ramp of the Cross Island Parkway. Behind them was an entrance to Little Bay Park that followed the water’s edge to Fort Totten and then on to the Bayside Marina. On his first visit he had discovered that if you keep walking south, the path leads beneath the Long Island Rail Road and up onto Northern Boulevard.

He got out of the car, opened the trunk, and grabbed a picnic basket and blanket. Beryl scanned for the entrance. Along the road, just inside the park, was a dark wooded area where the spring grass was unkempt, and several ragged trees made it seem unwelcoming.

“Follow me,” Ramzi said. He headed back up toward the off-ramp and waited for her by two rectangular brick piles that marked the entry to the park. “This is the back way, but you get a nice view of the bridge and water.”

“How do you know so many beautiful places? I’ve lived in Queens all my life and I never knew this was here,” Beryl said.

As they entered the park, Ramzi touched his finger to his lip to silence her. A crumbling concrete trail began at the entrance, but petered out within fifty yards of the gate, leaving them to walk through grass. Ramzi breathed in the scent. Fresh cut grass, blossoms, and manure, it all added up to spring. It was barely April, but the forecast said seventy, and already it was warm and sunny. The sky was the richest blue, and the water, though grayish-green, was mirror-still, reflecting the bridge.

“I came from the mountains in what is almost desert, not this lush green and expanse of water,” he said by way of explanation.

Had he made a mistake? Yes, it was a good idea to use this woman for cover, but he should have chosen a more brazen, less likeable one. It was a constant struggle to keep her at a distance. It troubled him. He had to remind himself this was a She-Devil, however kind, and that he was performing his duty to Allah by deceiving her. But he couldn’t banish the thought that she was a good woman trapped in an evil culture. He felt her round hip rub against his, and despite himself he was aroused. The first time they’d slept together he’d been terrified. He had listened to Azis’s warning, and read New York magazine every week. The sexual habits of New Yorkers repelled, yet fascinated him.

He had been content with his wife. In truth, sex wasn’t something he’d given much thought to before coming to live in Queens. Americans seemed obsessed with it, as if it were the most important thing in the world. It was true that he enjoyed sex. When he and Fatima did it, he felt close and safe. No one in Pakistan ever talked about love. That was something for the blasphemers of Bollywood to churn out in their endless stream of movies. Seeing Fatima was often accompanied by a feeling of warmth and longing, and if he’d ever given it any thought, he’d have been happy to call that love.

Beryl turned to him and smiled. He knew she looked forward to these outings. She’d lost fifteen pounds from the exercise and claimed to be fitter than she’d been in years. Even in winter, Ramzi had led her along the water’s edge, although one day in early March he’d had to abandon his plans because the path was slick with ice. Instead, he’d taken her on a luxury water cruise. He felt a twinge of guilt when he remembered Beryl that night—giggling like a schoolgirl, posing for his pictures. She couldn’t have guessed that the true subject of those photos were the bridges and buildings and port facilities in the background. He’d taken enough photos to fill a 256MB memory card. Their expeditions became more frequent as the weather warmed up. They’d explored the whole length of the Long Island waterfront from the Brooklyn Bridge to today’s outing at the Throgs Neck Bridge.

“What’s that?” Ramzi asked, pointing to a chicken-wire enclosure about the size of a residential building block.

The park was crowded with people, some lone walkers, some in groups, and some on bicycles. The slope down to the water was dotted with sunbathers who had dragged fold-up chairs to the park and sprawled in their swimsuits. Two women in leotards power-walked, while another couple glided by on rollerblades. Inside the enclosure he’d pointed at, the grass had been worn to dirt. It was mobbed with people and dogs, and the stench of animal excrement, fur, dog breath, and urine wafted from it.

“It’s a dog run.”

“A what?”

“A dog run. In New York City you have to keep your dog leashed most of the time. Inside that, you can let it run free.”

“Really?” Ramzi was appalled: In his country, dogs were rabid curs. Here they were more pampered than children.

They made their way down the gentle, sloping lawn toward the path, and met up with it under the bridge’s pylons. The tide was low and the air had a decidedly fishy tinge to it.

“Look at this bridge,” he said. “What a magnificent achievement. Look at the pylons, they’re solid. And the cables could hold it up on their own.”

“I suppose I should be grateful we’re not discussing piston engines,” Beryl said.

Ramzi turned his attention from the bridge to his companion. He glared at her. “You know how much I admire these bridges, not just the engineering either, they are magnificent.” He slid his arm around her. They passed under the bridge and beside some soccer fields where elementary and middle school children battled it out. The shouts from the parents fought with the noise of the traffic on the bridge overhead.

Ramzi’s mission loomed before him, and the thought of it filled him with dread. The longer he stayed here, the harder it was to maintain his rage. Jihad had saved him from shiftlessness and had given him direction. Of course, he despised Beryl, but until he started to date her he hadn’t realized how much he missed a woman’s touch. Then, despite himself, Beryl had begun to mean something to him. In time, he began to know the infidel, and had developed a liking for many of them.

Beryl’s hand crept around his waist and she kissed his cheek as they strolled along. At the same time, he was fully cognizant that a war was being fought and he had chosen a side. Beryl was a weapon the Great Satan had abandoned in the field. He had merely picked it up where it lay and was putting it to good use.

They rounded a bend. “Let’s look for a place to eat,” Beryl said. There was a hilly section where man-made mounds of earth had long since become part of the landscape; grass and trees grew on them.

“Let’s eat up there on the plateau,” he suggested. “That way you can watch the view and I can watch the soccer.” Ramzi laid out the blanket and Beryl spread the food on it. She’d made sandwiches, brought sodas, and packed grapes into Ziploc bags. She’d gotten used to Ramzi not drinking alcohol, and had given it up herself. For dessert, she’d bought a pie at The Stork in College Point.

After they ate, Ramzi lay his head on her lap and stared at the sky. Several trees were just coming into blossom and filled the air with a heady but pleasant scent. Immediately, an image of Beryl on her knees before him, her mouth clamped firmly around his penis, came to mind. He remembered the fear he felt when she did it the first time. Ramzi had never hit a woman, but looking down on Beryl’s soft, shiny hair, her head bobbing at his crotch, he wanted to knock her across the room and scream, Have you no pride, woman? No fear of God?

Azis had given Ramzi absolution when he first warned him this would happen. They had prayed together. In the end, Ramzi grew too ashamed to face Azis. Perhaps God would forgive him. After all, he had submitted to serve Allah. But Beryl would go to Hell.

He feared telling Azis the worst. This abomination had given him the most intense pleasure of his life, while the shame crushed him. How could he ever speak with a decent Muslim woman again? Azis’s dispensation meant nothing. He was tainted, dirty, and the shame of it would never leave him.

“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” Beryl said.

He turned his face toward hers and hoped his anguish didn’t show. “Not compared to you.”

“Flatterer.”

“Truthteller.”

“You are free next Sunday, right? There’s no reason to miss my mother’s party. You’ll enjoy it, it’s a fundraiser for the Jewish orphans of Kazakhstan. That’s your part of the world.”

Ramzi didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. “Oh yes, Pakistani Muslims and Kazakh Jews, we are almost brothers. And clearly we all look the same to the Jews of Scarsdale, New York.” He had bolted upright, his muscles tense and his neck throbbing.

“Oh Ramzi, this is America, that sort of thing doesn’t matter. Besides, the only religion I’ve seen you practice is the same one I do—lapsed. Lapsed Jew, lapsed Muslim, what’s the difference?”

Ramzi had no retort. In truth, he could not be bothered to find one.

“She wants to raise money to bring the orphans here for six months to get the medical help they need and to learn English, math, and Hebrew so they might get a better start in Israel. My mother’s getting on. She thought maybe you could teach them. We both could. Maybe we could move in with her and look after her and teach the Kazakh children. You speak Aramaic.”

“How do you know I speak Aramaic?”

“You told me, remember? The first day at school when you were lost and I told you some of our students were from central Asia.”

He’d forgotten. What other lapses was he guilty of? It was all too much for him. Great levivot and off tapuzim to die for was one thing, but no amount of knish was sufficient to entice him to embrace the Jews, except for Beryl, of course. Then Ramzi had the merest glimmer of a thought.

“All right already,” he said, taking pride in his mastery of New York speak, “I’ll come to the party. But only if you let me take your picture.”

Beryl laughed good-naturedly.

“Stand here,” he said, positioning her so that his shots would take in the undercarriage of the bridge.

While she fussed and clucked over her hair, he took a dozen photos, from all angles. Beryl wasn’t in half of them.

* * *

As Ramzi walked home on Liberty Avenue that same evening, he spied standing in a doorway the same man he’d recognized so many weeks ago at the paan sellers. As their eyes met, the man left the cover of the storefront and slowly approached, his right hand inside his overcoat even though it was much too warm to be dressed that way.

The man was called Mohammed, Ramzi recalled in a flash. He had been foolish and naïve to think he could avoid Azis. He would not get away that easily. The best he could hope for was that Mohammed had come to question his absence from the mosque. Mohammed’s expression gave Ramzi little reason to hope for the best. If he made a run for it now, he would die. He would never see Beryl again. Then he admitted the truth to himself: He had abandoned jihad. He was a changed man, an infidel, a fornicator. He wanted to live.

“There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah,” Ramzi said in greeting.

“The true believers are those only who believe in Allah and His messenger and afterward doubt not, but strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah. Such are the sincere,” Mohammed said, closing the distance between them.

Ramzi knew the quote from the Qur’an, and the guilt it produced in him squeezed his chest like a vice. At first he thought to reply: Allah, most gracious, most merciful, but that implied a certain culpability, and so instead he said, “Allah is all-knowing, all-aware.”

He approached Mohammed, careful to keep his movements steady and nonthreatening.

Mohammed’s face flashed uncertainty, and taking advantage of this brief moment, Ramzi added, “I have taken a woman.” His tone meant to convey that this explained everything.

“A Jew,” Mohammed said, his mouth pulled tight with contempt.

“A whore,” Ramzi agreed, although it pained him to speak the words. “A controlling She-Devil to whom I must account for my every movement. And yet, Azis knows the value of the hussy and encouraged me to take her.”

“No man cowers before a woman. What have you become?” Mohammed’s small eyes narrowed to slits and his glare felt like a laser beam slicing into Ramzi. He moved toward Ramzi.

“I serve Allah through jihad. That is who I am,” Ramzi said, standing very still. He hung his head as if the shame of his dalliance with Beryl was tangible weight.

“You are a favorite with Azis. I have seen him have a man killed for less than what you have done. I would be happy to oblige my imam should he change his mind. You are expected at the mosque tomorrow at 4:00 p.m. Fail to come and I will be given my chance.” He took two more steps toward Ramzi, meeting him head on, then sidestepped and walked past.

When Ramzi was sure Mohammed had gone, he headed up the stairs to his apartment. As he put keys to the lock, he caught the end of a message being recorded on his answering machine. “I know you’re probably tired but I’ve got to run a bunch of chairs and plates and flatware over to my mother’s. You wouldn’t help, would you? I could really use you.”

Ramzi dashed into the apartment and grabbed the phone. Life was mysterious, and he, merely a fallen leaf tossed and blown on the wind. “Beryl, my love, of course I will. And why don’t we visit awhile?”

* * *

Had it really been six months since his meeting with Mohammed? The first class of Kazakh orphans were about to graduate. As they fed the pet rabbits and turtles kept at the school behind the Chabad, he realized he’d grown quite fond of them, and was sad to think they’d soon be leaving for Israel. What a pleasure to teach children so hungry to learn.

He glanced up as Beryl entered the classroom. She leaned against the blackboard beside him and smiled at the children. He wanted to slide his arm around her but knew he couldn’t do that in front of the orphans. He stroked his beard. He’d been surprised by how quickly it had grown in. He’d dyed all of his hair silver, making him look at least fifteen years older than he was. This may be America, but he still equated age with wisdom, and was happy to think of himself as growing wise.

“Almost done?” Beryl asked.

He nodded.

“Good. Mom’s cooking up a storm. She loves you . . . almost as much as I do.”

Ramzi’s world had shrunk in the relocation. He felt safe here, and he kept to the neighborhood. He walked each day from Beryl’s mother’s house, which was now his home, to the Chabad and back, occasionally stopping at the local deli to pick something up for the evening meal. Except perhaps for the paan, he didn’t miss his old life at all. Beryl was due to move in with him when school ended in June, and he looked forward to that.

It was Hanukkah and the menorah would be lit tonight. As with many converts, the rituals of Judaism seemed to have more meaning for him than for those who’d practiced from birth. Most of all, he was looking forward to Gloria’s (he had begun calling Beryl’s mom by her first name) famous levivot and applesauce.

The last few orphans left the room and he took Beryl’s hand as they strolled home to Gloria’s, the chill air turning Beryl’s nose bright red.

THE INVESTIGATION

BY BELINDA FARLEY

Jamaica

So Edwin Stuckey had not believed in miracles. Couldn’t have. By the third hour of services at the Crusading Home of Deliverance in southeastern Queens—when the bellow of the preacher rang out like a toll that beckoned to repent and reform, and the congregation of twenty-eight had sprung to their feet in a fervor—I, who had so often scoffed at organized religion, was on my feet as well. All about me, the jiggle-jangle of tambourines being slapped on open palms reverberated. Shouted hallelujahs stung my eardrums. Tears were shed; wails directed heavenward. Was I praying?

I should’ve been taking notes.

Instead, I now found myself exercising total recall on the F train. It had been a week since the call had come in on the police scanner: a “1010” announcing a possible death at Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue. I was a reporter, a novice in the newsroom of a weekly in Richmond Hill, where the Maple Grove Cemetery kept us a safe distance from Jamaica, the neighborhood of this particular call. Jamaica, Queens intimidated the other staff reporters—all four of whom were white— for no other reason than its inhabitants were largely black, and so we tended not to report there. The paper was a rag anyway, housed in bright yellow corner boxes and valued mainly for its classifieds. I worked there to prove to my folks that the money they’d shelled out for my J-school tuition hadn’t been a complete waste.

I still lived with my parents, and a great aunt, in a Brooklyn brownstone that had been in my family for three generations. I’d been happy there. We were privileged upper-middle class, or, rather, my parents were, being members of fraternal organizations, committees, and social clubs with established roots in the African-American community of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Despite my precarious employment, I was still considered a catch within my circle; I’d escorted no less than three females to their debutante balls. I supposed that sooner or later I’d have had enough of my journalism career and would join an uncle on Wall Street.

The call came in while I was alone in the office. Later— when things had run their course—I thought of a photograph that I had tacked to the wall in my college dorm.

The picture showed a house on a hill in Hollywood, California, circa 1962. It was taken by Diane Arbus, so, of course, it looked like no other house on a hill in Hollywood, or anywhere else. The hill was all tangled vine and bare tree limb, and the house was appropriately dark and stoic, and made of cardboard. It was a prop. But the sky above it was lovely. Who, what, when, where, why, and how: No photo—or story, for that matter—ever told the whole truth. The most important lesson I learned in J-school.

There was no ambulance nor squad car at the scene when I arrived. I didn’t feel too confident as I rapped on the door of the modest wood-frame house. You could feel on the street that the neighborhood was tight: Loungers on their front porches eyed my unfamiliar self with suspicion. But I needed to get a byline under my belt.

“Yes?” The door swung open immediately and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties eyed me over his glasses.

“Evening, uh, morning, sir,” I stammered, to no acknowledgment. I hoped I wasn’t too late. “I’m a reporter for the—”

“Who is it, Gershorn?” A thick, squat woman with a hairdo that looked as if it had been roller-set for two days appeared at the man’s side. With her elaborate coif, and skin the color of a gingersnap, she could’ve been an aged starlet. In reality, she was a housewife, as evidenced by the formality of an apron tied over her blue housecoat.

The man bristled. “We were expecting someone, but not you,” he said. “What is your business here, young man?”

Where the skin of the woman remained taut and unlined and shone with the assistance of petroleum jelly, every second thought and hardship that had ever befallen the man was noted in some wrinkle or frown line that caused his face to sag like a deflated mahogany balloon. His gray hair was coiled in tight, generous ringlets on his scalp. He was tall, standing nearly two heads above her.

“I’m Doug, Douglass Nichols, and I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item.” I extended my hand. “I’m responding to a call that came over our police scanner regarding a possible death . . . ?”

The man stared at me blankly. He did not shake my hand. I glanced at my notepad to confirm the address.

“Sir, was there an incident here tonight? The police came?”

The man contemplated my question before opening the door to me. “A crime, young man, not an incident. Come in.”

I stepped inside. He closed the door behind me and clasped his hands behind his back.

“Claudette,” he called to the woman. “Tea. Tea for our guest.”

In no time at all the woman reappeared with a lone cup on a saucer, which she extended to me. I balanced it on my notepad. The man motioned for me to take a seat.

On either side of the doorway stood a pair of ivory ceramic Rottweilers like sentinels. Potted plants generously dotted the living space, barely allowing me room to sit down upon a brocaded sofa sheathed in plastic. It was positioned between two end tables that supported lamps bearing shades of heavily braided fringe that must have smoldered every time the light was switched on.

The walls were teal; the lamps were gold. I committed the room to memory, to be described later in my story.

“Do you take sugar?” the woman asked haltingly.

I shook my head.

The man sat down beside me, and the woman took a seat across the room at a dining room set of heroic proportion. It spoke of some other time—a time in which there were castles and feudal systems—with elaborate inlaid carvings, mounted on claw feet. An unframed oil painting of a Caribbean landscape hung above it.

“The Bel-Air Mountains, yes,” the man nodded approvingly as I studied the painting. “That was once the view from my own window. See there?” He rose to his feet and approached the image, pointing. “Those mules, those pigs foraging in the garbage pits? Those palms, those coconuts? Is all Haiti. Is my home.”

He turned to face me, scrutinizing me.

“I am Mr. Stuckey,” he said finally. “And this is Mrs. Stuckey.”

I nodded and waited for him to continue. He did not.

“You say your son was murdered,” I ventured.

Mr. Stuckey nodded, satisfied with my inquiry. “In that room, there.” He pointed down a darkened hallway.

Now it was my turn to give him the eye. What’s going on here?

Noting my skepticism, the man rose to his feet. “Follow me.”

Midway down the hall, he paused and flicked on a light switch. A door stood open adjacent to it, though the other doors on either side of the room were closed. Warily, I peered into what appeared to be a child’s bedroom or, rather, the room of an adolescent boy. It was painted a dense, cornflower blue, and decorated with outdated pop culture posters. A large, weathered Table of Periodic Elements hung on one wall, attached with brittle and yellowed tape.

“That once was mine,” Mr. Stuckey noted proudly, indicating the poster. “When I was a boy, it hung in the classroom of my secondary school, the Petion National Lycée.” His back stiffened with pride at the mention of the name. “It was given to me by the headmaster, a gift. I was to be a great scientist, then.” He paused. “As was Edwin too.”

The room was small. Shoved under a window that opened onto brick was an unmade twin bed, and not two steps from it stood a modest desk, bowed by a stack of books whose titles were turned away from me. A boom box also sat perched atop the desk, and there—How had I not seen that!—rested an overturned chair and a noose hanging limply from a light fixture above it.

“Jesus!” I stepped backward and clutched the doorframe in reflex.

“Yes,” Mr. Stuckey nodded solemnly. “My son was murdered right here. He was twenty-two years old.”

“Same age as me,” I whispered.

Mr. Stuckey turned off the light and we returned to the front of the house in silence. I took my seat back on the couch. My tea had grown cold.

“You will help us?” Mrs. Stuckey piped up.

“What time did the police arrive tonight?” I asked, pen poised to record the details in my notepad.

“The police,” she clucked dismissively with a wave of her hand.

“The police do not come here anymore,” Mr. Stuckey added.

Anymore? “Were you home then, when the intruder broke in?”

“The intruder was already here,” Mr. Stuckey corrected.

“So there are suspects?”

“Oh,” he nodded enthusiastically, “there are suspects.”

‘”Nice,” I added, in spite of myself. “If you could give me a list of the names you gave to the police . . .”

“The last time the police were here, they took no names. No. Nothing from us,” Mrs. Stuckey fumed.

The last time? “The last time this evening, the last time . . . ?”

“The last time one month ago,” Mr. Stuckey said stoically.

“A month ago?” I closed my notepad. “Sir, listen. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here, or what it is you want me to—” I fell silent as I shifted my position on the sofa, making sure that I had all of my belongings. The Stuckeys looked at me helplessly, and I was beginning to feel spooked.

At that, a girl stepped into the room from the hallway.

“I’ll talk to him, Papa,” she said. “I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” The girl was brazen. She stood with her hand on one hip, and she blinked her eyelashes once she was done taking me in. She wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that was knotted tightly in the center of her back. Her speech was not the patois of her West Indian parents, who only nodded as she signaled me with a beckoning finger to the door.

Once we stepped off the porch, she immediately lit a cigarette. “I heard everything,” she said, exhaling.

“I’m a reporter for the—”

“I said everything.” She rolled her eyes. “Walk with me.”

The girl pirouetted gracefully as a ballerina and took off down the block. She was short, like her mother, barely over five feet, and though I was nearly six feet, I had to jog to keep up with her.

“So, you from around here?” I asked, falling back on my usual opening line. Dumb! Some reporter I was, but I didn’t know where to begin with this girl. I was ecstatic just to be walking with her. In an instant, my street cred had risen to the umpteenth degree, and the few brothers hanging out seemed to be getting a kick out of watching a dude like me, in my skippies and Polo, pursuing a sister like her, whose mane of naturally red ringlets blew behind her like a superhero’s cape.

She didn’t respond to my lame attempts at flirting, and we walked along Jamaica Avenue in silence, passing the gated entrances of fast-food restaurants, 99-cent stores, and discount clothing outlets with names like Foxy Lady and Tic Tock. The sky above us had a chunky, textured look about it; mounds of cloud clung stubbornly to the midnight blue, as often happened after a storm. It had been an uncharacteristically stormy summer. A crushed can of Colt 45, however, still balanced precariously on the fence post of King’s Manor.

“I don’t know why people drink that swill!” I knocked the can over in an attempt at irreverence, accidentally splashing my sneakers with stale beer. Shit.

The girl led me a little further to a Salvadoran café with Christmas bulbs and plastic flowers in its window.

“I’m Janette,” she said, as we slid into an upholstered booth.

“Dougie,” I grinned.

“Dougie, huh? That’s cute.” She drummed her fingernails on the table between us. “I hate that you can’t smoke anywhere anymore.”

“Been smoking long?”

“Since I was thirteen.”

“Nasty habit.”

She raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. I ordered beer for both of us. Music and words incomprehensible to me floated from a juke box somewhere in the place.

“My brother committed suicide,” Janette said suddenly. My beer caught in my throat and a bit of it dribbled down my chin. “You’re conducting an investigation here, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So, here.” Janette reached into her back pocket and shot a scrap of paper across the table at me. “That’s the name of the detective.”

“Detective?”

She shook her head at me in disbelief. “What the fuck? Are you a reporter or what?” She rolled her eyes. “The detective working my brother’s case, you moron.”

“Right, right.” I took a pull on the neck of my beer, trying to recover. “Here’s the thing,” I said, leaning toward her across the table. “Your pops said this happened a month ago.”

“A little less than a month ago. We’re just really stressed about how long all this is taking, you know?”

“Right, but a month ago?” I sit up straight. “A month ago is not a story today. After a month, there’s no story. I’m sorry.”

“But my brother is dead.” Janette’s aggressive demeanor crumbled.

“You’re talking suicide here.” I shook my head sympathetically. “That’s tragic, but I can tell you straight up: If your brother chose to kill himself, we ain’t gonna run it in the paper now, know what I mean?”

“My brother did not choose to kill himself.” Janette’s eyes flashed angrily.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, call the detective.”

“Wait.” I wave the waiter over for another round. “If you already have a detective working the case, why the calI on the scanner?”

Janette ignored my question and turned to the waiter. “I’ll have a Jack and ginger.”

“And,” I continued, “if you already know he took his own life, why not just grieve and clean out that bedroom and move on?”

She remained silent.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended,” she shrugged. “Your questions are valid.”

“Any answers?”

“If I had answers, would I be sitting here talking to you?” She smiled slyly. “I think not.”

* * *

I never cared for police precincts. Not that I’d had much experience with them.

Occasionally, I was sent to the local station house to clarify a fuzzy docket that’d come over the teletype, but the officers always seemed less than welcoming. I usually got out of there as soon as I could, which was what I intended the afternoon following my interview with Janette. In a moment of hopeful lust, I’d promised I would speak to this Detective Spurlock, and she, in turn, promised she’d speak to me again. So here I was in the 103rd Precinct at the detective squad.

“Come on back.” Detective Spurlock motioned toward one cluttered desk among many. With a swish of a burly arm, he cleared a chair of paperwork for me to sit. “You got good timing, kid. Caught me right before sign-out. Minute later, I’d a been gone for the night . . . Coffee?”

I glanced over his shoulder at a stained-glass pot that contained what looked to be black sludge. “No thanks.”

“Smart,” he shrugged, sipping boldly from a chipped mug. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here about the Stuckey case.”

“The Stuckeys.” Spurlock ran a pink hand through a thick head of white hair. “Listen, I don’t know what your connection to this family is, but—”

“I’m a reporter for the Weekly Item,” I interrupted.

“That so?” He nodded. “Well, good luck. Once they’ve got your number, you’re getting no peace from then on. My advice: Steer clear. There’s no story there.”

“That’s what I’m thinking too, but if there was,” I lean in, “what would it be?”

Spurlock furrowed his brow. “Meaning?”

“The parents seem to think their son was murdered.”

“Okay, kid, I’ll indulge you, I’ve got nothing but time, right?” He shuffled through a stack of bulging file folders before selecting the thinnest one. “Here we go.” He took a swig from his mug and whipped on his reading glasses. “Edwin Stuckey, age twenty-two, found hanged in his own bedroom, March 2.” He paused at the date, gave me the once-over, continued reading from his notes. “Apparent suicide, no suspicious circumstances, blah, blah, case closed.”

Spurlock sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“Wait a minute.” I flipped through my own notebook. “If you began your investigation on March 2, why did the call come over my scanner just two days ago?”

“Ahh,” the detective laughed. “They won’t stop, these people. I closed this case one week after it happened, and they’ve been phoning 911 ever since.” He shook his head. “Hell, I’d arrest the two of them for Aggravated Harassment if it weren’t so damn sad.”

“So there’s nothing? Nothing to suggest the murder that the family thinks occurred?”

‘’Nope.’’ Spurlock reopened the folder and flipped through the paperwork. “The sister gave me a couple a names of some friends of his, who turned out not to be friends at all. The boy didn’t have any friends.” He handed me the list. “Church members. A bit too pious for my tastes, but hey, to each his own.” He closed the folder and switched off his desk lamp. “Like I said: case closed.”

* * *

Of course, there was no story. But I went ahead and crafted a lead and pitched it to my editor.

Jamaica, Queens—A twenty-two-year-old man was found hanged in his bedroom under mysterious circumstances. Family members suspect foul play.

He glanced at it before tossing it aside. “We don’t do suicides.”

Still, I wanted to see Janette again. I steeled myself for the journey. It took me nearly two hours: the F train, then the Q76 bus to the end of the line. The bus wove its way down residential streets before groaning to a halt at the concrete 165th Street terminal in Jamaica, Queens.

It was bedlam. Greyhound on crack. People mobbed each designated bus slot, frantically directing the drivers into their respective spaces. An open, buzzing vegetable market operated behind the commuters, and as the day was a hot one, clouds of flies swarmed crates of long onions and collard greens. An old woman wearing a hairnet sat on a folding chair selling spices and exotic remedies sealed in plastic baggies. There was too much going on here; I was used to separation: a bus terminal being a bus terminal, a vegetable market being a vegetable market. Here, in Janette’s neighborhood, everything was everything all at once.

I cut behind the terminal through the Colosseum Mall and down tight aisles displaying brightly colored skirts and cell phone accessories. Out on the other side stood the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica; Edwin’s funeral had been held there.

“Yo, man, you good?” A guy about my age peered at me from beneath an open car hood.

“What? Oh, yeah man, yeah.” I kept moving.

Jamaica Avenue, almost there. On the “Ave,” all the girls resembled Janette, with their manicured hands, toes, and eyebrows. Women sashayed bare-legged, wearing tight clothes; streaked, braided hairdos; metallic purses; chatting casually on headsets while munching on meat kebobs and cubes of sugared coconut.

I was tripping.

“Help? A little help?” A thin, thin, thin woman with a red cap pulled so low that she had to raise her chin to look at me blocked my path. “Ice-e?” She extended a cart toward me with a brutal shove. A regulation grocery cart, sealed in duct tape, enclosed with a plastic lid, a cardboard cut-out of brightly colored ice creams taped to its sides.

“Whoa,” I muttered, gripping the cart to keep from being run down. A plastic wheel jumped the rim of my sneaker, leaving a marked trail.

“Ice-e?” the woman repeated sternly.

I hadn’t noticed the man next to her. The old cat was just squatting there on the balls of his feet, arms extended at awkward angles from where they rested on each knee. In front of him stood a stack of newspapers and, atop the stack, a neat pile of quarters. I recognized the paper, a freebie like mine, but here on the street it cost a quarter.

I slapped some coins in his palm and snatched up a copy. The lead caught my eye:

Jamaica, Queens—A young man recently found hanging in his bedroom has been identified as Edwin Stuckey, age twenty-two. Family members say the list of suspects is numerous and have sealed off the scene of the crime—the home—until further notice. The police have no comment.

The Crusading Home of Deliverance was located in a sprawling Victorian residence. It wouldn’t have been recognizable as a church were it not for the small cardboard sign and handmade cross posted in a none-too-clean bay window. I checked Detective Spurlock’s directions several times before rapping on the front door.

I’d tried to contact Janette after seeing the brief article about her brother in the competition, but she wasn’t taking my calls. So what was I doing? Seems I needed to know what happened to Edwin Stuckey after all.

“Are you here for evening service?” A smiling elderly woman dressed in white opened the door. I could see behind her into a drab parlor containing metal folding chairs, a podium, and what looked like a small organ.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m here to see Reverend Pine.”

Did I have an appointment? she inquired, continuing to smile.

I admitted I didn’t but assured her it was important, that I was here about Edwin Stuckey.

“Edwin. Yes.” She bowed her head. “We are still mourning his loss, but happy for his deliverance.”

“Yes, well . . . Reverend Pine?”

I followed the woman into the room and took a seat in the back row. The room was large and half-filled, all its occupants black, conversing in hushed voices.

“Son?” A slim, natty man dressed in a three-piece suit charged toward me with his hand extended. “I’m the Reverend Pine, and I welcome you to our sanctuary.” He shook my hand with an intense vigor before adjusting his chunky glasses and straightening his tie. “We can speak briefly in my office. I’ve got service in an hour and I must prepare.” He cleared his throat. “You understand.”

I studied the hallway he led me down. On either side of the wall were photographs of the reverend with parishioners and community dignitaries. His office, lined with two bookcases of theological texts, contained more of the same.

Reverend Pine took a seat behind his desk. “You’re here for Edwin?”

“Yes, sir.” I shifted in my seat. “I’m a reporter for the—”

“Weekly Item. I know.” He smiled wryly.

I peered up at him sharply.

“I keep myself informed, son.” He laughed and adjusted himself in his seat. “See, my congregation is this here community, and we are all interested in Edwin’s well-being. We even trust that you are interested in his well-being.”

I was suddenly growing wary of this man and his glib talk of dead Edwin’s well-being.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of shop you’re running here—”

“There’s no need to be disrespectful.” Reverend Pine pinned me with his gaze. “What do you want to know? Edwin Stuckey saw a flyer for our church revival last summer, showed up at our doors, and we welcomed him.”

“So why does his family think he was murdered? Why did his sister give the names of members of your congregation to the police?”

Pine shrugged nonchalantly. “Why? You best ask Edwin’s sister, Janette, yourself. Before he came to us, Edwin had no friends. He had no interests. He had no hope. He was very depressed. We tried to comfort him.”

“He killed himself.”

“No, he didn’t.” Pine took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. “There’s a problem in our society, son, that I’m sure you’re familiar with. Loss of hope.”

I stared at the man, attentive despite myself.

“Let me be clear here.” He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “I do not advocate suicide. I did not encourage Edwin Stuckey to kill himself. I pray for his soul every day. But Edwin and his family are the reason I do what I do: People do lose hope and not all of them regain it. And not all of them can accept when hopelessness claims one of their own.”

“Look, Reverend Pine, that’s a nice sermon and all, but I’m just here for the facts,” I said.

He opened his arms. “Sadly, those are they.”

* * *

To my everlasting surprise, I sat through all three hours of Reverend Pine’s service. It was motivating, it was uplifting, it was hopeful. The tears, the tambourines, the shouting. Most importantly, though, it did not compel me to commit suicide. It made me want to get on with my life.

When the door of Deliverance closed behind me and I stepped onto the cracked sidewalk beyond its front stairway, I decided to phone Janette one final time. I watched a group of middle school girls skip double-dutch further down the street. The clothesline they were using for a jump rope slapped the pavement fiercely and their chants rippled down the block: “All, all, all in together, any kind of weather . . .”

The father answered, said Janette was out. “Mr. Stuckey, this is Douglass, the reporter,” I began.

“Yes?” His voice rose to an expectant pitch. “Any progress?”

“See the teacher looking out the window. Dong, dong, the fire-bell . . .” The girls picked up their volume, feet racing the rope.

On the line I let out a sigh, and I heard Mr. Stuckey deflating in the silence. “Unfortunately, sir, I am no longer able to pursue this story.” Across the street, a dude carrying a basketball under one arm shouted after a car rolling past on a wave of bass line.

“That boy who did that to himself was not my son, he was someone else. Somebody did something, or said something that—” Stuckey cleared his throat. “Someone should be held responsible.”

I hesitated, then snapped my phone shut.

“How many ringers can you take? One, two, three, four . . .” The girls ticked off their chant behind me.

INTRODUCTION

AN ERRINGLY PERFECT LANDSCAPE

In the always entertaining send-up known as the Urban Dictionary, "Staten Island" is defined as "a floating dump that sits in New York Harbor. Often mistaken for a populated borough." Alternate definitions include: "Brooklyn with parking," "recepticle [sic] of New York City's garbage—paper, plastic, and human," "where the hair is high and the IQ is low," and "name given to the small pile of gristle, burnt ends, and spit-out left on the edge of your plate at the end of a meal," as in:

Have you finished your dinner?

Yep.

What about that last mouthful?

Nah, that's just Staten Island.

Incensed? Insulted? Then you're probably not a native of the island. Some of Staten Island's most vocal detractors are those who grimly populate its clutter. They're the ones spewing expletives after a snowy-white Escalade or a tricked-out Camaro smushes them against the railing on the Outerbridge. They're growling because it's August and there's that certain fragrance wafting on the breeze. They're the ones who consider their entertainment options for the upcoming weekend and realize, once again, that the choices are 1) the mall; 2) the mall; or 3) hop the ferry and get the hell away from . . . the mall.

Next time you're on the island, slow your stroll and take a good long look at the oft-falling faces of its citizenry. There is very little veering toward glee. Sure, you can find giggling children romping in a kid-sized anthill at the Children's Museum or picture-book couples strolling hand-in-hand through the Greenbelt. There are raucous side streets that feel like a family reunion, with neighbors conversing from their stoops and a cool clash of salsa and Sinatra blaring from open windows. Indeed, there are sometimes whole gaggles of happy people doing apparently happy things and looking damned pleased to be living in . . . in . . . uh, that other borough.

But in front of, behind, and on either side of these perky few plods a Greek chorus on Thorazine, shuffling in the shadows and moaning a soundtrack of regional discontent. The tragic chorale seems to be made up mostly of my writing students at the College of Staten Island. When I ask them to write anything about where they live, they sigh and roll their eyes so dramatically they can see who's behind them without turning around.

Each semester I confront a different group of eye-rollers, but when the topic is Staten Island the consensus varies only slightly:

"Nothing ever happens."

"Nothing ever happens."

"Nothing ever happens."

As a writer, I firmly believe that 1) there's nowhere where nothing ever happens; 2) something eventually happens everywhere, even nowhere; 3) everything is bound to happen somewhere; and 4) there's no such thing as nothing whenever you're somewhere.

Nothing ever happens on Staten Island?

Nothing happening on the glitzy Uggs-trodden paths of the Staten Island Mall, no steamy intrigue in Frederick's of Hollywood or in the cinnamon-dusted confines of Auntie Anne's? No memorable drama on the relentless to-and-fro of the ferry? Nothing cool about the counter guy at the neighborhood bodega who always has a great story, or that gay club that opened up for a while then disappeared? How about intrigue in the lives of the dude and dudette of Staten Island stereotype—she orange-tinged, deftly manicured, and helplessly attached to her cell; he muscled, sticky-coiffed, and primping behind the wheel of that aforementioned Camaro?

Nothing interesting at all? I ask, and, after another round of eye-rolling, they're aching to elaborate.

"This place is too damned small."

"Everybody knows everybody else's business."

"Same people you grew up with, all the time. Never anybody new."

"There's no place to go but the mall."

"Being made fun of all the time gets tired real fast. I don't even tell anybody I'm from here."

And until I finally shut them up, all they do is continue to serve up more reasons why Staten Island is an erringly perfect landscape for noir, the ideal hangout for scoundrels, swindlers, liars, thieves, murderers, adulterous vixens, and assorted hooligans. Let's review:

1.

The place was too damned small. On all sides, water ate away at the island. Every day, the brick of the buildings inched closer to him, until Eddie could feel their soft scrape against his skin. Every street seemed to sweat, panting poisons through its many open mouths. There was no street he hadn't seen, no corner that didn't hiss his name. People walked toward him, through him, past him, all smirking on the edge of a smile. Laughing at him. But there it was, the sweet weight of the gun in his pocket. Soon he'd be able to breathe again. Eddie would blow a hole in the way the city touched him, and he'd climb through.

2.

"Everybody knows everybody else's business," Eddie spat, "and I don't want nobody knowin' mine." He held the bartender's wiggling little head in a vise grip until it stopped wiggling. He looked down, and the little guy's scalp was glowing red. Eddie got real pissed real fast because here it was, an interruption in his day, now he had to figure out if he felt like killing this guy. One minute, he's looking forward to the zarzuela and a nice chianti at Espana, now here's this loudmouth prick with his eyes popping out.

3.

Same people you grew up with, all the time. Never anybody new. Alexis could swear she said the words out loud, but there was Eddie, still asleep, snorting, his mouth open, his mountain of belly radiating heat. Just because their families had lived next to each other in New Dorp. Just because he'd given her that stupid ring in high school. Just because he was the first one to ask, she had to say yes, had to stand up in front of God and family and sign up for this? She sighed, fingered the little blade, studied his sweating pink neck.

4.

There's no place to go but the mall. There's no place to go but the mall, and there's no way to walk but in well-lit circles, then ride the escalator with its silver teeth, and the girls. There's no place to go but the mall, and the girls. Sheep boots and sequin skirts, low-cut tops, red-tipped nails, hair color of falling sun, skinny wrists, big perfect mouths, and the girls, swing purses, smack gum, talk the island, girls. Blindfold left pocket this time. Tape on the right. There's no place to go but the mall. There's nothing to do but wait.

5.

I don't even tell anybody I'm from here. I can hit Brooklyn or the Boogie B, sling it like I'm a gangsta, point my ride down the middle of the street. I can flash my piece, hold it against a throat, have a man whimpering my name. I can lay a woman down, then leave her, make her unknow my name if that's what I need. Then I get on that great big boat, and I'm gone. In the Bronx, some guy with a gun is searching the back alleys for me. Some big-hipped redhead in Brooklyn is aching to stake a claim. But I get home and the island closes around me, names me all over again. There's something about water. It cleans you.

* * *

So there.

Staten Island = 0 is a popular equation outside the confines of the borough. During Bouchercon, an annual national crime fiction convention, I sat fuming as a panel on "crime fiction set in New York" went on and on and on, with panelists bellowing darkly about nefarious goings-on and iconic characters in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and . . . and . . .

Finally, nudged by an irritated attendee who suddenly knew why her students didn't want to write about their home town, members of the panel acknowledged their omission with what amounted to, Oh yeah, there's crime there too, and went back to a spirited discussion of the Big Four.

Yep, there's crime here too. Good crime. Mystery. Dark, scary stuff. Big crime. The noir kind, without a good guy in sight. Just scan the headlines: Skeleton in Staten Island Basement Points to Unsolved Murder; Staten Island Man Commits Murder after Victim Had Spit in Wife's Face. Then there's the haunted Kreischer mansion on Arthur Kill Road. Mob Wives, for Chrissakes, with all that squalling, hair-pulling, and Botox. A recent spate of hate crimes against blacks, Mexicans, Muslims. Mist-shrouded abandoned psychiatric hospitals. Guys named Eddie. Underground caverns. Willowbrook. The ghostly ship graveyard. The legend of Cropsey. That rolling landfill and all those secrets buried beneath it.

Even the one movie that was named after the borough got it exactly right. Here's the synopsis: A Staten Island mob boss Parmie is robbed by septic tank cleaner Sully who has a pal Jasper, a deaf deli employee moonlighting as a corpse chopper.

That's a damned sunshiny day on the island.

I'm not sure why Staten Island is the borough bringing up the rear in Akashic Books' Noir Series (okay, okay, yes I am), but here we are, the shiny coin in New York's back pocket. (You can't really buy anything with it, but throwing it away would definitely bring bad luck.) We will prove that SI is as rotten, vengeful, unforgiving, and badass as any one of its quartet of brothers.

This gang I've gathered is unrelenting. Among them is island native Bill Loehfelm, who crafts a stark and breathless character study on Snake Hill. In "A User's Guide to Keeping Your Kills Fresh," Ted Anthony chronicles the haphazard adventures of a murderous mob bungler. The blade-edged tenets of street justice rule the day, and night, in Todd Craig's ". . . spy verse spy . . ." Michael Largo's "Paying the Tab" sits the reader on a barstool, then lifts you out of one world and into another. S.J. Rozan's "Lighthouse" moves with a chilling, elegant rhythm, and Linda Nieves-Powell arranges a jazzy introduction to the siren of the Stapleton projects. And lest you think that nefarious island hijinks are a recent development, Bruce DeSilva builds upon a true story of unbridled power and privilege, set in 1858.

That said, I'm slightly disappointed that there are no appearances by corpse choppers, which may be because it's become a perfectly respectable Staten Island job description. Nevertheless, I'd like to meet one.

Patricia Smith

July 2012

PART I

FAMILY AFFAIR

SNAKE HILL

BY BILL LOEHFELM

Eltingville

We came over the top of Snake Hill too fast, and started our drop down the other side at the same speed. My father's giant old station wagon slalomed deep into the snaky curves like a fat skier in wet snow. The tires didn't screech, but they squeaked now and again. Streetlamps were few and far between. The trees were black shadows on both sides, the foliage dense and dark, close to the roadside. I tried to keep the headlights focused on the winding double yellow lines in front of me, keep those lines centered in the crossed beams of light. I hoped to hell that no one was coming up the hill in the opposite lane.

My brother snored over on the passenger side of the wagon's big bench seat, having passed out sometime in the first three minutes after we left the Haunted Café back on Bay Street. I hadn't seen him put back more than two or three drinks, less than half of what I'd had, and I got that sick, nervous feeling in my stomach that had been coming on more and more lately, the feeling that he was messing with more powerful stuff than booze. Pills, maybe. Powders. He hadn't, I noticed with a quick glance, despite my insistence and his assurances, fastened his seat belt. Couldn't even do that for me. I wanted to slam on the brakes and bounce his head off the dashboard, just to make a point. But I didn't do it. I kept riding the sharp, blind curves in the road. He shifted in his seat with the back-and-forth motion of the car.

Why, I wondered again, tightening my grip on the steering wheel, was I driving like a maniac to get us home by curfew when there was so much more to worry about? Because, I reminded myself, curfew was what our folks cared about. Curfew and the car. They wouldn't ask what Danny was getting into, because they didn't want to know, and I sure wouldn't tell. Wouldn't say anything about a seventeen-year-old with a grown-up hangover. They never did anymore, not after the past two years in our house. We'd had all the bad news we could handle.

I looked over at my brother again. His forehead was pressed against his window. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he always smiled in his sleep—the benefits of an empty conscience. Another quick check of the road and I glanced at the dashboard clock. One fifteen in the a.m. Well, we'd blown curfew. That was a lost cause. Seemed I was losing causes by the minute. More important now was the matter of getting down the hill. If I couldn't deliver us home on time, I could at least deliver us home in one piece. That plan hit the skids, literally, barely a moment after I had that thought.

I don't know if it was oil, or gravel, or the greasy entrails of something dead and left to rot, but coming out of an especially sharp turn, the back end of the station wagon fishtailed hard left, as if God had flicked the ass-end of the car with his finger. I didn't panic. I didn't overcorrect. I didn't make a sound. I held steady and hit the brakes.

The back left corner of the station wagon slammed into the guardrail, the back tires sliding and scratching on some roadside gravel. A deep thump pulsed through the car on impact, as if someone had whacked an empty pot with a spoon and we were inside the pot. It wasn't that loud, considering, but it lingered in my ears for an extra second nonetheless. The chassis bounced once or twice and the car settled, still, on the side of the road like the collision had knocked the wind out of it. My brother groaned beside me. He touched his fingertips to his forehead. One eye was open, the other still closed. I guess he wanted to make sure the incident was worth the effort of opening both. I was glad he seemed okay. I grimaced in sympathy at the goose egg already rising over his right eye. Maybe that's why that left one had stayed closed.

"What the fuck, Kev?" he said. "We dead?"

"No," I said. "We're fine."

At least he knew we'd had an accident. He couldn't be that far gone.

He nodded as if I'd given him a lot of information to process. He squinted through the windshield with his one open eye then turned and did the same out the back window. He was looking, I realized, for the other car.

"Just us," I said. I turned around too. A cloud of thin gray dust hung suspended in the ruby-red glow of the brake lights. I realized I still had the brake pedal pinned. "I tagged the guardrail coming out of a curve. Too much of a rush, I guess."

"I don't know why you give a fuck about curfew anymore," he said, turning to me, both eyes open now, bewilderment all over his face. He sniffed. "You're the only one who does."

"Who do you hang out with?" I asked.

"You."

"And who else?"

"No one, really," my brother said.

"And how do we get around?"

"In Dad's car."

"Ask me again why I care about curfew."

My brother scoffed: "Dad'll let you have the car whenever we hang out, especially because we hang out, whatever the fuck time we come home. What're you, dense?"

"And you're so wise on this how?"

Danny shrugged like the answer was so obvious he could barely speak it. "Dad thinks you look out for me. He thinks I'm safer when we're together. He wouldn't run the risk of separating us. Mom wouldn't let him."

"You saying you're not safer with me than you would be alone?" I swallowed hard. "Doing what you do these days?"

Danny turned one way in his seat, and then the other, glancing around us. "Didn't you just wreck the car?"

"I didn't wreck it," I said. I didn't know what part of my commentary his crack about the car had been meant to criticize. "Just dinged it up at most."

I decided I should get a look at how bad before I tried continuing the drive home, or continuing my attempt at a conversation with my younger brother about his growing drug problem. Just in case it was worse than I thought, worse than it had sounded. The car, I mean.

I opened the door, cool night air rushing into the car. I realized I'd been sweating, the breeze running up the sleeves of my T-shirt. I took a deep breath. When I turned to hang out the door and look, the seat belt caught. Danny stifled a giggle. I popped the belt free and leaned out of the car.

"You smell gas?" Danny asked.

"No." So far, so good. I hadn't even thought of that. Gas tank was on that side too. I heard the flick of a lighter and smelled cigarette smoke. Glad he was so confident. But things seemed okay. The back tire wasn't flat. I could see the hubcap. No dents that I could see in the back quarter panel, at least in the faint wash of the dome light from inside the car.

"Light me one," I told Danny. Without turning, I reached my arm across the car for the cigarette. The lack of obvious damage had me feeling better, more and more confident that nothing was wrong that we couldn't play off as a parking lot accident and pin on some other idiot driver. Dad would grumble, but he'd forgive. And small dents he could pound out himself in the driveway. He was handy like that.

Danny slipped the cigarette into my fingers. I brought the smoke to my lips, tapped the brake pedal. The taillights ignited, a red burst off the back of the car washing over the wild green bushes and trunks of the trees. Still working, that was good. None of the telltale bright white gave away broken glass back there. Amazing, I thought, how bright those lights actually are. I tapped them again. And then I saw it. My throat went dry.

A shoe. One shoe.

A sneaker, really. A blue Ked, adult sized. The cheap kind you see lined up in flimsy cardboard boxes along those long rows of shelves at the K-Mart or the Korvettes. Like old people wore. No big deal, I told myself, a shoe by the side of the road. Except this shoe stood on its heel, tilted a little to the left. I could see a bony, hairless, blue-veined ankle, the cuff of a pajama leg. An old person. Some poor, senile, old bastard who'd probably wandered away from one of the estates on the hill.

My throat closed and my heart stopped, a fist reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart down to the size of a grape, strangling it.

Fuck me. I'd killed someone.

I heard Danny getting out of the car. Air exploded out of my chest and my heart started again. I lunged for Danny, locking onto his forearm. He glanced down at my hand, not looking all that surprised I'd grabbed ahold of him.

"Get back in the car," I said.

"Lemme go," he said. "I gotta take a piss. Since we're apparently camping out here for the night."

"Get in the car."

I did not want him seeing that body. And I didn't want anybody seeing us anywhere near it. I'd decided to run from the scene. I couldn't even remember making the decision. But I was totally sure of what I wanted to do.

"Dude, I gotta go," Danny said. "One sec."

"Wait till we get home."

"Who're you? Fucking Mom?"

"Someone could see us."

"I'll go back in the woods." He chuckled. "You already took care of the guardrail. Easy-peasy."

He tried to tug his arm free, half an effort because he expected me to let go. I didn't. He bristled, and for the first time since we'd stopped he looked a little angry.

"There's gotta be a car coming," I said, "either from ahead or behind us."

We'd settled to a stop on the wrong side of the road, facing into oncoming traffic, our headlights burning bright down the side of the hill. It was mid-spring, the trees had only half their leaves. Our car was blatantly visible from every direction. Our voices probably carried far in the quiet night. The sound of the station wagon slamming the guardrail certainly had. People did live up here. They lived nearby over on Todt Hill, and on Lighthouse Road too. The Hill people. Rich people. Rich people who didn't tolerate late-night, side-of-the-road bullshit, people who didn't come to see if you were all right, if there was anything they could do to help. They just called the cops and went back to bed and let the paid help deal with it. That could've happened already. The cops could be on their way up the hill as we sat there bickering like one of us had gotten more chocolate milk than the other at breakfast.

I didn't want to be dealt with. I wanted my brother back in the fucking car. And I wanted both of us home.

Danny settled on the edge of the front seat, one leg in and one leg out of the car, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He had his outside leg in the middle of the road. "What the fuck?" He reached under his seat, moving his hand around under it. "We don't have any beers left in here?"

I thought I saw headlights break through the trees below.

"We're in a hurry," I said, trying to keep my voice light, and failing. "Remember?"

I watched my brother for a reaction to my bullshit. Could I have made it any more obvious that there was something at the back of the car I didn't want him to see? I hoped my guilt and horror, not only over what I had done by accident but what I was now doing on purpose, amplified my fears, like that remorse-ridden lunatic in "The Tell-Tale Heart." I realized gratefully that Danny had most likely never read the story. I also realized I was glad and relieved he was high and therefore if not easily led at least leadable.

That thought made me feel like shit. It made me sick.

"We're going," I said, my voice a croak. "Now."

I braked as I put the car in drive, using the sideview mirror to look into the cloud of red light and exhaust behind us. I saw the second foot as we inched away from the shoulder. Though it tilted away from the first foot at the toes, the heels were nearly touching, the feet therefore making a V shape, like feet did when their owner was flat on their back. On the soles I could see the Rice Krispies patterns in the waxy, honey-colored rubber. Or maybe I was imagining that last part. Our grandfather had worn those same shoes in the last years of his life. Before he died after two long, long years of stomach cancer, calling out for morphine till the bitter end.

* * *

Back in brightly lit Eltingville, streetlights and porch lights everywhere, I parked the car a few houses down from ours. It annoyed the neighbors to no end, seeing my father's beat-to-hell, twelve-year-old, 1977 gray behemoth of an Impala wagon parked in "their" parking spot.

Back in the day, long before us, before he'd even met our mother, our father had been a brawler, and Danny and I desperately wanted, just once, to see him throw down on the neighbors we liked least. Like the 'roided-out dude from my high school who washed his Monte Carlo SS twice a week, shirtless and cranking shitty club music, like the whole island was his personal health club/coke den/dancehall. Or the old guy who lived alone on mental disability checks and never drove and so sat behind his living room curtains all day, even when the kids on the block were at school, the guy waiting for some Wiffle ball or street hockey ball to bounce onto his pristine lawn so he could crank the window and threaten to call the cops. Or, more specifically, his son, the cop, who we never saw, not once. But it never happened. Dad didn't fight anymore. At least not over parking spaces, and certainly not over the wiseassery of his silly sons.

After I turned off the engine, I sat behind the wheel for a few moments, a few breaths, willing myself to leave what I'd seen and done on the hill up there. I silently swore to never take that short cut again, curfew be damned. I had a brief, ridiculous thought that if we did get busted for hitting someone back on the hill, that we, that I, could somehow blame my father. If he hadn't been so anal about the curfew, I would never have been in such a hurry. That particular bizarre assemblage of necessary moments that led to me killing someone would never have coalesced and I would never have hit that person now lying there dead by the side of the road. My face got hot. Of all the rotten fucking luck. How many things had to go wrong for that person to be in that spot at that moment when the rear end of the Impala came smashing into them? If I'd tried to hit that person I never, ever could have done it. Not even head-on. What was that goddamn idiot doing wandering along a pitch-black road in the middle of the night? It had never entered my mind that there might be someone even more careless than me on that road. Certainly not someone I couldn't see coming. My head started to hurt. I had to stop thinking about it. Why was it so hot inside the car? I opened the door and stepped out into the street. Danny was already around the back of the car.

"Holy shit," I heard him say. It was an observation, not a weary summation of the night's adventures. That scared me. "Damn," he said.

A dent, probably. Maybe some torn-away piece of clothing. Blood, most likely. Worse, possibly. Body parts. I continued around the back of the car and saw what had arrested Danny's attention. The entire back bumper of the station wagon was missing. Gone. Shorn clean off when I'd fishtailed the Impala into the guardrail. And now lying by the side of the road at the scene of the accident. Could you trace a bumper back to the car from which it came? You could certainly get make and model and year. You could go around to body shops asking who'd come in for a replacement bumper for a '77 Impala station wagon. You could tell all your cop friends to keep an eye out for cars missing their rear bumpers. And then I realized no cop would even have to do that much work to find out what car had hit that dead person. Because, I realized, that bumper was lying there with the license plate still attached. I almost laughed. I'd killed someone, fled the accident, and left the license plate at the scene. I was too dumb to be a character in a Poe story. What had Danny said about our dad trusting me to look out for him? Talk about misplaced trust. I thought for a moment about walking into the house, waking him, and spilling everything, putting everything in his hands. But I didn't want this on him, and I didn't really want him to handle it. I just wanted it to go away. Getting him involved wouldn't make that happen. Now was not the time for wishful thinking.

Danny had a fistful of hair at the top of his head. He was staring at the back of the station wagon. "Wow. I betcha that's hard to do. Dad's gonna fucking freak."

"We gotta go back," I said.

"We?"

"Yes, we," I said. "I'm gonna need your help."

"Dude, I'm tired. How heavy can a bumper be, right? Toss it in the back. We'll hit the body shop in the morning. I'm still suspended. I've got the time. I'll take it in."

"You don't have a license," I said. "You're not allowed to drive."

Danny laughed. "That's your best argument?"

"I need you to look for the bumper," I said. "I'm gonna be driving in the dark."

"Wait till morning."

"Dad's gonna walk right past here on his way to the train. He's gonna see it."

"Then let's move the car around the corner."

"Then how do we explain getting home without it?"

"Bus?"

"Fuck! Danny! C'mon!" I kicked at the space where the bumper had been. "Help me out here."

Danny started laughing. I could've strangled him right there in the gutter. He'd played me right into a temper tantrum. He'd been doing it since we were little kids. I had a flash of us as eighty-year-old men, standing in this same street, me screaming at him, and him laughing. It would never end. He'd been willing to go back to Snake Hill from the moment I'd first asked. I should've known better. As if there had ever been a time when he'd rather go home and go to bed than traipse off on another adventure, no matter how minor. Well, this one wasn't as minor as he thought, but I saw no need to make him the wiser.

He walked to the passenger-side door, tried the handle, and found it locked. "We gonna go, or what?" He couldn't stop smiling. "I ain't got all night."

The words accessory after the fact scrolled across my brain. I tried to console myself with the fact that no cop, no court on earth, would believe Danny's denial that he knew nothing about the body. How would he defend himself? Well, your honor, I was on the nod from a head full of backroom crank. I told myself that in protecting myself I was protecting him too. And my father, whose name was on the registration attached to the wagon's license plate. Really, I was protecting the whole family by returning to the scene of the crime and cleaning it up.

I climbed into the driver's seat and started the car. Maybe you should have thought about protecting the family, a faint voice in the back of my head told me, before you took Snake Hill at twice the advisable speed while six drinks deep on a weeknight.

It's too late, I argued back as I pulled us away from the curb, to do anything about those choices now.

I took us back the way we came, the wide residential streets of our neighborhood narrowing into the older, winding commercial corridors of Amboy Road with its short canvas awnings hanging over the bricked storefronts, every building hugging the thin strip of sidewalk dividing it from the road. Coming around the curves, which I took slowly, it looked impossible to step out of the nail salon or the deli or the driving school and not walk right into oncoming traffic. At intersections, I lingered too long at green lights, petrified of committing some violation.

The streets we followed back onto Richmond Road were only one lane each way and usually bustled, jam packed with traffic in both directions, but at that late hour the streets were dead. We saw not a soul. And that fact only made me sure that Danny and I couldn't have looked more suspicious being out and about at that hour. Riding around in our damaged car couldn't help our image much. And should we get pulled over, how would we explain ourselves? Or the lack of a rear bumper, which was a great excuse to light us up in the first place. I wanted desperately to speed, to push our errand to its end. The knots in my stomach pulled tighter as we moved away from the homes and businesses and the road darkened.

We found the foot of Snake Hill and started our slow climb. I hoped we wouldn't encounter some version of my earlier, idiot self, careening down the hill road out of control at top speed.

"Think of it like this," Danny said. "Could've been worse. What if that guardrail wasn't there? Most of Snake Hill doesn't have any. We could've gone spinning off into the trees. Into God knows what else. What's the drop-off like over there?"

"I don't know."

"How steep you think it is?"

"I don't know that, either."

"Right," Danny said. "And now we don't have to."

"We should probably start looking for the bumper soon."

I slowed our progress to a crawl, barely enough for forward motion, and decided I'd move as far as I could onto the narrow shoulder should someone come up behind us. Danny kept a steady watch on the roadside. He was humoring me, as we still had a couple hundred yards to go before we came anywhere near where the collision had been. I was grateful. I needed him to be quiet so I could think. I needed to decide how much to tell him.

One of Danny's qualities that I most envied was his refusal to judge. I wondered if it was cynicism, optimism, or apathy that left him shrugging off every atrocity and most acts of kindness that he witnessed on the news or saw in the papers. He'd always viewed most of the world from a peaceful distance, and that was even before he found the drugs. Maybe that was what he liked about them. Maybe they made that distance deeper or safer or made it feel permanent and right. Maybe that distance got harder to maintain as he grew older. Or maybe it was Grandpa's death, or what it did to our mother, the way it stoked her hot tears and her raging temper, that made him want his boat to drift even farther from shore. The agony in our house certainly made the fight look futile, even I could see that, and I believed in heaven.

As we both peered into the roadside shadows, I found myself wishing I had left Danny home. Not that he would've stayed there if I'd told him to. He'd never have let me back out into the night alone.

I heard a sharp "A-ha" from Danny and turned to see him pointing dead ahead through the windshield. And there, in the middle of the road, in all its slightly tarnished glory, was the Impala's bumper. Intact and lying there like so much chrome road kill.

"Nicely done," I said, pulling the car over to the side of the road.

There wasn't much of a shoulder and half the wagon hung out into the traffic lane. We'd have fair warning about oncoming traffic from either direction, though, and the later it got, the smaller our chances of encountering another driver, anyway.

I threw the car in park, hit the hazards, and jumped out the door. I glanced into the woods, searching for the shoes in the weak glow of the Impala's dome light. I didn't see them, but I knew that didn't mean they weren't out there, or that Danny wasn't going to see them. Unless, of course, they'd never been there to begin with, something I could convince myself was true if I worked at it hard enough. I'd prefer having had a hallucination to the reality that I'd killed someone.

I heard a groan. A faint, B-movie zombie groan.

There was no way. The old man I'd hit had to be dead. I'd hit him with an out-of-control, two-thousand-pound automobile. Christ, I'd never considered the alternative. A fucking miracle.

Danny was out of the car, looking at me over the roof and waiting for instructions. I didn't think he'd heard the groan in the woods. Maybe I hadn't either. Then I heard it again.

"Fuck." I hung my head.

"Fuck what?" Danny said. "The bumper's right here on the shoulder. We're golden. Let's dump it in the car and get the hell outta here."

Another groan.

"Did you hear that?" Danny asked.

"It's nothing," I said. "Some animal in the woods."

Danny laughed. "This is Staten Island, for Chrissakes. Animal in the woods, like this is fucking upstate or something. Gimme a break. Somebody's out there."

We heard a faint rustling in the leaves. Faint enough that it could have been the wind.

"Fuck this," Danny said. He went back to the car, pulled open the passenger-side door. He reached under the seat, and pulled out a gun from underneath it. A small black pistol.

I was shocked to see it. "What the fuck is that?"

"It's a Pez dispenser. What's it fucking look like?"

"Where did you get that?"

"I had it for a while, this dude at school bet me on the Jets game and didn't have the cash. What's it matter? You never saw it."

He walked around the back of the car, peering into the dark woods. He stepped to the edge of the trees, to where I'd taken out the guardrail with the car, the gun held loosely at his side. "Yo! Fucknuts! You ain't scarin' nobody."

Enough of this, I thought. I jogged over to the bumper, grabbed one end, started dragging it toward the car, the metal grinding on the asphalt.

"Help me with this, Danny. Put the gun away. It's somebody's old dog or something. Open the back of the car."

But Danny ignored me. He was staring into the dark woods, his head tilted to one side like a puppy that didn't understand a command. I stopped halfway to the car, bent over, panting, cradling one end of the bumper in my hands. I listened for what it was Danny heard. I heard it too. The old man's voice, a feeble attempt at words. Gibberish. Danny turned to me.

"There's somebody out there," he said, quieter this time, no aggression or defiance in his tone. "What the fuck?"

I set the bumper back down on the pavement. "I need your help. Me. Over here."

Danny looked at me for a long moment then he started into the woods, picking his way over the dead fallen branches and through the underbrush, sloughing his way across the carpet of dead leaves.

"Goddamnit, Danny."

I looked at the bumper at my feet, looked into the woods, where Danny was now a slow-moving shadow among the trees. He'd gone right by the spot where I knew the old man was lying. Danny was probably still drunk, I reminded myself. And still high, as well.

The battered gray hulk of the station wagon sat silent by the side of the road, the pulsing hazard lights making the car look like a UFO awaiting liftoff.

I wasn't a horrible person. I thought the guy was dead. I didn't see any benefit to anyone in confessing that I'd killed him. I'd get in trouble, as would Danny, who got in plenty without my help. I felt bad for the old man, bad for his family. He had people who loved him, though not enough to keep him from staggering along a dark road in the middle of the night. But why should two families suffer? It sucked that someone had lost their grandpa because I was a terrible drunk driver. Was it any worse than going by cancer? Any worse than a slow, awful death that traumatized your kid so bad that she traumatized her own? And why should my parents, one of whom had just lost her parent, lose their sons over the same accident, if they didn't have to? Nothing I did would bring him back to life.

But all that was moot now, I thought, because the old fucker wasn't dead.

I left the bumper where I'd dropped it and moved into the woods, making my way toward the shadow I knew was Danny. It got easier to find him when his disembodied face appeared in the golden glow of his lighter. He watched me the entire time I made my way to him. We'd ended up several yards deep in the woods. I'd thought the old man had been closer to the road. Then I figured it out. He'd crawled. Danny let the flame go out.

"Shit gets hot," Danny said. "Did you know about this? Is that why you were all fucking freaked?"

I said nothing. Hands on my knees, I bent over the old man, listening to his raspy breathing. How could he not be dead? I'd hit him with a fishtailing station wagon, flipping him over a guardrail. And yes, I'd left him there, broken and bleeding. Danny hit the lighter again.

The old man had gray eyes. They stared straight up. They stared past me and Danny, up into the night sky, maybe searching through the branches overhead for the stars. Maybe he saw something or someone coming for him. It did not appear that he saw me or my brother standing over him. I thought about how sad it would be if in his head, the last feeble circuits were firing and what he saw as the famed white light at the end of the tunnel was in reality just Danny's lighter, glowing there in the dark like the lantern on the ferryman's boat. No one would even look for him until the early morning. He wore thin blue pajamas and a ragged maroon robe that was thrown open, the top soaked dark purple with blood. His chest was caved in like someone had dropped a safe—or a station wagon—on him.

"This is a fucking mess," Danny said.

It was. The old man had misused the last of his strength crawling deeper into the woods and away from any chance of somebody seeing him in time to save him.

"We did this with the car, didn't we?" Danny asked. "You saw him, you knew he was here." He shook his head. "We gotta take care of him."

"Danny, listen. Look at him. He's got minutes left, tops. What're we gonna do? Drive all the way down the hill and find a pay phone somewhere? Nose-diving down this hill started all this. We gonna knock on doors up here on the hill? How do we explain how we found him? It ain't that tough to figure out he got hit by a car."

"I can't believe what I'm hearing. I never knew you could think like this." He let the lighter go out. "What if he doesn't have minutes left, what if it's hours? He's hung on this long."

"I can't tell you what to do," I said. Fuck it. "We can carry him to the car maybe. You wanna take care of him, we'll take care of him."

Danny hit the lighter again. "That wasn't what I meant by take care of him." He held the gun out to me. "This is."

"Jesus, Danny. Are you serious? I don't think that's the right idea."

"You leave him here dying in the woods. Now you're squeamish? Look at the guy. We'd be doing him a favor." The lighter went out. "Remember how Grandpa hung on and hung on, for weeks, months after they gave him only days? You want that for this poor bastard? For his family? I wish somebody had come for Grandpa with a gun."

I looked back to the road, at the squat gray mass of the car. Its flashing lights seemed to mark the seconds passing us by, silently beating the time like a lit-up heart. We were really pushing our luck. Another car would come over the hill sooner or later. I appreciated my brother making a moral argument on my behalf, giving me an ethical parachute. He meant well. I was the good brother, after all, the one who, till tonight at least, concerned himself with such things. But if morals or ethics or right and wrong were really my worries, I'd never have left the old man there in the first place. I was learning fast what I really cared about. From the moment I saw him handing it my way in the lighter's glow, I'd had only one real concern about the gun.

"You misunderstood me," I said. "Somebody's gonna hear that gunshot. We can't have that."

We stood there in the dark, the old man at our feet, his weak scratchy breaths growing farther apart. I had the power to end it, his life, the whole fucked up episode I'd gotten myself and my brother into. All I had to do was accept the power, and not leave all our fates, as predictable as they may be considering where we lived, to other hands.

"Go back to the car," I said. "I'll meet you there in a minute."

"Fuck that."

"We can't leave him. We can't shoot him. Go. I'll take care of it."

"I got this," he said, kneeling down in the dead leaves. "You go back to the car. I'm much, much better at living with ugly shit than you are."

I kneeled across from him, speaking to him over the dying man. "Because it's only now that it's getting ugly?"

Danny crouched there, hands on his thighs, waiting, giving me time to make my case.

"You close and cover his mouth," I said. "And I'll pinch his nose shut. We'll carry it together. We'll never talk about it. Ever. That's my best offer."

"He's barely even here," Danny said, moving. "This shouldn't take long."

It didn't.

By the time Danny was halfway through his third whispered Hail Mary, the old man was dead. I hadn't thought to use the time to pray. And then we were done and everything would be like it had been from the beginning, an accident.

We stood, brushed the twigs and dead leaves from our pants, and crept out of the woods. We didn't speak. Danny helped me load the bumper into the back of the station wagon. It barely fit. As we drove home across the island, Danny helped me work up a story for our folks to explain what had happened—to the car. It was the only thing we talked about.

SISTER-IN-LAW

BY LOUISA ERMELINO

Great Kills

Get in the car.

I started to turn but there was a gun in my back or something pretending to be a gun. I faced forward. The voice was familiar, a woman's voice, a cigarette voice. Philip Morris unfiltered. I think that's the only way Philip Morris comes. Smoking them was a grand statement, too big for me, but if I was right about the voice then we'd shared a few together, she and I.

Angela?

Just get in the car. On your left.

She leaned over and opened the door and moved back. I got in. Her husband Joey was driving. He was a small guy and it was a big car. He looked like he was sitting in a hole. It was Buddy's car, a white Cadillac convertible with rocket fins, but the top was up, black and ominous.

Joey? I said.

Joey stared straight ahead, didn't even check me out in the rearview mirror. I was disappointed. I thought Joey liked me, but then I was always thinking people liked me when they really didn't give a shit. I felt better that I was in the backseat with Angela and not in the front with Joey. I knew about the piano wire around the neck, though this was no movie . . .

I actually felt bad. Until just now, Angela had treated me like family.

We were in the Village, on Barrow Street. I was on my way to meet Buddy at the gay club he used to own, before the feds subpoenaed him to testify. He said that was when he learned to sweat and gave up red silk lining in his custom-made suits. Maybe saying the club he used to run was a better way to put it. Only one group of people owned clubs in Greenwich Village, but it was undisclosed ownership. The State Liquor Authority kept close tabs on who got a liquor license.

Why did I know all this? I shouldn't have. My criminal involvement began and ended with my father's Prohibition bootlegging days and his stint as a bookkeeper for Tony Bender in the '30s. Good with numbers and honest, my father wasn't looking for power and glory, just enough money to start a legitimate business and buy a house. So how did I end up in a white Cadillac with rocket fins and this crazy bitch who was about to become my sister-in-law holding a gun on me?

I asked Angela where we were going. It was a legitimate question, I thought, under the circumstances.

Does it matter? she said.

I shrugged and she pulled my hair.

Staten Island? I said.

Bingo. She laughed.

My brother bragged how you were a college girl, Angela said. Me, I always thought you didn't have the brains God gave you. Angela really laughed when she said this. Hard to believe we grew up on the same street, she said to me.

I could have mentioned that she was a full ten years older than I was and her father wore overalls to work and gambled his paycheck before he got home Fridays, but her mouth was up close to my ear, her perfume was up my nose, and she was poking that gun hard in my ribs.

I met Buddy in Manhattan but he said he lived out on Staten Island. Right away I knew something was up. He'd grown up in the Village. Staten Island? For me, Staten Island was Middlin' Beach and my mother's stories about the rented summer bungalow thirteen blocks from the ocean her first married summer when she was twenty and had a newborn baby (not me). My father took the ferry out every weekend. My mother thought she'd died and went to heaven. Her eight brothers and sisters thought so too, and came out every chance they got. No screens, no plumbing. I don't remember the amusement park or my cousins making human pyramids on the beach for the camera but there was an old 16 mm movie of me in underpants licking the block of ice that sat on the porch.

What I'm saying is, that for me, Staten Island didn't conjure images of the high life. It was somewhere you went to if you were on the lam, it seemed that far away; where you went when you owed the wrong people money, the guys with the broken noses, Buddy called them, or when you couldn't go back to the neighborhood, like Angela, who needed a place to keep her husband straight after he got out of prison. Her mother watched the kids and the old man's insurance policy, which paid double after he was crushed between the ship and the pier, paid for the house on Florence Street that was a primo fixer-upper. Buddy said that when he came back from California after his marriage broke up, they were sitting on orange crates with candles stuck in cheap wine bottles.

We drove through the Midtown Tunnel and onto the BQE and I could see the Verrazano—for my money, the best thing about Staten Island. We turned left off the bridge and drove down what always felt to me like a country lane. The houses were old, the colors of old houses, green and brown. They had patches of grass in the front. Hylan Boulevard curved and looped before it straightened out and you hit the traffic and the local guidos in muscle cars with music blasting, small strip malls with the same three or four stores, Chinese restaurants that would mix won ton and egg drop soup in one bowl, sandwich shops called Angelo's and Gino's, an overstuffed sub painted in primary colors on the plate glass window, bridal shops, catering halls, restaurants named Petruzzi's with lattice, cognac-colored windows and endless parking. The Staten Islanders loved outdoor parking. They loved parking lots better than garages because in a parking lot everyone could admire your good-looking, expensive car, and you could too.

Hylan Boulevard flooded in a sudden rain; it flooded bad. The semi-attached condos that had been built on the graveyard of grand old houses flooded too, and the cars parked to the sides of the front doors were moved to higher ground with the first sprinkle.

Angela?

Shut up, she said.

I turned my head and she rammed the gun in my side.

Don't look at me.

Why? Because I might recognize you?

Funny. You think you're so funny. Watch me laugh. You know, smarty pants, you should have just stayed where you belonged and away from Buddy. So now just shut your big mouth.

Someone should have warned me when I met Buddy that his family was crazy, but who knew they were this crazy? And let me tell you, when I met Buddy I wasn't planning on anything long term. All I wanted was a good time. And Buddy was a lot of fun. He knew everybody and had all kinds of connections. We went to after-hours bars and gambling parlors, clubs with private shows in back. We walked past velvet ropes and got the best seats; drinks arrived at the table compliments of the house. There were bear hugs and cheek kisses.

But honestly, did I need a guy who was broke and living with his mother, his two kids, his sister, and a brother-in-law who had five-to-ten in Dannemora under his belt? Living on Staten Island no less? Buddy was pretty quiet about the Staten Island piece and hinted that it wasn't so bad and maybe we could live out there after we got married. He was awful grateful to Angela for taking him in when the ex-wife grabbed the stash, dumped the kids, and went AWOL with a South American disco dancer named Chico.

We made the turn off the boulevard and onto Florence Street. I was starting to think Angela was really stupid. She kidnaps me at gunpoint and brings me to her house?

When Joey pulled into the driveway, I could see the television flickering with the kids planted in front of it. Angela and Joey had four kids of their own and they all watched television together and made popcorn on Saturday nights. The kind in the aluminum pan that you hold over the stove and the top blows up like a balloon.

Angela handed Joey the gun and he pointed it at my face. That was scary, the idea of taking a bullet to the face. I shut my eyes.

Joey, I said, did you ever shoot anyone?

I thought I told you to shut up, Angela said, which made me open my eyes.

She was digging in her huge black alligator satchel (which for sure had "fallen off a truck," but who am I to talk?). Before she'd turned nasty, Angela would throw things my way when they came in pairs. Shit, I was wearing an 18 karat gold Rolex that had actually been special order, serial number and everything, from some guy who worked in the factory and swiped a few selectively every month. I was one to talk. Thinking about my watch made me look down at my arm that Angela was trying to duct tape to my other arm. We both zeroed in on the watch at the same time and Angela ripped it off my wrist.

Last year, she said, this would have been mine. Buddy would have bought it for me, so I'll just take it now.

I saw this as an opportunity and gave her an elbow to the lip and a slap on the side of her head, right on her ear. I had nothing to lose. I had read about serial killers. Once they get you tied up, you're done for. If only . . . Angela pulled back and punched me so hard that if I'd been a cartoon, the whole strip would have been nothing but stars.

When I opened my eyes again, Angela had taped my wrists and tied me up. The rope was around my neck and connected to my duct-taped wrists, kind of a semi-hog-tie. A disgusting concept. I was hating Angela, not to mention Joey who was waving what I noticed was a very beautiful Beretta in my face. I recognized it as Buddy's gun. It was a pocket pistol—used, unfortunately. Buddy was going to give it to me—for protection, he said when he showed it to me. The only reason I didn't have it was that Buddy was waiting for a holster. Buddy liked everything just so.

Angela, I said, this is really stupid. What's going on? What do you want? For Chrissakes, I'm marrying your brother in six weeks. Take this shit off me!

She looked at her watch—I mean, my watch that seemed now to be hers.

We've got a lot of time, she said to Joey. Buddy doesn't get home for hours.

There she was right. Buddy had two jobs, one at a restaurant and the other at a mob-owned nightclub somewhere in the 70s in Manhattan where the boss had signed a half-dead Judy Garland while she was nodding off on pills. I was supposed to meet him when he got off at four a.m., which was hours and hours away.

Can I put down this goddamn gun, Angela? Joey said. And can we get moving? Would you quit yapping?

Okay, okay. I thought you were ready. You mixed the cement, no?

It's not just the cement. I gotta move the rocks. They gotta fit. I want it to look nice.

I could feel the blood in the back of my throat; she must have broken my nose, the crazy bitch. I imagined the mouse starting under my eye.

You know we're in Great Kills, she said to me. Great Kills, get it? You're gonna be great killed. Angela thought this was hilarious.

I wasn't feeling so cocky right about then, I have to admit. I thought I was better than Angela. I mean, comparing us was like apples and pears, but if you want to know the truth, while I appreciated her finer qualities, ultimately I did feel she was a creature below.

Angela, talk to me. Let's figure this thing out, I said.

It's easy, she said. You're a smart girl; you figure it out. But let me give you a hint. Buddy's got everything here. We take care of each other. We're family. What's he need you for? What's he got to go to Manhattan for? You wanna take the kids away from me? I love those kids . . . they call me Mama. They hug me so tight sometimes I can't breathe.

We can work something out, I told her. Maybe Buddy and I could live here. Maybe find a house nearby . . .

Buddy had hinted at this very plan and I had kiboshed it unequivocally. I'd lived in Rome and Paris and Bombay. I was going to live in Staten Island next to his sister?

Buddy told me he asked and you said no.

I didn't. I never said no.

Buddy's a liar?

No, he just doesn't listen. You know, Angela, how he doesn't listen. It could be great, all of us together.

She looked at me. I sensed that Joey was feeling bad for me. His hand wasn't shaking so much anymore. I willed him to put down the gun but he didn't. He just wasn't gripping it so tight that his hand shook.

Angela smiled. She was a beautiful girl. Black hair, skin like pearls dipped in milk. The first time I met her, she had on a one-shoulder dress and I swear I wanted to put my tongue against her skin and lick, it was that luscious.

I fell for that once, Angela said, with that other rat bastard. We were like sisters. Then look what I had to do. She took everything anyway, but at least we got the kids. Joey and I took care of her, didn't we, Joey? But just my luck, we get rid of one son of a bitch and Buddy finds another. He's a real pain in my ass sometimes, my brother.

Angela, be honest, Buddy's only here with you because—

Because what?

She didn't look so beautiful right now. I shut my mouth. Because he had nowhere else to go, I wanted to say.

Buddy's mother always said she was sorry she gave up the tenement apartment on Spring Street. She didn't call it a tenement, though. She called it her "nice apartment." From Buddy I knew it was three rooms in the back, facing the alley, tub in the kitchen, and everyone waiting in the hallway when one of them took a bath on Saturdays. Tenements weren't Buddy's style and neither was Florence Street, from what I could see. There were more trees on Spring Street.

Joey had been "fixing up" the house on Florence Street ever since he'd gotten out. Joey was handy, he had what they called "hands of gold," which he seemed to use for ripping things out and never putting them back, the bathroom on the second floor, for instance. We're getting a new bathroom, Angela had told me, but they'd been using the one in the basement for three years while Joey moved on to other projects, such as busting up the stairs so everyone had to walk up a wooden ramp like the cart horses in the stable on Thompson Street.

And then there was Joey's wall. The first time Buddy took me to Florence Street, Joey was in the front yard mixing cement. There were piles of boulders, different sizes, and Joey was using them to build a wall. The kids were carrying over the smaller ones and Joey was fitting them on top of one another and side by side and cementing them in place. The wall belonged on an English country estate. The wall belonged on meadows and hills and dales. The wall was beautiful and ridiculous. The house was small and ugly and sat on a small and ugly lot, and then all around it, not more than ten feet out, was this magnificent stone wall that each time I visited got higher and higher, until it was starting to look like a rampart. Buddy laughed about it. He called it Joey's therapy. But I have to be honest, it gave me the creeps.

I'm tired of talking, Angela said to me. Get out of the car.

No, no, Leave her in the car until I'm ready, Joey said.

We can't leave her in the car. We'll put her in the basement while you set things up.

The basement? Did you ever carry dead weight up stairs? Joey said. I'm no Hercules and for sure, she ain't no lightweight.

I let the insult pass. I'm always surprised when people say mean things about me. As I said, I was always thinking people liked me when they really didn't give a shit. But all that aside, what the hell were they talking about?

I pulled at my wrists, but when I did, the rope tightened around my neck. I was afraid I would pee myself. I thought I'd bring up using the bathroom but I wanted to wait for the right time. Maybe I could get away then, make a noise, maybe I had a chance. The kids would hear, the old lady, deaf as she was, the dog, the neighbors not twenty feet away, someone.

Angela smiled. She can walk, she said. She can walk up the basement stairs. It'll be dark.

You're kidding me, Joey said.

I always believed in you, Joey. Even with that crazy wall. I always believed in you. That's why I stuck, through thick and thin.

I have to go to the bathroom, I said.

You wanna take her? Joey said.

Let her piss herself, Angela told him. She looked me straight in the face. Whatta we care?

Can you guess the rest? Joey put the gun to my temple. Angela duct-taped my mouth. She checked the rope around my wrist and my neck. She pulled me out of the car and down the basement steps. Joey wanted to put out a mat so I could lie down. Angela said no. I'd piss on it, remember I had asked to go to the bathroom? And then she'd have to throw it out and Clorox the place. She'll be lying down forever, Angela said. Just like the other one.

In the end, they put some blankets on the floor and pushed me down. I could smell dog on the wool but I was glad just to lie there and close my eyes. I heard them leave. I watched the light go away as the sun went down. I heard the scrape of the trowel. I heard one of Buddy's kids call out to Joey, asking him why he was working on the wall, it was nighttime. I think I slept. And then they were pulling me up. Angela and Joey. And walking me up the stairs.

There was no moon. I wondered what Buddy would think—if he would think that, like his first wife, I had just up and disappeared. Gotten cold feet? Left him at the altar? And the kids . . . would they feel abandoned again? Miss me? I noticed when I got close to the wall how wide it was, wide enough to lie down on. The wall was different heights in different parts. I wondered how high it would go in the end. I realized I would never know.

Angela took my arm and walked me to a place where the wall was low, maybe four feet, and she made me lie down. I felt the stones that jutted through the layer of cement hard against my back, my shoulders, my head, and then she picked up a boulder, so big that it blocked my vision. It would have blocked out the moon if there had been one in the sky, and she brought it down with all her strength.

* * *

Buddy came home early the next morning. When he woke up, he took his coffee into the yard where Joey was working on the wall. The kids were rolling stones. They were still in their pajamas.

It's really coming along, Buddy said. This wall is going to be here after we're all dead, Joey. It's like the goddamn Colosseum.

The phone rang and someone inside picked it up. Is that for me? Buddy shouted.

You expecting a call? Joey said.

I thought it might be Ruby. She never showed up last night.

She ever done that before?

No, Buddy said. Never.

WHEN THEY ARE DONE WITH US

BY PATRICIA SMITH

Port Richmond

Maury's eyes were crazy wide, staring right into the camera, just like they were on yesterday's show and the show before that. His hand rested on the shoulder of some blubbering white girl, Keisha or Kiara something, her hair all hard-curled and greased up into those stiff-sprayed rings, smeared black circling her eyes, greening gold Nefertitis swinging from her ears, more faux preciousness twinkling from her left nostril. Seems like K or K's baby daddy could be any one of the fidgeting young black men and—surprise!—she kinda didn't know which one.

The contestants were all sloe-eyed, corkscrew braids, double negative, mad for no reason except that they had been identified on national television as fools who didn't give a damn where their dicks went. It was time, once again, for the paternity test and Maury's dramatic slicing open of that manila envelope. For some reason, the prospect of finally knowing whose seed had taken hold reduced Kiara or Keisha to unbridled bawling and a snorting of snot.

Jo had the show on more for background than anything, but she stopped for a closer look at the little nasty who'd opened her legs and been done in. It amazed her how anybody, let alone a white girl, could look at any one of those sadsacks and feel bad enough about herself to fuck him. "I ain't never been, or ain't never gonna be, that damned horny," she said out loud, just as Tyrell, sloe-eyed and corkscrewed, was revealed to be the father of the squirming little bastard in question.

"I'm gon' take care of my 'sponsibility," he monotoned, a semi-earnest declaration which was greeted by wild hooting and hand-clapping from Maury's drama-drunk studio audience. Even after receiving the sudden blessing of papahood, Tyrell avoided looking at or touching the mother of his child. Kiara or Keisha stood, shivering in a whorish skirt and halter top, in dire need of at least an orchestrated hug. She continued to keen.

I cannot watch this shit, Jo thought, just after thinking, Where did she find an actual halter top in 2010? Although she made a move to punch the television off, she didn't do it. Instead she lowered the volume so the string of skewed urban vignettes could still distract her from what she really needed to be doing. Maybe the next segment would feature some tooth-challenged redneck hurling a chair across the stage upon discovering, after a week or so of sweaty carnal acrobatics, that the he he thought was a she was really a he fervently embracing his she-ness.

Jo revisited her mental to-do. Last night's crusted dishes, still "soaking." A mountain of undies and towels, waiting to be lugged to the Bright Star laundromat, where the guy who guarded the dollar changers—to make damned sure that no "nonlaunderers" used them—never missed an opportunity to converse with her tits. Oh, and she'd skipped breakfast again. After her last tangle with an oil-slick omelet at The New Dinette, a succession of Dunkin's dry toasted things, and her own ambitious attempts to get healthy and choke down oatmeal, the idea of a morning meal had lost its appeal. By three p.m. she'd be trolling Port Richmond Avenue, inhaling a loaded slice or two at Denino's or resigning herself to The New's lunch menu and one of their huge, dizzying burgers.

There wasn't much in the fridge—various leftover pastas curling in Tupperware and cold cuts she could practically hear expiring. Ravenous, she spotted the pack of Luckies on the edge of the dinette table, and her whole mouth tingled with crave. Although the pack was half-empty, she didn't remember buying it. Just one, she thought. Just one, and maybe a little drinkie to follow. Instead she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, shutting it out, and did what Katie had told her to do. She said the word "poem" out loud.

That's it, she thought, scrambling for her wire-bound notebook and new pen. I'm going to write me a poem. From the flickering Panasonic, Maury asked, When did you first suspect that Aurelio was sleeping with your mother?

Poetry was Jo's new medicine. During her last trip to the university hospital's emergency room, her vague complaint that she had been "sleeping too long and smoking too much and maybe drinking a little harder and my kid is driving me crazy" earned her a useless nicotine patch and the advice of Katie McMahon, a perky community counselor, who suggested she put little bits of her life into lines. Rhyme or not, no matter. About anything she wanted it to be about. "If you call it a poem, then it is," Katie had said.

Surprisingly, the little scrawlings helped. She'd written more than a few choice lines about Al, the ex-cop who showed up with his monthly hard-on to pound her into the mattress with something he called love. She wasted whole pages on Charlie, who'd inhabited her womb for nine months, and now had no patience for her "stupid fuckin' rules." He dropped by occasionally to pilfer weed money from her wallet, gobble the contents of the refrigerator, or sleep off an encounter with too many shots of Jäger. On good days—or when she needed to remember that there had actually been good days—she wrote all pretty about a moment when she was full of light, strolling over the Bayonne Bridge like she was walking on water. From up there the island magically shed its dingy and became more than gossip, stench, and regret. The key to happiness on Staten Island, she decided, was to get as close as you could to the sky and make the assholes as small as possible.

Flipping to a fresh page in the notebook, she clicked the top of her pen and licked the point the way she'd seen real writers do before they—

A key rattled in the lock and the front door was flung open with such force that it banged into the wall, knocking more mint-green chips from the plaster. Jo felt her heart go large and stone.

"Hey, what the hell is up, Jo?"

He refused to call her Mom. Or Mother. Sixteen years old, six-feet-two inches of swaggering explosive. Her son.

"It's hot as shit out there. What's in this place to eat?"

"I think there's some ham in the—"

"The same ham as last time? That shit's old. Ain't nuthin' cooked in this bitch?"

Jo steeled herself. "Charlie, I told you not to come in here—"

"Cursing? Hungry? And you gon' do what?"

Jo knew the answer. Nothing. She had never not been terrified of her son. Charlie had ripped her open at birth, glared at her as he bit her breast to demand milk, pinched and pummeled his kindergarten classmates, set fire to wastebaskets in school restrooms, been suspended from sixth grade for showing up plastered on a vile mix of Kool-Aid and vodka, and greeted all attempts to control and educate with a raised middle finger. He strutted and primped in Day-Glo Jordans, a too-big Yankees cap twisted sideways on his head, pants two-sizes-too-wrong pulled down so far the waistband backed his ass. He adopted the lyric swagger of black boys, taking on their nuance and rhythms while hissing about "niggers" in the circle of his crew. While Jo watched in horror, Charlie grew as wide and high as a wall. He arced over her when she dared make mama noises, and huffed in her face with dead breath, which stank of cheap tobacco.

His eyes looked like someone had died behind them.

She wasn't sure what he did during the day. It wasn't school. She'd gotten letters and phone calls from Port Richmond High attesting to his continued absence. "He's a dropout," she finally blurted to one well-meaning guidance counselor, before hanging up the phone.

There were even rumors that Charlie had managed to father a child. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, Jo could see him snarling, fully erect, a gum-cracking girl laid wide and waiting. His lovemaking would be thrust and spit. When she thought of a child built of Charlie and air, a thick shudder ripped through her.

"Did you hear me? Food! I'm fuckin' hungry! I swear, Jo, don't make me have to—"

She sprang from her chair and bolted for the kitchen with no idea what she would do once she got there.

He'd only hit her once.

One clouded August night, a week after Charlie turned sixteen, Jo saw him on the street just after finishing her part-time job at Bloomy Rose, a florist in Midland Beach. She'd worked late that night, helping with a huge order for the funeral of a local politician. As she wound her way toward her bus stop, a fierce rain needled her cheeks. Assuming the rain had driven everyone inside, she was surprised to see a dark human huddle on Father Capodanno Boulevard just before Midland Avenue, and even more surprised to see her son at its edges.

But there he was, hanging on yet another corner with Bennie Mahoney, a no-gooder from New Dorp, and two other boys she didn't know. Their backs were hunched against the downpour, and she saw the orange flare of cigarettes. She wanted and didn't want to know what they were up to.

The sign on the nearest building on Midland read Q.S.I.N.Y., and she could hear the guttural thump of dance music from inside. The letters made no sense to her until she realized where she'd seen them before. The island's first openly gay club had launched on the Fourth of July weekend to much fanfare and trepidation. Staten Island wasn't known for its tolerance, and there were worries that the patrons of the club would become targets for ham-handed haters.

The letters stood for Queer Staten Island New York.

Jo felt an ominous drop in her belly.

Charlie's views on all things gay were well known and frequently bellowed. While Jo admitted a cringe when she thought about man-on-man, and a starkly uncomfortable curiosity when she considered girl-on-girl, Charlie's florid vocabulary was peppered with references to "fuckin' fags," "cocklickers," and "turd burglars." Jo remembered a bespectacled whisperer from their block who had packed up and hightailed it off the island with his family after being on the receiving end of a vicious beatdown. He never identified his attackers, but Jo remembered how he would practically shrivel when he passed Charlie on the street.

The Charlie who now, for no good reason, was in the middle of a meeting outside a gay dance club. Afraid of what he might be planning, and before she thought about the consequences of doing so, Jo shouted his name.

The group stopped its conspiratorial grumbling. All eyes snapped to her, standing across the street from them, the wind crimping her cheap umbrella, her cotton blouse plastered to her breasts and darkening with rain.

Her son's eyes bored holes into her. He did not move.

Bennie punched Charlie's shoulder hard, and laughed. "Hey, it's your fuckin' mommy." The two other boys joined in the merriment. But Charles Liam Mulroy, his steel-gray eyes locked to his mother's, did not speak. Jo couldn't bring herself to utter his name again.

They stood that way, three of the young men snickering, one son motionless and burning, one drenched mother craving the world of ten minutes ago. Finally, Jo spotted the approaching bus spewing puddles. She scurried to the stop and boarded, never looking back.

Late that night, she woke from a fitful sleep to an angry wall in her room, a wall dripping rain and hissing through its teeth. After two deep glasses of screw-top wine, gulped to calm her nerves, Jo hadn't heard Charlie come in.

"Don't you ever fuckin' do that again. You wanna be somebody's mother, get your ass a dog. Don't you ever admit you even fuckin' know me. Not in front of my crew. You see me, you don't say shit. You lucky I didn't lay your bitch ass flat right there on the street."

She didn't realize she was holding her breath until her head began to pound. Charlie was panting, fists clenched, backlit and glowing in the moonwash. She was just beginning to think how oddly beautiful the image was when it grabbed a fistful of pink pajama top, pulled her up from the pillow, and then knocked her back down with a slap that rattled her teeth.

"Don't. You. Ever. Fuckin'. Embarrass. Me. Again."

He dropped his body down on the side of the bed, waiting for Jo to meet his eyes. She couldn't. She lay with her head flattened to the left, the way it had fallen after the slap. She felt his hard gaze. After a wet intake of breath, he slowly lifted the pajama top and clamped her bare right breast with a huge, calloused hand. Jo silently willed her spirit out of the room. Charlie squeezed rough, then pinched the tip of her nipple so hard she whimpered.

He laughed. "This some sick shit. Wow. Man. You done got my cock hard in this bitch."

He popped up and strutted out of the bedroom, leaving behind the dead green smell of bad weather.

They never talked about it. She never called anyone, never thought about reporting him, never even mentioned it to Al, the ex-cop. From that day on, she never acknowledged him in public, no matter what he was doing, who he was with, where he was. And she stopped remembering the thick smear of blood she'd see on his skinned knuckles that night. She stopped wondering whose it was.

* * *

"I am fuckin' starvin' up in this bitch!" Charlie screamed again.

Jo clawed through cabinets and the fridge, searching for something, anything, that wasn't the same old ham. In the front room, Maury had probably morphed into another screechfest. She wanted to be back in that room, opening her notebook, finding that empty page, picking up her pen . . .

"Ooooohhhhh, godDAMN! What is this shit?"

Jo bolted for the living room and swallowed hard at the sight of Charlie holding the purple notebook, starkly focused on a particular page.

"Give that to me," she said, as calmly as she could manage. "That's mine."

"Oh, hell no. I'm seeing my name, so this shit is my business. I already read the one about you gettin' naked and fuckin' that cop. Mama's a muthafuckin' freak."

His eyes scanned the page, and she saw it all take turns in his face—confusion, anger, embarrassment, confusion, realization, anger again. She wondered what poem he'd found. She wondered what she'd pay for writing it.

Charlie started reading, his voice all exaggerated white:

Charlie is not a son, not a boy, not a man

He is the way a day turns toward a storm

He is a star that screams before disappearing

He is night without a bottom

I can't wake up from him, can't give

him back, can't even give him away,

can't think of anyone who would even want

that kind of exploding. I can't even say his

name without my heart stopping. I wish I

could remember giving him a home

in my body. I wonder if it would just

be easier to stop stop stop loving him

as easy as it was to stop loving me

Hearing the poem out loud, Jo couldn't help noticing that she was using the word "even" too much. Concentrating on that kept her from focusing on the ominous silence that followed Charlie's booming of the word "me."

The silence was broken by a laughter Jo had never heard before. Charlie threw back his head and opened so wide she could see the collapsed gray teeth at the back of his mouth. He laughed so hard he sputtered, and when he could manage it, he spat out snippets of her poem. "Not a son! Give him back! Give him away! Home in your body! Stop, stop, stop!" He laughed until there were tears in his eyes. "Stop!"

Still snorting, he pushed past her into the kitchen, waving the notebook over his head. He slapped it flat on a burner of the gas stove and held Jo at arm's length while he turned the knob up far as it would go. Flames leapt up around the notebook and burrowed toward its heart. The smoke alarm started thin, warbled, then blared. Above the din, Charlie laughed maniacally.

As Jo's poetry flared and sizzled, all those words she had scraped directly from the surface of her skin, Charlie turned the water on full blast in the kitchen sink, where last night's dinner dishes were still soaking. With a pair of metal salad tongs, he lifted the blazing notebook and tossed it under the running water. Jo could swear she heard it moan.

"You are such a sensitive bitch," a suddenly solemn Charlie hissed. "Getting in touch with your feeeeeeelings. Grow some fuckin' balls."

Jo fell to her knees on the tile and felt the day collapse around her. Before she could scream, she heard the front door squeal on its hinges and bang shut, so hard the smoke alarm hiccupped and died. And the laughter stopped.

No, it didn't.

* * *

That night, Jo woke to the sound of shouts and sirens outside her bedroom window. That wasn't unusual for Port Richmond, but there was something jagged about it this time. For a moment, she was disoriented. She had fallen asleep in her clothes, so tangled in her bedsheets that she couldn't move right away. She smelled liquor somewhere—on her pillow? in her hair?—and remembered swilling Jack Daniel's after Charlie stormed out, hoping to drop the curtain on one bitch of a day. She felt bleary. Her eyes opened behind a cloud. She peered at her alarm clock. Four fifteen a.m.

Jo imagined that an acrid whisper of smoke was the dying breath of her poetry, still floating in the kitchen sink. Until now, she hadn't realized how important the pages had become to her, and nothing in the notebook could be salvaged. The heavy thought of beginning again made her head drop to the pillow, to the left, the way it had when her son slapped her. She wanted sleep to pull her under again. But the street noise grew louder and more insistent, the stench more disturbing than the island's usual garbage-tinged funk.

Jo freed her legs from the sheets and lumbered to her window. Number 302, directly across Nicholas, was burning. Had burned. The two windows on the top floor were soft-sputtering black and orange. Her mouth hung open, torn between awe and panic. She'd slept through a damned fire? Had there been people inside? Were they okay? Why couldn't she picture the people who lived there? Were they black or white? After all, they were right across the street. She must have seen them hundreds of times. Were there kids?

Where was Charlie?

The weight of the question sickened her. Was she concerned about the safety of her son, or worried that he could somehow be responsible for the blaze?

Jo pulled on her old CSI sweats and a T-shirt, slipped into her sneakers without tying the laces, and ran outside, careful to lock the door behind her.

Nicholas was clogged with fire trucks, firefighters, and people spilling excitedly from two-flats. Jo's eyes darted wildly, searching the crowd for Charlie's sneer, his chopped reddish hair. She wanted to cover her ears against the Oh my God, oh Jesus, Dios mío babble of panic. All those upturned faces, the shouting, the questions, that bladed smell.

And the screeching woman, suddenly flailing, throwing her body against a knot of people determined to hold her back. Grim-faced firemen hauling four body bags out of the still-smoking building. More screaming.

Jo squeezed her eyes shut then, and she saw them clearly, the people who lived on the second floor. A smiling black woman holding the hands of a toddler and a little girl. An older girl. A teenage boy trailing behind, lugging those light-blue plastic bags from the Port Richmond market. She saw them stop to climb the stairs at 302 Nicholas.

But the screeching was not that woman.

* * *

The screeching woman was the mother of the woman who died, the grandmother of the four children who died.

Jo found that out during breakfast at The New Dinette. Exhausted and shell-shocked, her clothes smelling vaguely of smoke, she gnawed a slice of bacon and slurped peppered eggs while listening to tragedy's hum. No one could talk about anything but. She half-expected to hear her son's name.

The woman Jo had seen behind her closed eyes was dead. So were the two boys, the two girls. They had all died, but it wasn't the fire that killed them.

"That boy killed his brother and his sisters and his mama," Marla, a waitress, said to everyone who would listen, and to a few people who wouldn't. "Slit they throats, set that fire, then killed hisself."

Jo hovered over days of congealing breakfasts at The New long enough to hear different versions of the same story, which meant it must be true. Or, most of it. Melonie, seven, her throat sliced open, dead. Brittney, ten, throat slit, dead. The mother, Leisa, her throat not slit, smoke exploding her chest. The little one, Jermaine, still whole and unbloodied, clung to a chance but lost his fight at Richmond University Hospital. The fire had loved him so hard that when he first reached the emergency room, no one was sure if he was a girl or a boy.

Then there was C.J., manchild at fourteen, collapsed in a river of blood, an old-fashioned straight razor under his body. His own throat slit. The whisper was that he had a history of setting small fires. His charred note nearby: am sorry.

Jo couldn't grasp the mathematics of it, the impossibility of killing your family then sliding a blade across your own throat. She had seen that boy. She had seen him laughing, bouncing his little brother on his shoulders. She had seen him watching his sisters ride their bikes, barking like a big brother when they veered too close to the street. She had . . .

Charlie setting fires in the boys' room.

Charlie burning the words that wondered what he was.

* * *

But C.J. wasn't Charlie. Thank God. Her son hadn't gone that far, hadn't burned that house down, hadn't killed anyone.

Then her next thought, before she could stop it: But if he had, someone would have come for him. Someone would have taken him away.

* * *

Charlie and Bennie, smelling like men, sat on the couch half-watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees. The two of them overwhelmed the room. Their flopping arms and spread-eagle. Their vile mouths, open and chewing. Their uproarious stink.

Jo's son was on full blast: "Man, you hear about that crazy nigger killed his mother? And his sisters? With a razor, then burned them up. Nigga got some balls though. Cut this own throat too. Gotta give him credit for going out tough like that. Musta not liked his mama. Bitch musta been ridin' his fuckin' nerves. He took her out."

Bennie snorted as Charlie pointedly met his mother's eyes and grinned. He raised a dirty glass of something clear.

Whenever he was home now, which was less and less, Jo folded herself into the smallest corner of the place, stitched her lips shut, and learned to nod. She fried huge slabs of fatty meat, mashed mounds of potatoes, and became a regular at Mexico Supermarket. (She couldn't shop at the Port Richmond store anymore because of the light-blue bags.) She crammed her basket with honey buns, jalapeño chips, taquitos, powdered donuts, Red Bull, ice cream, cigarettes, pork rinds, and moon pies, then slathered everything with butter and served it up to her ravenous ass of a son.

She wouldn't give him time or room to want for anything. She didn't want him to realize that she'd already served her purpose. She wouldn't give him reason to open her throat, burn her down.

All Charlie did was eat, sleep off highs, and grow taller and wider. His pores leaked poison and stained the walls. Jo cooked and nodded, answered promptly to "Hey, bitch," and hid her new notebook, a smaller one, behind a row of vases on a high shelf in her room. When she was sure that Charlie was out, she wrote poems to her new dead friend Leisa, who had a son who killed her.

When they are done with us

When they are done with us

When there is no longer a road

From our blood to theirs

All we do is remind them

of need

And it is us who taught them

never to need

anything

Suddenly there is no river deep enough

for us

No fire blue enough to strain for our bone

No love

at all

Jo tried not to imagine what Charlie would do if he found this notebook, if he saw how she held whole conversations with a woman she did not know. She had lived for years just across the street. Jo wished she had spoken to her past the occasional nod, wished she hadn't assumed they'd have nothing in common because the woman was black and Jo was white.

No. Not the woman. Leisa.

They could have shopped together at the market, waddling home laden with light-blue plastic bags filled with cans of tuna, spongy white bread, brown fruit. And when the moment was right, Jo could have taken Leisa's hand and said, gently, Describe your son's eyes.

They could have saved each other.

* * *

One morning Jo copied a poem she'd worked on the whole day before, trying to make it perfect.

Leisa, it is hard to admit

the poison that burned through our bodies

and became them

Hard to recite this crooked alphabet

Hard to know we can no longer

circle them with our arms

and contain their whole lives

Their horrible secret is how they

burst like flowers from our bodies

They damn us for remembering

They damn us for wanting

to sing

that story

It still wasn't perfect, but there was something Jo felt she needed to do.

She pulled the page carefully from the notebook, folded it four times, and wrote Leisa in her best flowing cursive. Then she crossed the street to the makeshift altar, a raggedy explosion of blooms and mildewing stuffed animals in front of 302 Richmond's scarred shell. There had been people milling around the altar every day, but now there was no one. She studied it for a minute, then tucked the poem beneath a bug-eyed duck. She whispered a run-on sentence that may have been prayer.

Then she walked down to the bodega to pick up coffee and copies of the Advance and the Post. Reading both the Staten Island and NYC papers was her entertainment, akin to watching Maury and Springer in the mornings. Wallowing in the grime and drama, she was reminded that she lived both in, and close to, a cesspool.

The place was packed with people, which was unusual for the hour. There was that tragic hum again, that sad tangle of different languages in stages of disbelief. Jo wondered if something had happened during the night.

At the newspaper rack, she read the headline and the first graph of the Post's front-page story before she even picked it up.

IT WAS MOM IN STATEN ISLAND MASSACRE HORROR:

The mother did it. The horrific murder-suicide that ended in an arson on Staten Island was committed by the deranged mom, who slit three of her kids' throats before she killed herself and her baby in the blaze, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

Autopsies showed that C.J., Melonie, and Brittney had pills in their stomaches. They were dead before the fire. They hadn't just lined up and waited to be killed. They'd been drugged first.

And the note: they'd found Leisa's diary and compared the handwriting. She had written am sorry. She had left the note close to her son's body, which was like putting a smoking gun in his hand.

Jo felt a needle traveling in her blood. She picked up the paper and left, without talking to anyone, without paying. She didn't remember her walk back home, but when she looked up, she was there. And so was Al, the ex-cop, hovering around her door, grinning like a Cheshire and, as always, leading with his zipper.

"Hey, Jo-bean," he hissed. "Been thinkin' about you like craaaazzy. Came by as soon as I got a break." His chapped lips brushed the side of her face, then his tongue touched. Jo thought maybe the heat of another body would burn away the rest of the day. Wordlessly, she let him in. Then, as soon as the door was closed, she blurted her usual fears, the fears a man was supposed to take care of. The fears were Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.

"You know, that kid needs a father to keep his ass in line." That was always Al the ex-cop's first suggestion, although he never hinted at who that father might be. "You want, I'll have some of the guys pick him up, scare the shit out of him."

Al seemed to have forgotten again that he was an ex-cop for a reason. Al seemed to have forgotten that once, sick with drink and aimlessly speeding in his cruiser, he'd scraped a sizable stretch of concrete barrier along the entry ramp from 440 to 278, stopped, and was promptly hit from behind by a grandmother in a Subaru station wagon. Two squad cars showed up to sort through the mess. They secured the silence of the terrified granny, scrubbed the scene clear of Al's airplane miniatures, and concocted a cover-up tale that would move a hardened judge to tears.

But later, when Al was oh-so-vaguely pressed on the details, he caved and admitted—well, everything. Swilling in his cruiser. Shooting sparks as he hugged the barrier. Getting rammed from behind. And being helped by his pals in blue. Babbling, he even named the pals.

Of course, he was fired. Even cooled his heels in the slammer for a bit.

So none of "the guys" he spoke of so lovingly would be inclined to do any favors for good ol' Al. Jo didn't bother reminding him about the circumstances of his ex-ness. He liked playing cop, so she let him.

He even fucked like one. Like he was alone. Everything he said to Jo—at Jo—was addressed to Al, the ex-cop: "Oh, you're hitting that pussy today, boy." "She's gonna remember this." "She's gon' be calling your name for days."

Jo had hoped that a body against hers would blur the day, dim the smell of fire. But not this body.

When he left, her room smelled like his deluded monologue, his miserable spurt. The newspaper sat on the bedside table. The mother did it. Leisa had killed herself and her children. Tell me why, Jo tried to beg her dead friend. But what came out was: Tell me how.

Maybe the smiling C.J. she'd seen playing with his siblings and lugging home groceries was just another kind of Charlie, one who'd learned to paint his snarling face with light. Maybe Leisa was crazy, out of her mind, her head crammed with the kind of wounding Jo was beginning to know.

Jo started to cry. She wept from bone, from memory, from loss. She wept for Leisa, for C.J., for the stranger who'd escaped her body and named her Bitch. She wept from lack of love, unleashed wracking sobs that hung wet in the air. She wept for the shadows that were Staten Island, the prison she lived in. She wept past the pushing open of her bedroom door, the brash boy who suddenly stood there.

"Fuck you cryin' for?"

Jo's head drooped as Charlie filled the door, swaying, smelling like he'd drank something with blades. "It smells like ass in here," he slurred. "Like your ass mixed with somebody else's ass." He laughed then. "Was the dick that good? It made you cry? Hell, if it wasn't nasty sick, I'd hit that. Make you call my name. Give you some shit to cry about."

He lumbered off. Jo heard him fall into bed in the other bedroom, still laughing, snorting. Soon he would rock the house with snotty snores. He would sleep deep into the night as poison spilled from his pores. He would wake up hungry, snarling, looking to be fed up in this bitch.

She pulled the notebook down from its hiding place, found her pen, and wrote another poem for Leisa, the mother, the murderer.

Where did it seep into you,

the ghost of the only answer?

How did you pull it in,

breathe it in, own it?

How did you find the teeth

you needed to take back your

own body, to build a revolution

in darkness? And how brave

of you

to take all of them

with you

There was more she wanted to say, but Jo was afraid that writing more would lead her to a road she couldn't travel. Not the why, but the how. She craved Leisa's strength (the how) not her weakness (the why).

She went to the kitchen and pulled down a note Charlie had written and taped to the fridge months ago: DAMN GO BY SOME FOOD. Already, she could hear his drunken snoring. She took the note back to her room, sat down, and began her work.

Going back and forth between her son's scrawled note and a page in her notebook, she worked for hours to get it right. The fat O. The swirl of the S. The strangely elegant Y. She felt Leisa gently guiding her hand as she traced the letters, traced the letters, mirrored the letters.

Down the hall, Charlie sang razors. But in Jo's room, he was writing an apology for what he was about to do. He was saying, I'm sorry, finishing with that strangely elegant Y.

This time, the dead boy would sign his name.

A USER'S GUIDE TO KEEPING YOUR KILLS FRESH

BY TED ANTHONY

Fresh Kills

New York Newsday

Wednesday, April 11, 2001

3 Corpses in L.I. Car Trunk

Authorities Unsure How Long Ago Deaths of Men, Woman Occurred

By Silvia D. Bruce, Staff Writer

The bodies of two men and a woman were found yesterday in the trunk of a Chevy Impala in Captree State Park in Suffolk County, and authorities said the deaths may not have been recent. A source said the case may have a connection to Staten Island . . .

Now and then, there are moments in a man's life that offer up complete clarity. They're rare, and rarer still is the ability to recognize them. It is only the truly intelligent, self-aware man who finds himself in a moment of clarity and actually sees it for what it is—and moves forward in a productive way.

Manny Antonio was not that kind of man.

If complete clarity sidled up to Manny in a tube top and fishnets and offered him a freebie, no strings attached, he would bitch-slap it and choose the company of his right hand and some Jergens instead. If complete clarity were an all-you-can-eat buffet of Chinese food, Manny would ask for the menu and order the chicken and broccoli. That's just Manny.

Or, I should say, that was Manny. Because all of Manoel Antonio's verbs got turned into the past tense on Staten Island exactly ten years ago today. It was ugly, it was messy, and it was—what are the exact right words here?—fucking hilarious. And it was precisely because Manny didn't know the moment of clarity when it came rushing toward him like a steroid-addled fullback.

I. MANNY'S PROBLEM

That would be Josephine and Conrad Spencer, late of Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey (what's with those dashes, anyway?). They weren't a bad sort, really. Their problem was that they loved to redecorate. Obsessively. Couldn't stop, in fact. Did up the living room in a South Pacific tiki theme for thirty grand, then redid the den in midcentury modern. Eames chairs and clean lines. That was another forty-five grand.

They borrowed big time from Marine Midland for those two rooms. Then they wanted to remodel some more. I mean, you and I may not like our kitchens to look like a warehouse from the 1930s, but to each his own. They wanted to borrow 50K more, but Marine Midland was wising up to them, and the loan officer told them to talk to the hand. So they looked for other, more . . . creative, shall we say, options.

Long story short, those informal solutions got mad when the repayments weren't happening on schedule. They turned to their own informal solutions, things got ugly, and the conundrum finally made its way down the food chain to Manny.

Manny Antonio was what Sergeant Joe Friday would have called "a small-time hood turned contract killer," a Portuguese thug who was a bad seed from the get-go. When he was a kid, at a neighbor's sixth birthday party, he popped all the balloons with a paring knife and pulled both claws off the birthday boy's pet crawfish. Blame the parents, if you must—divorced, addled by pills, dogged by anger-management issues before those words were ever invented—but if you ask me, Manny Antonio was born bad.

And even in that, he kind of sucked. I once had a basketball coach who said the wisest words a thirteen-year-old can hear: "If you're going to do something, be good at it. If you're going to chase pussy for a living, that's a choice—but be good at it." Manny wasn't even good at being bad. The best you could say about him was that he was very average at being very average.

Which was why he was a forgettable thug, the kind of scrub who gets the job done eventually, without any great panache. He inspired no emotion in anyone whatsoever. Remember Duffy Dyer, that second-string catcher from the early 1970s? What he was to the Mets in those days, Manny Antonio was to the people in the tri-state area who needed some thumping and killing done.

That points us back to Conrad and Josephine. She was the kind of woman who, when you see her berating the Acme cashier about the price of Shedd's Spread or complaining about the pepperoncini in the endless salad at the Olive Garden, you're glad she isn't your next-door neighbor. So when the informal loan outfit starts getting increasingly persistent in recovering its investment, she makes the tactical error, in an unfortunately aggressive phone call, of telling its duly appointed agents to take a hike.

Predictably, the duly appointed agents are not thrilled with this turn of events. They are particularly agitated about the part where Josephine implies that if the pressure does not abate, the involvement of local law enforcement might ensue. Namely the detectives of the Ho-Ho-Kus Police Department. "And don't think I won't do it. We have rights!" Josephine Spencer yells over the phone.

So the duly appointed agents, realizing the potential calamities associated with imminent police intervention, decide to schedule a visit to offer more personal customer service.

As you may be aware from the movies, these kinds of duly appointed agents rarely choose to undertake such visits on their own behalves. So they duly appoint their own agent. That is Manny.

I will pause at this point to say that the unfortunate breakage of an $8,500 original Eames Lounge Chair was not intentional on Manny's part. Though I will say also that Manny has no idea what an Eames Lounge Chair is as he breaks Josephine Spencer's neck across its armrest. He does, in passing, note the comfort of the vintage piece a few minutes later when he reclines in it briefly while using his boot-clad right foot to kick the supine Conrad Spencer's Men's Wearhouse-panted ballsack.

I doubt any other of Charles and Ray Eames's creations have witnessed such an assortment of unpleasantness—particularly to the soundtrack of a small-time hood humming Alan O'Day's forgotten 1977 pop anthem "Undercover Angel" while occasionally interrupting himself to growl at his victims, "Fuck you, you fucking fuck."

But I digress.

With the Spencers appropriately lifeless, Manny sets to getting their bodies into the Impala he has rented the night before, under an assumed name, from the Avis in Weehawken. It is past ten p.m. on a Wednesday night, so he is able to roll them up in two throw rugs (certainly not from the midcentury modern den; that is, of course, hardwood flooring) and, with some exertion, get them into the car without, he thinks, anyone getting a glimpse of his activities. He then sets out for his favorite dumping ground.

That is where the trouble that ended Manny really begins.

II. FRESH KILLS

I knew Manny pretty well. I was there at the beginning, and I was there at the end. I made the effort to get what he was about, even when it was clear there was not much there to be got. So here's how I think it went from his point of view at this juncture.

Manny crosses the Goethals, which he hasn't done in a while. He hates the Goethals. He hates all bridges. What if you stall on a bridge? What if you get a flat? You're a sitting duck, and if there's a body in the trunk, much less two, you're totally and completely fucked. Mister State Trooper, please don't stop me.

What's more, the Goethals is vertigo-inducing, and Manny has vertigo bad. Don't even talk to him about crossing the Verrazano or the GW. They're much longer and higher, and that would just be too much. He's also claustrophobic, so no Lincoln or Holland. Good thing he never needs to get to Long Island.

Fresh Kills is his go-to dumping ground. It's huge—things can get lost there with very little effort—and it's actually hard to get caught disposing of a body as long as you stay near the edges. If you get into the belly, you either get lost or get accosted. So far, unbelievably, neither has ever happened to Manny. At age thirty-seven, he's dumped about two bodies in Fresh Kills for each year of his life.

It's not as if he has any other choice. Manny used to go inland for his body-disposal needs, but inland New Jersey was the purview of the Chinese syndicate down in Metuchen. Nobody dared get anywhere near the Meadowlands; that had belonged to the Italians since Eisenhower. And the Pine Barrens has become entirely Eastern European territory; if the Russians don't cut off your balls for using it for corpse disposal, the Serbs or the Ukranians will. All of them know Manny for trying to litter his hits in their territory. All despise him with that dull, unmotivated disdain that means he can probably stay alive as long as he doesn't actually get in their way too much.

Those nuances haven't really mattered much lately, though. Business has been slow for Manny, as it often is for mediocre people who do things mediocrely, particularly contract killing. He hasn't even been to Staten Island for eighteen months, not since that date with the Vietnamese chick who worked at the nail salon on Richmond Avenue. Like most of his dates, that one hadn't gone well for Manny. He was hoping the evening would end with her on her back saying, "Fuck me." Instead, it ended with her on her high horse saying, "Fuck you."

"Fuck you too," Manny replied. He hasn't had a date since.

Manny makes it off the Goethals and eventually exits onto 440 South, careful to put the Impala's turn signal on at exactly the appropriate points. No sense in getting stopped for a stupid traffic violation.

For the next few minutes, he takes a series of narrow back roads to the edge of the landfill, to an access road that leads to a stone hut, inside of which is Manny's guy. By that I mean the watchman Manny pays to look the other way while he goes into the landfill to get rid of what he needs to get rid of, no questions asked.

Imagine a landscape brimming to the horizon with garbage. You saw that Pixar movie WALL·E, with the robot scampering around in a future America that has been turned into a giant garbage dump? That's sort of what it used to look like in big chunks of—well, big chunks of New York City, frankly.

These days it's difficult to imagine what it used to be like around here. You drive around now and see mostly rolling hills of green with roads gently snaking through them, and they're turning the whole thing into reclaimed wetlands and a giant park. Hard to believe that the detritus of our parents and grandparents lurks underneath, entombed for generations. Probably until the end of the planet itself. If the aliens ever land, they'll be able to learn a lot from the Clorox bottles of the Beat Generation, I'm sure.

That night, though, it had been just a few weeks since something game-changing had happened, something Manny—moron that he was—had no idea about. Fifty-three years after Robert Moses created it, the Fresh Kills Landfill had closed for business. Giuliani and Pataki had been on hand that day to watch the last barge, with a huge sign on it that said, LAST BARGE, chug to the dock. All that meant one thing: Manny was about to be royally screwed.

He thinks it's business as usual, though, as he pulls up and climbs through a hole in the razor-wired fence to get to the door of the hut. It is dark, but that's not odd. His guy is often asleep at the switch.

"Yo. Rodrigo." Manny dry heaves a couple times. The humidity is ugly for early April, and the place stinks to high heaven.

Nothing.

"Rodrigo! Manny! Manny Antonio! Got some transacting to do! I need the digger!" Manny bangs on the door of the hut. Silence. Another minute passes. Finally, Manny leans in and shines his pocket Maglite on the window part of the door and sees the sign:

FRESH KILLS LANDFILL

CLOSED PERMANENTLY 3/22/01

CONTACT DEPT OF SANITATION

NO TRESPASSING

"Fuck," Manny says to no one in particular. "Goddamnfuckingshitcocksuckerfuckfuckfuck." Manny's command of English, not exactly Wordsworth even on the best of days, falls apart completely when he's stressed.

Manny pulls a map of Staten Island from his back pocket and is gazing at it with the flashlight in his mouth when he sees a light in the distance. A car approaches. There's a flashing light. It's a cop—no, wait. It's some sanitation patrol truck. It pulls up, sees a human being in its headlights, and screeches to a halt, kicking up the dust of a billion spent Marlboro butts and empty dishwashing liquid bottles and discarded maxipads.

"Sir, can I help you? What are you doing here? You're not authorized to be here." The guy is about twenty-three, scarfing fast food and dripping melty drive-thru cheese onto a uniform that, if it weren't khaki, would look like a mall cop's. He seems utterly bewildered that Manny is standing in front of him.

"Don't worry," Manny says. "Just tying up some loose ends." He puts on his best I'm-in-control voice.

The rent-a-cop sighs, puts down his Arby's, and starts to get out of the car. "I'm going to need to see some—"

At that moment Manny does the last rational thing he will do on the final night of his life. With his Maglite still chomped in his teeth like a panatela, he pulls his Kel-Tec P-11 out of his waistband and shoots the guy between the eyes. The report rings out, echoing across the trash-saturated emptiness. Inertia keeps the guy standing up for a second, dead on his feet. Then a dark stain starts to spread around his khaki crotch. His ears twitch and he collapses with a dull thump.

"GodDAMNit!" Manny has no idea what to do.

He stands there for what feels to him like hours but is probably more like five minutes, wondering if rent-a-cop reinforcements are on the way. He searches the body and the car; no sign of a walkie-talkie. Maybe the guy wasn't in communication with base, or whatever.

So what does he do next, the dumbshit? Well, he says to himself, I gotta get rid of this body, and I might as well get rid of the van too, so—and this is the logic of a lifelong dullard—he sets the van on fire with the rent-a-cop's body in it. It promptly catches the gas tank and, as Manny hurries off, the whole thing explodes, taking the hut and a pile of garbage with it. A huge plume of smoke and orange flame claws into the air.

Manny floors the Impala, banking off a pile of old kitchen appliances and skidding along the dark dirt road as he tries to regain control of the wheel. Behind him, everything is fire and thick soot.

As he gets back onto the West Shore Expressway a few minutes later, he hears sirens in the distance. He diligently uses his turn signal to get back onto I-278.

Manny is crossing the Goethals for the second time in an hour when he notices that something is caught in the passenger-side windshield wiper of the Impala. He can't quite see what it is, so he turns on the wipers. The only thing that tells him what he's looking at is the Dole sticker. It is an old banana peel, decayed beyond recognition.

Nervously, Manny starts singing underneath his breath: "Undercover angel . . . midnight fantasy . . . I've never had a dream that made sweet love to me . . ."

In the trunk, the Spencers do not hear him. They are, after all, dead.

III. MEANWHILE

Two days pass.

No one hears from Manny.

Multiple police departments are sniffing around.

The disappearance of the Spencers after what looks like a violent struggle has made the Bergen Record. On the radio, 1010 WINS is calling it a possible home invasion by a stranger and telling people in North Jersey to lock their doors.

The rent-a-cop's murder has made the Advance, the Daily News, the Post, and even the New York Times.

The informal loan outfit is not happy. Which means the duly appointed agents are not happy.

Phone calls are made. Arrangements are set up. Money changes hands.

Another day passes.

IV. THE END, MY ONLY FRIEND

I had always liked Manny despite his shortcomings. But the world has to evolve. Hopey I don't know about, but we definitely have to be changey. The trouble with Manny was that he couldn't change. He got stuck in his own rut and created his own feedback loop.

So here's how it ended, ten years ago today:

Three days have passed. The cops in Ho-Ho-Kus have cordoned off the Spencer home and started an investigation. Neighbors are worried. One reports she saw a guy carrying carpets out to the trunk of some Chevy. A Lumina, she thinks it might have been.

On Staten Island, the rent-a-cop's murder is being investigated as some kind of mob hit. Turns out the kid, who had the job only because someone's uncle's cousin's brother-in-law got him on the books, was linked to some crime family down in Philly. His name was Pascale. He was studying computer science.

Manny has not called in to the duly appointed agents. The cops find his StarTAC in the parking lot of the Showplace bowling alley, and find it has a lot of calls to numbers that are entirely too close for comfort if you happen to be one of the aforementioned agents.

In fact, Manny is on hour seventy-five of a full-on, tri-state panic attack. He has driven from Staten Island to Watchung, from Totowa to New Haven, trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the bodies in the Impala's trunk. He considers briefly dumping them in the water in Bridgeport, but the docks are too well patrolled. He even starts heading, via back roads, to Rhode Island, where he thinks he can dump them in the salt marshes on the coast. But, in quick succession:

He overheats his engine heading east on I-95.

He (you'll love this one) flags down an AAA truck for help.

He manages, somehow, to keep the AAA guys out of the trunk. They fix things and go on their way.

He turns around, heads back toward Jersey, makes it to Secaucus, where he buys a disposable cell phone. Then he thinks: I'll go back to Staten Island. I'll just sneak into the landfill from another direction and dump the bodies. Brilliant.

He is panicking. He hasn't showered in four days, hasn't eaten in two. He's surviving on Jolt and NoDoz. The ticking clock is haunting him, floating above him in his mind like it used to in those 1950s noir flicks that starred actors like Edmond O'Brien. He actually thinks he can see the clock in the sky as he crosses the Goethals yet again, cursing the Spencers and the duly appointed agents and Goethals himself, whoever the fuck he was.

Manny approaches Fresh Kills again. It's about one a.m. on Saturday, and nature, as it will forever do, is reasserting itself. Like the garbage that encircles them for acres upon acres, Josephine and Conrad Spencer are starting to putrefy.

In the driver's seat, with the air-conditioning on, Manny can't really smell them. But the moment he gets out of the Impala, the odor that envelops it is almost intolerable. This makes him very paranoid at red lights. What's worse, the remnants of Josephine's Dior Poison, freshly applied to the nape of her neck only ninety minutes before Manny cracked it over the Eames armrest, is still a potent ingredient in the olfactory mix. It's as if hell were slow-roasting a pork shoulder one evening and trying to cover up the scent with some demonic Glade Solid.

Manny has nowhere to go, no place left to turn. So he does what he's always done in these dead-end situations, where there are no more options: he calls me.

"I'm fucked," he says. "I need help. This job's gone way bad."

He knows I'll come. I always do. I'm his big brother, after all.

I'm the reason he's so mediocre, or so he likes to tell me. I'm the educated one, the one who (according to Manny) got spoiled and sent to college or (according to me) did the work that pushed me forward. I'm the one our parents had the foresight to send away to my aunt's when they started fighting and having the drug problems. They kept him with them in North Jersey as they fell deeper into their slow slide, through the Nixon and Ford administrations and well into Carter. Talk about general malaise.

I was, of course, expecting his call. See, there's something Manny doesn't know about the whole situation, and it's the key bit of information: Yes, I'm going to help him out if at all possible. But I'm also probably going to end up killing him too.

The informal loan outfit, it seems, has given up on the duly appointed agents. One of the "loan officers" is an old crew buddy of mine and knows that I, like my brother, supplement my legit income with occasional freelance dirty work. He knows that the guy his outfit is trying to track down is my brother. He also knows, and I won't get into why here, that at heart I'm an amoral prick who would do anything for money. He's mostly right.

"Make your brother disappear," my crew buddy tells me. "I don't care how, I don't care where. I don't care if he's dead or living on an estate in the Falkland Islands. Just. Get. Him. Out. Of. Our. Hair."

For that he offers me $11,000. I accept.

That's where my head is when I pull up to a remote corner of the Fresh Kills Landfill, not far from the South Mound, at 2:46 a.m. on Saturday, April 7, 2001. I am going to tell my brother that he has to leave the United States of America for the rest of his life, and that I will give him $8,000 with which to do so, and that we will never see each other again. And that if he comes back to this country and I find out about it, I will kill him.

You may notice that $3,000 of my fee is unaccounted for in my plan. Hey, every job has expenses.

I see Manny lurking in the dark, right where he said he'd be when he called from the pay phone on Forest Avenue. I pop in two sticks of Doublemint and get out of my car. I am driving a gray 1983 Chevy Citation, which I got for $700 from some guy named Honest Achmed in Yonkers. It's the perfect kind of car for this line of work: just old and cheap enough to be ignored, not old enough to be considered classic yet. And easily disposable.

"Thanks for coming." Manny is wired. His voice is pulled taut.

"No problem. Tell me about the last three days." Frantically, kinetically, he recounts the saga from his point of view, leaving nothing out. I am amazed that he can still think coherently, but his tale makes sense. And, from what I know from my employers, it's all true.

I look at him, trying to keep a poker face. "So what are we going to do about this situation?" I am calm, and he sees it. That makes him more tense. He always hated that I knew how to keep my cool when he didn't.

"Do you think I fucking know? Why the fuck do you think I called you?"

"Manny—"

"Don't Manny me, dickhead. Just help me." He is trying to be menacing, which he knows doesn't work with me. He just sounds pathetic.

I lay it out for him. Leave the United States, go somewhere, don't come back. Or choose what's behind Door Number 2, which will only end badly.

"Wait. What?" The realization is dawning for my dimbulb brother. "You're working for the fucks who are coming after me?"

"Yeah, Manny, and if it were anyone else working for those fucks you'd be lying on the ground already with a bullet in your brain."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck you. You want a chance to get out of this alive?"

"Lemme get this straight," Manny says. "They hired you to kill me? You took a job to kill your own brother?"

"It doesn't have to be this way. Just say yes. Just walk away. This is the moment where you get to change things. You can do anything you want. You just can't stay here. Don't be a dumbshit. Just this once, don't be the dumbshit you've always been."

"No," he says. "Fuckfuckfuckfuck. They send my own big brother to kill me." He is flop-sweating, almost crying. I notice that he is wearing a Members Only jacket. I thought those disappeared around the time the first George Bush was elected president.

"Look, Manny. You're a cocksucker. You've always been a cocksucker. I can't say I love you, but we have a lot of history and a lot of blood. You're my brother. Let's at least try—"

That's when things go south. Something changes. Manny stands up straighter. I know this moment. It's the one where people realize the end is racing toward them, so they have nothing to lose. This is the about-to-die version of beer muscles.

Manny reaches into his waistband and pulls out his gun. "I'm not going anywhere, motherfucker. But you are." He aims the Kel-Tec at me. "Later," he says, and fires.

Fuck, I think to myself. I'm smarter than this. I can't believe it.

His shot misses. To this day, I have no idea how.

I move quickly, instinctively. I leap at Manny, punch him in the throat even as I bring my steel-toed boot down on his left ankle. The gun bounces away. He goes down instantly, gasping. I marvel at how much his face looks like my own, but without the intelligence. It's like he's a clay dummy molded and sculpted and fired in the kiln to resemble me, but without any of the life. I think of when I was nine and he was five and we slept in the woods behind the house one night. I tried to protect him by beating a rabid squirrel dead with a tree branch. He asked me, eyes shining, if we could find another squirrel and do it again.

I head butt him. His eyes, decidedly not shining, loll and sink back into his head. I kick him in the nuts. I hear a sound like a beach ball deflating. He waves his arms, lashing out in semiconsciousness, and connects with my left ear. I go down and see stars, my mouth open against the ground. Stuff goes into it, and I taste the garbage of New Yorkers in my mouth. I spit frantically, crawl to my knees, and go right back at him.

Fuck you, you fucking spoiled brat, I think to myself. I've been putting up with this for too damn long. I lean down, head butt him again, and then bite off his right ear. I spit it out in his face. I realize I am crying.

I also realize, through my haze of anger and tears, that the Rubicon has been crossed. There is no going back.

My baby brother is still gurgling when I take a decaying single-serving milk carton off the ground, crumple it up in my hand, and shove it into his mouth. I grab his chin and ram it upward into his skull repeatedly, which has the odd effect of making him look like some Warner Bros. cartoon character chewing a particularly recalcitrant piece of beef jerky. I can hear his jawbone squeaking. Inside his mouth, lit by the moon, I can see the words 2% milkfat.

Manny strains to breathe. I am picturing, in my mind, Joe Pesci's final scene in Casino, when he is buried alive in the desert. Manny and I watched that movie on video the last time we hung out a few months back.

I spit out my wad of Doublemint, pull it into two pieces, and shove one up each of his nostrils. That does the trick. Airflow is now nonexistent. As he pushes to clear the airway and take in oxygen, his face turns red, then purple. His left eye blows out and goes dim, taking on the look of a built-in eye patch. Arrrrrr, I think to myself, making the pirate noise in my head.

Like I said: fucking hilarious.

I spot the Kel-Tec on the ground a yard or two away. I grab it, anchor my heel, and fire down at him. His head explodes at my feet. Brain on my boots. The shot has knocked the gum out of his nose, and he makes one final, inadvertent exhale.

"You asshole!" I yell, spitting in what's left of his face. "Couldn't you have just this once listened to me? Couldn't you have just fucking said yes?"

No one hears me. I have just killed my brother. I feel . . . nothing. I feel absolutely nothing.

I black out. When I wake up, it is thirty-five minutes later. It is still dark in the landfill. It still smells. My brother is still dead, lying next to me.

I climb to my feet, reach into Manny's pocket and take out the key to the rental car. I shamble over and open the trunk of Manny's Impala. Josephine and Conrad Spencer stare up at me with unknowing eyes, supine, the lump of the spare tire under rough felt between them. The smell is almost unbearable.

I lift up Manny's body, carry it to the trunk, and place it between the two people he killed. I do so gingerly; he is, after all, my brother.

* * *

Turns out I was Manny's moment of clarity, and he chose the hand and the lotion. Offered the grand buffet, he went with the chicken and broccoli. Maybe it was gonna be this way no matter what. Maybe my parents just did him too much damage. Maybe it's true what they say: garbage in, garbage out.

I, however, am still alive. And I need to get out of the country's biggest dump and deal with the mess that my brother made and that I have to clean up.

That I can do. I know what Manny does not—that when it comes to dumping bodies, Suffolk County is the new black. In the new millennium, everyone who's anyone is getting rid of their dead people there.

How could Manny have known? He was too phobic to take the tunnels into Manhattan and Long Island, too stupid to even consider there might be a new frontier beyond the ones he spent his life haunting. The closed-minded fuck couldn't even consider there might be another way to do things. Just like Dad. "Oh, I couldn't possibly stop taking the pills. There's no other way, boy." Assholes.

I park the Citation where it won't be seen and wipe the steering wheel and driver's area free of any prints. I get into the Impala and make my way to Richmond Avenue, then I-278 East and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge beyond. I am careful to use my turn signal and not speed; no sense getting nailed on something stupid at this point in the game. Dawn is starting to break. I love the Verrazano and the chance to see lower Manhattan at dawn. The Twin Towers are always so beautiful just before the sun starts to rise.

I pass through Brooklyn, pass through Queens. I get on the Utopia Parkway and hit the gas on Manny's rented Impala, humming "Undercover Angel" as I drive east toward Suffolk County. Maybe I'll stop in and see my big sister in Yaphank while I'm out here. She and I have always been close.

V. ME, HAPPILY EVER AFTER

I can't believe my brother is dead ten years. Seems like yesterday. I have lots of fond memories when I think of him, ones that predate the day I pocketed the money that finished him off. Family's like that, though. No matter what, in the end you still feel connected. Nothing feels better than blood on blood.

These days, I run a legit business—data processing for corporations that need to outsource it. It's pretty good—I have twenty-three employees who call me boss—yet I sometimes miss the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-dirty flavor of my former job. But being a thug for hire is, I suppose, a game for the young.

Funny thing, though: the money I got from getting Manny out of the way started me down this path. After that I got better at killing, more nimble, and I really started to rake in the cash. I innovated. Within months, I was the first in the business to use a GPS to plot the distance between burial sites, the first to use tasers for more efficient and cleaner torture, the first to understand how the Internet can be used to mine data and make contract killing more efficient. Change is everywhere these days, and people who don't adapt will die. Figuratively speaking.

* * *

I got out in 2004 when I met the woman who would become my bride. She has no idea what I used to do for a living. Today we live on Staten Island, on a little hill where you can see the bottom of Manhattan. The Towers are gone from the view, of course, but still—I can't imagine being anywhere else. It's right in the middle of things, but it's remote too. We have two boys, six and two, the same age difference as me and Manny. They're good kids, but sometimes they fight. I hate when brothers fight.

I do think this park they're building where the landfill once stood will be cool. I'll probably even take my kids there. History is history, even when you can't talk about it. Even when it involves fratricide. I like to think that I did Manny a favor, got him out of an unresolvable situation—and a life—that he simply couldn't handle. This is rationalization, I know. But that's what killers do. We rationalize. It allows us to pretend we're regular members of society. I've just managed to do it longer than most.

You could argue that people never change. I would disagree. Because the day I killed Manny changed my life. I didn't know it then, but I know it now. It was a horrible thing that taught me how to improve myself. These days, I almost never feel like a killer anymore. I owe that all to Manny.

Now and then, there are moments in a man's life that offer up complete clarity. They're rare, and rarer still is the ability to recognize them. It is only the truly intelligent, self-aware man who finds himself in a moment of clarity and actually sees it for what it is—and moves forward in a productive way.

I am that kind of man. My brother, as I stated earlier, was not.

DARK WAS THE NIGHT, COLD WAS THE GROUND

BY SHAY YOUNGBLOOD

South Beach

The sound was soft at first, a scratching that seemed to be part of the hip-hop song blasting from the open windows of the vintage bronze Mercedes as it pulled up next to the white Lincoln I was sitting in.

An unnaturally tan, pear-shaped man, wearing a plaid golf hat and sunglasses, stepped gingerly onto the gas station's oil-stained concrete in a pair of shiny penny loafers. He wheezed as if he had asthma and tucked the tail of a pink, buttoned-down shirt into the waistband of a pair of gray sweatpants, which were stained at the knees. I saw that the muffler of the wide four-door model car was almost touching the ground.

The man grunted and stretched his arms out as if he'd been driving for a long time. He turned in my direction and sniffed the air with a grimace. The wind had shifted and the aroma from the nearby Fresh Kills Landfill, also known as "the dump," wafted over the top of a long line of leafy green trees, cleverly planted to camouflage the rolling hills of garbage facing the Staten Island Mall. The man slammed his car door shut, turned on his heels with a military twist, and marched into the store. Although there was a driving boom box beat thumping out of the windows, I was sure now of a dissonant muffled tapping coming from the sagging trunk of the Mercedes.

It was club night and my new friend Francesca "Frankie" Dacosta had stopped at the gas station near her house on the western shore of Staten Island to buy a six-pack of peach wine coolers and a bag of ice. I had met Frankie a few days before, at the grocery store on Forest Avenue. I was standing in the produce aisle holding a large bunch of collard greens. My fingers felt the leaves as if they were braille, as if some message decoded along the thick stems and fine veins could explain why Raymond, my husband of forty-two years, was gone. It was so unfair. He had been hammering a nail into the wall so we could hang the framed photo of our last trip to the Grand Canyon when he fell to the floor. The doctor said a blood vessel had burst in his head. Six months and one day after we both retired from thirty-seven years of teaching in the New York City public school system, we thought our lives were just beginning.

I sat up night after night for two weeks listening to Blind Willie Johnson's sorrowful blues, a moan accompanied by bottleneck guitar, raw emotion that echoed my grief, Dark was the night, cold was the ground . . . I didn't want to die, but living without my Raymond took the sweet out of everything.

Frankie turned a corner in the supermarket and saw me standing in the produce section holding the collard greens like a wedding bouquet. Silent tears poured down my face onto the front of a red silk blouse that had been my husband's favorite.

"I wanted to take a picture, but my good sense took over and I gave you a pack of tissues and took you home with me," Frankie told me later.

* * *

I opened the passenger door of the Lincoln and was about to get closer to the sound when Frankie came flying from the store like she was being chased by demons out of hell. The loose black shift she wore was hiked up above her pale knees and she pressed the sack of wine coolers to her chest. She tossed the bag of ice onto the backseat, barely missing my head.

"Get in! Lock the doors!" She barked commands and I followed orders. Frankie jumped in the car and hit the power lock three times. She pressed another button and the windows rolled up at lightning speed.

"You're sweating. What's going on?"

"There's a really creepy guy in there. He's trying to get the attendant to give him half a gallon of gas in a mayonnaise jar, thirteen matches, and six yards of silver masking tape."

"Sounds like he's making a recipe or something."

"Or something." Frankie wiped sweat off her upper lip with a handkerchief.

"I think there's a body in the trunk." I rolled the window down a few inches. "Listen."

"That's crappy music." She waved the handkerchief in front of her face.

"Listen," I shushed her. We both heard a loud thump.

Just then the driver of the Mercedes strolled out of the store cursing the gas attendant's mother. I rolled up the window and looked over at Frankie. Then my head snapped back toward the Mercedes when I heard a crash. The man had thrown the empty mayonnaise jar against the side of the building before getting back in his car. The Mercedes took off, leaving behind a trail of smoke, the smell of burning rubber, and the echo of screeching tires.

"He's headed toward the dump. Should we . . ."

Frankie pressed her lips together and shook her head. "Marie, honey, this is Staten Island. We should be blind, deaf, and dumb." She brought two fingers to her lips, closed her eyes, and pressed her other hand to her ear.

"Maybe it was a big dog," I said, sure it wasn't.

"Yeah, and maybe it won't snow this December," Frankie countered, pulling into Friday evening traffic on Richmond Avenue.

"What if it's somebody you know?"

"I don't know the kind of people who'd be locked up in the trunk of a car, do you?"

"He was acting so crazy. I just know he's going off to do something bad."

"He's a bad man. What do you want to do about it, Marie?"

"We didn't do it already, so I guess we leave it alone."

"Thank you. Enough already about that bum."

We stopped talking about the guy, but I couldn't stop thinking about him.

We took the long way to Frankie's house. She liked driving through Todt Hill where the wealthy lived. Frankie said Paul Castellano of the Gambino crime family had lived in a house that was an exact replica of the White House, down to the flagpole flying both the American and Italian flags. I read somewhere that Todt was a Dutch word for dead. There was a large cemetery nearby and I also took note that there were no sidewalks or public transportation in the neighborhood.

On the day we met, Frankie invited me to her South Beach home and a meeting of the Staten Island Ward Widows of America. After her husband Ignacio died, Frankie had painted every room in her house bright yellow—with the exception of the bedroom, which she painted red velvet. Frankie had a sweet tooth, and sleeping alone for seven years hadn't made her any less lonely for companionship, or desserts. Although the widows took turns making dessert, Frankie had a great recipe for cannoli, which was to die for.

"Marie," she said, "for you, I'm making cannoli. I want to bring some sweetness back into your life."

She worked real hard to make me smile again.

Making the cannoli was an all-day affair. The recipe had been given to her by her mother-in-law, along with the responsibility to pass it on to the women in the family. When Ignacio died of a heart attack on his job as an electrician for the city, Frankie had been inconsolable for months. She read an article in the New York Times about a group of widows who met every month for dinner and companionship. Those were the things she missed most, and so for the past seven years she and her friends had been meeting monthly in each other's homes to eat together and put some sweetness in their lives.

Frankie, Olympia, Celia, Theresa, and Angelina were well into their sixties, and all but Angelina were either widowed or divorced. At first the women eyed me a little suspiciously. It was rare to see a black woman in this part of Staten Island—especially in this famously clannish Italian stretch of Hickory Boulevard—although I had recently learned that in the seventeenth century early settlers on the island had been French Huguenots and freed slaves. I didn't say much at that first meeting, and after brief introductions the conversations started in as if I weren't even there.

* * *

Today the women arrived at the front door of Frankie's home within minutes of each other. Celia was the first. Frankie had invited her after months of listening to her complaints about being a jailhouse widow. Although Celia's husband wasn't dead, she was hoping he'd die in prison where he had been for the past three years serving time for bigamy. His wife in Ireland showed up on their doorstep one day demanding back–child support for a teenager he claimed to know nothing about.

"Excuse my French, ladies, but that Irish fucker ruined my retirement. I'm supposed to be lounging on a beach in the Bahamas with a cold cocktail in my hand."

Angelina, still as thin and girlish as she was in high school, had a bum for a husband. Tito had terrorized her from the moment she met him in high school, bullying her into marriage at sixteen and getting her pregnant every ten months for the next six years. She finally had her tubes tied after saying a few dozen Hail Marys. She wasn't a widow, but she dreamed about it. She was an honorary member of the club and a portion of every meeting was dedicated to exploring ways to kill Tito. They had poisoned him, hired someone else to kill him, put a spell on him, and each month looked forward to concocting the most creative murder so that Angelina would be eligible for his pension. Tito had left the family years ago, so in a way Angelina was living like a widow, but without the pension. She earned income as a wedding seamstress and had a team of well-behaved children who helped make her home business a success.

Olympia, loudmouthed and vain, divorced her husband thirteen years ago, but she still cooked him dinner every night and delivered it to him in the basement of his Kensington Street home, where he'd lived since the young secretary he left her for left him when he ran out of money. His business failed and his hair fell out. Still, he was the father of her two daughters and she was grateful for that, but was hoping he'd die soon and put everyone out of their misery.

That day she wore a bejeweled patch over her left eye because her recent self-improvement had been laser surgery so she wouldn't have to wear trifocals. She had a tall weave of teased hair that fluffed around her face like blond cotton candy; Frankie said she looked like a disco pirate and I had to agree. The only thing missing was a parrot on her shoulder and a cutlass in her hand.

After Theresa's first husband died in a mysterious fire, she got involved with a married man who strung her along for ten years before marrying her. She was still mourning her dead husband while trying to keep the new one interested.

"Come on, Frankie, give me the recipe. Bennie would buy me a fur coat if I made cannoli like this," Theresa said.

Requests for Frankie's secret cannoli recipe were always appreciated, but she declined with her usual answer: "If I told you the recipe I'd have to kill you. This one goes with me to my grave, ladies, since it looks like neither one of my sons want to make me a grandmother."

"What's the matter with your Gianni? He's a handsome guy, got a good job in the city," said Angelina, already a little tipsy from her second glass of chianti.

"Too damn picky, my Gianni. He's thirty-five years old and still no wife." Frankie dabbed at her mouth with a linen napkin.

"You should've left him in Sicily with your brothers for a few years."

"My brothers would've killed him. He likes to read books. They're fishermen, they gut fish for fun. Gianni hates fish. He barely lasted a week every other summer. One good thing came out of it, though. He speaks perfect Italian."

"Theresa, you got anybody for Gianni? Is your youngest married yet?"

Theresa was well respected as a matchmaker since she had miraculously married off her homely thirty-year-old niece to a retired boat captain in Sardinia and successfully introduced a young cousin with a limp to a cab driver who lived in Sunnyside.

"My Sheila's married three times already. The oldest is married to her job. Works for a lawyer in Bay Ridge but she spends most of her time in the city. She seems to have a taste for married men," Theresa complained.

"Just like her mother." Olympia poured more chianti into my glass.

"What do you mean, Olympia? Ben was almost divorced when I met him. We got married right after his divorce was final."

"Ten years later, wasn't it?" Olympia smiled at me and winked.

"Olympia, I swear I'll put your other eye out and it won't be temporary."

"Frankie, your son Charlie, he's connected, isn't he?" Olympia changed the subject.

Frankie's look could have sliced through the Italian marble fireplace. Her voice was cold and dropped to a whisper: "My son Cicero is in construction like his father. He's a legitimate businessman."

"I didn't mean anything . . ."

"Cicero's a good boy. He brings me a box of assorted from Alfonso's Bakery every Sunday, and my Gianni, he works with me in my garden. He bought me a Madonna to put in the backyard. He'll help me install it before the ground freezes. Gianni, he's a good boy. A little queer with the books and all, but I couldn't be more proud of him. He teaches English at a private school on the Upper East Side."

"My Nardo saw him coming out of a double feature at the mall last week," Celia offered.

"Was he with somebody?" Angelina asked.

"All alone. So sad. He's so good-looking." Celia picked up the framed photo of Frankie's youngest son from the buffet.

"Movie-star handsome," Olympia said, passing his photograph around the dining room table.

"I know I can find somebody for him," Theresa insisted.

"Staten Island is like a village. Everybody knows your freaking business and thinks they can improve it." Olympia adjusted her eye patch.

"So, girls, how we gonna kill Angelina's husband this week?" Frankie asked, passing the dish of cannoli around a second time.

"What about poisoning his favorite dessert?" I suggested.

The women all laughed. "We tried that years ago. Don't you watch CSI: NY? It's got to look like an accident."

"Tito didn't come for dinner. The kids called him a dozen times, but he won't answer. It's not like him."

"Do you think he's gambling again?" Olympia asked.

"Maybe. Some fat guy driving a Mercedes came by the house looking for him. He reeked. Who wears Old Spice anymore?"

I glanced over at Frankie.

"Debt collectors," Frankie said, smiling.

* * *

A week before Christmas, Frankie invited me to stay the week at her house after I confessed that all I did was listen to the blues and cry into several glasses of red wine every night. Neither of us felt like traveling during the holidays and we didn't want to be alone. Her sons worked on the holidays and at most dropped by for a glass of wine and a quick meal. My husband and I were both orphans and never had children. I felt so alone in the world without him. We made a few friends over the years among our colleagues, but they were all couples.

Frankie was surprised when her son Gianni called to say he wanted her to meet his girlfriend. She invited them over for cannoli and coffee the day I arrived.

When Gianni told his mother his girlfriend's name, Luzette, she thought the girl was French. He didn't tell her she was black.

"Nice to meet you, Mrs. Dacosta, Mrs. Greene," the petite caramel-colored girl whispered.

"Mrs. Dacosta was my mother-in-law. Francesca was my mother's little girl. Call me Frankie and speak up."

"Ma! A pleasure, Mrs. Greene," Gianni said, shaking my hand and grinning like he'd won the lottery as he looked back and forth between me and his mother. The ladies were right, he was movie-star handsome and the young lady he brought home looked like a model. I felt sorry for that pretty little whispery girl, not because Frankie was mean but because it couldn't have been easy meeting the mother of a man who was so clearly a mama's boy. Gianni hung their coats and scarves on a hook by the front door.

Frankie led us into the dining room we had spent all day decorating with garlands of fake holly and bowls of silver balls. She picked up the platter and offered Luzette a cannoli. The girl took a small bite.

"The cannoli . . . It's . . ."

"I know. Pretty good, huh?" Gianni mumbled through a mouthful.

"I don't think I've ever tasted anything so good. How do you make them?"

"I'd have to—"

"Ma, let's install the Madonna," Gianni cut in before his mother could threaten the life of his beloved.

"Tonight? It'll be dark soon."

"I know, but let's do it now. You know I don't have much time during the week, and weekends . . ."

"Yeah, I can see you've been busy." Frankie eyed the girl up and down.

"Ma, do you mind if I check the scores?"

"No, the remote is on the shelf behind the TV."

"Why do you put it there?"

"I get exercise when I change the channels."

Gianni turned on the TV, then flipped through the channels. He didn't seem to find what he was looking for.

"I'm getting you a satellite dish for Christmas," he said.

"Get yourself a—" Frankie's mouth opened, eyes wide. She stared at the TV as if the Holy Mother herself had appeared on the screen.

"The body of a man missing since late fall was found at the Staten Island dump this morning. He allegedly fell asleep in a dumpster and was crushed nearly beyond recognition by the industrial compactor at the Fresh Kills Landfill. The body has been identified as Tito . . ."

"Angelina's Christmas present!" Frankie exclaimed, then powered off the TV.

At that moment the kitchen phone rang. Gianni practically ran to answer it. A few minutes later he came back into the dining room buttoning up his coat.

"Ma, we gotta go. Cicero's truck broke down on the Verrazano Bridge. We'll be back in a flash. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Greene." He grabbed their coats and Luzette's hand and they disappeared into the night laughing like young people should when they're in love.

There was an awkward silence after they left.

"He never brought a girl home before. I thought he was gay."

"So, what did you think?"

"Can I be honest here? I always thought black was beautiful, before it was a popular opinion. Beautiful, yes, but not one of us. She must be pretty special for him to bring her home."

"I must be pretty special too."

"You're black?" Frankie laughed, and so did I. "Do you know how they met? Gianni said she was an angel of mercy. She took care of him after the ferry crashed back in October. I thought she was a nurse."

"A French nurse." I smiled.

"We should call Angelina, congratulate her." Frankie started putting away the cannoli.

"I knew it wasn't really a dog in the trunk of that car."

"Oh yes he was," Frankie said, biting into another cannoli.

* * *

We put on our coats, heavy gloves, and snow boots, and trudged out into the backyard. The ground was frozen, but there we were at dusk with a shovel and a pick ax in thirty-degree weather digging a hole for the white marble Madonna statue her son had given her. Unstoppable, Frankie went into the garage and came back with a lit propane torch. She handled it like a professional and passed it over a large square of earth. Tossing me a shovel, she took up a pick ax and we went to work.

"You know what brought me to New York? A man who lied to me, cheated on me, then dumped me. Before I met my husband I didn't think I would ever be able to trust anybody again. His friends didn't approve of us because I wasn't Jewish. Raymond saved my life." A flood of tears cooled my cheeks.

"My cannoli never had this effect on anyone before."

"Frankie, you don't have to love that girl, but she loves him and he loves you."

"It's okay by me if Gianni and that young lady want to have some café con leche babies so I won't have to take the cannoli recipe with me to my grave. I'll show her how to make gravy."

"What kind of gravy? The kind you put on biscuits?"

"Madonna! Have you got a lot to learn, Cookie." She wiped the tears from my eyes.

"I never had a nickname before."

"Well, Cookie, it suits you."

We had been digging for about twenty minutes when I heard Frankie let out a low moan.

"Madonna!"

I looked down into the hole and saw the skull. There was a dirty Dodger's baseball cap on the ground beside her feet.

"You bastard!" Frankie spat the words.

"Is that your husband?" I whispered in the dark.

"Are you nuts? That's Jackie Domino. He lived next door."

"How do you know it's him?"

"He wore that Dodgers cap like a flag."

"What's he doing in your backyard?"

"How the hell should I know? That dirty pile of bones kissed me at his sister's wedding, then bragged about it to some of his friends. I told my husband what really happened. A few days later Jackie told everyone he was taking a vacation in Florida. I never saw him again. His daughter sold the house not long after that and moved to the city."

"Frankie, we have to call the police."

"Not gonna happen, Marie."

"Did you give him your cannoli recipe?"

"Wasn't me, if that's what you're thinking. Jackie Domino was not a nice man. No class. Could've been anybody. His ex-wife, she was paying him alimony for the pleasure of not being married to him. He was a big gambler, liked to play the ponies, it could've been his bookie. He was a bully. His kids hated him too."

"What about your husband?"

"Ignacio? He was no saint, but I don't think he'd have killed Jackie over a kiss. Rough him up a little, no doubt, but he wouldn't have risked making me a jailhouse widow over this worthless pile of bones."

She picked up the Dodgers hat and turned it over like she was searching for clues, then kept her head down and wept. I put my arms around her and hummed that blues song I held onto in my cloudiest hours.

Dark was the night, cold was the ground . . .

Without speaking another word we worked for the next several hours in the growing darkness, mixing concrete, covering up old secrets, installing the Madonna, and whispering prayers of forgiveness.

"There are friends and there are friends who'll help you get rid of a body. Cookie, you're all right," Frankie said, biting into her third cannoli.

She reached over and held the hand that only a few hours before had touched the bones of Jackie Domino.

PART II

FIGHT OR FLIGHT

MISTAKES

BY MICHAEL PENNCAVAGE

The Ferry

In life sometimes the tiniest mistakes have the greatest consequences. That's the problem with mistakes. You can't control them. You can't prevent them.

They just happen.

Like this one.

You're at a bar over in SoHo. It's one of the nice ones. You know the type. Smoking isn't allowed but it's got a huge outdoor terrace. Palm trees and tropical plants sway in the warm night breeze. Inside, scented oxygenated air runs through the ventilation system to make you feel invigorated and get you in a drinking mood. The employees have wide smiles and can-do attitudes. This isn't one of those joints with the dollar drink specials. And you would never ever think of venturing inside. Well, maybe in the past. When you were younger and looking to see just what this town had to offer. Maybe even prove yourself a little.

But not anymore.

Tonight is Ben's bachelor party. He's the first of you to get hitched. Maybe someday when more of you are married, bachelor parties will be occasions of dullness and drudgery. But not now. Not this one. The way everyone is acting, it's like you are all getting married in three Sundays.

There's eight of you celebrating. It's a small group but large enough to be noticed. Everyone is dressed to impress. Everyone is dressed to kill. You've hired a stretch limousine and it makes everyone feel like a celebrity. You tipped the driver generously earlier in the night and he's now at your beck and call.

This is the fourth bar you're hitting tonight. Or maybe it's the fifth. They're beginning to blend together. But the sun hasn't risen yet so it can't be that late.

There's a boxing match on the television above the bar. A title belt is being decided. A small crowd is watching it intently. You catch the bartender slip a Benjamin into a money pouch and you realize he's taking side bets. You watch the fight until the round ends. Harold, one of the guys in the bachelor party, glances over at you. "What do you think?"

You shrug your shoulders. "Not bad."

"I bet you could whip either of their asses." He takes a swig of beer and staggers back one step.

"You're drunk."

"You want to place a bet?"

"No."

"Fine. I will then. Who's your money on?"

"I'm not sure."

"Don't bullshit me. You know who's going to win."

"Is that right?" You fold your arms. With each bar Harold has become more irritating. He can't hold his alcohol worth a damn.

Ben walks over to the group. He's beaming. "I have a confession to make. I've known the owner of this place for a few years."

"So?"

"He's given us an invitation into the back room. They got a craps table back there."

"Are you out of your mind?" one the group says.

"It's my bachelor party. Come on. It'll be fun. Just a few tosses of the dice. That's all I'm asking."

The group argues this for another minute before Ben wins out. After all, it's his night.

You all dutifully follow through the security checkpoints. They check IDs and pat down each of you for weapons. You've made it this far without getting separated. No sense in starting now.

The back room is small. A craps table is in the center, surrounded by a pair of poker and roulette tables. Security is everywhere and the pit boss warily keeps an eye on both the players and the observers. How this place hasn't been busted is a complete mystery. You guess the room can be broken down and the machines removed in minutes if the owners feel the Heat coming down.

The table bet is so steep it's criminal. Mark pulls two hundred from his wallet and the croupier slides over a feeble stack of chips. There's some serious money at play. A woman has on a diamond necklace worth more than an average person's house. She's got three stacks of chips so tall they'd knock someone out if they fell over. A man standing across from you is wearing a suit worth two week's pay. He tosses a small stack of Benjamins toward the croupier as an afterthought.

You look around in amazement, not believing that places like this actually exist. You are in a different world. The people in here are out of your league. Way out of your league.

Someone hands Ben the dice. He takes a generous sip of scotch for good luck and gives the two six-siders a whirl. They come up with a five and a six. Money all around. A few claps come from the crowd. He gives the dice a second roll. Similar results. Folks at the table emit a small whoop of joy. The man standing to Ben's left is wearing the largest Stetson you've ever seen. He pats Ben on the shoulder. With a flick of the wrist the stickman slides the dice across the green felt table. Ben grabs the pair, blows some warm air into his fist, and lets them fly. They bounce off the bumpers and start heading back to him. They stop after a few turns. For a moment the crowd is speechless. "Yo-leven," replies one of the croupiers. Ben takes a short bow and the crowd erupts. Passersby stop, snared by the commotion. The house begins distributing winnings across the table.

Three more tosses of the dice and you're amazed at how quickly fortunes have turned. The table is packed now. Others want in on the action. You take a step back so they can join in. It's a half-step, really. But it's enough to knock into the person passing behind. It feels like your shoulder has struck a concrete brick. Manners have always been your strong suit and you quickly turn to apologize.

The man isn't big. He's immense. At least six foot six and probably twice your weight. He's got an entourage and you're suddenly staring up at what looks like the defensive unit of a football team.

There's a large red stain on the man's white suit jacket. A stain you suspect you're responsible for. The man looks down at his chest. His upper lip begins to curl, like a dog whose tail you just stepped on. Veins pop out on his brow and across the sides of his shaved head. He looks like someone just shot his mother.

"I'm really sorry about that," you stammer. "My fault completely."

The man flicks his hand at his chest as if expecting to whisk away the spot. "You're damn straight it's your fault. This jacket set me back eight hundred dollars." Baldy is quickly flanked by two of his crew, making him look like the runt of the litter. One of them peers over his shoulder. His eyes narrow. Disgust is in his voice. "Man. That suit is fucked up. You might as well go throw it away."

You look into the guy's eyes. You've seen this before. A sinking feeling settles into the pit of your stomach. Things are rapidly deteriorating. "You can send me the cleaning bill. I'd be more than happy to pay it."

"What the hell good is that going to do me now? Me and my boys were going to hit some more clubs and score some ass. Can't do that if I'm smelling like shit."

Harold walks up alongside of you, as does the rest of your group. Mark has handed off the dice and grabbed his winnings. For a moment the two groups stare one another down. Sweat forms on your brow.

Baldy mutters something under his breath and turns to go. You sigh with relief. He's leaving.

"Pussy."

The comment comes from Harold. He's the biggest guy in your group—as tall as Baldy, but at least fifty pounds lighter.

Baldy's antennae catch the signal. He whirls around, teeth clenched, face red. He points a finger at you. "You're a dead man." You open your mouth to say that it's a misunderstanding. That Harold has had at least six gin and tonics too many. But Baldy and his posse are gone.

You look over at Harold. He's already moved on. You realize he probably doesn't even remember what he just said.

Ben walks over and slaps you on the back. "You okay?"

"Sure. No problem."

"Don't worry about those meatheads. A few more drinks in them and they'll lose whatever brain cells they have left." He thumbs back over to the craps table. "You want to have another whirl with me? I'm hot tonight, baby! Hot!"

You shake your head. "I'm going to get a drink."

You leave the gambling room and head over to the bar. A band is playing on a small elevated stage. The lead singer, a woman in her late twenties with short, jet-black hair, isn't half bad. She's belting out an INXS song.

The bartender serves up a seltzer with a splash of cranberry. You used to drink. Heavily. But that was during the Foolish Days, as you now refer them to. These days you know better. You know much better.

Three songs in and you're starting to feel a little more relaxed, a little more at ease. The singer has moved on to some Rolling Stones and the replay of the Yankees game is going your way.

"Sympathy for the Devil" is being belted out when you roll your neck to work out a small cramp. You notice Baldy talking to one of his friends at the far corner of the bar. Things go from bad to worse when you realize that two more of his goon squad are at a table to your right. Their beers are evaporating faster than they are drinking them. They're trying their best to look disinterested in you but are failing miserably.

You wonder where your friends are right now. The club is mammoth. You consider texting Ben but reconsider. They're all three sheets to the wind by now. That would just make things worse. You don't need a riot on your hands.

Baldy is staring straight at you. Fury is in his face. There's no mistaking it. You've seen it many times before. He's going to make his move. You glance at your watch. It's really late. Dawn is fast approaching. You can try to wait him out in hopes the alcohol will cause him to lose interest.

Five minutes pass and your patience begins to wear thin. You look around but your bachelor party is nowhere to be seen. Have they left without you? You glance at your watch. You came in on the ferry. The next one leaves in about thirty minutes.

You drop some bills on the bar, grab your jacket, and leave.

* * *

There's a slight breeze in the night air. It's been a long day and it's refreshing. The ferry terminal is about twenty blocks away. If you pace yourself you can get there in time. A taxi speeds by. You consider hailing it but you need the exercise.

You get to Whitehall Terminal with a few minutes to spare. Above the entranceway, the ten-foot-tall, blue-block letters spelling out Staten Island Ferry feel like they are inviting you in. The terminal is apocalyptically empty, which makes it feel even larger than usual. The only people around are those passed out on the floor who don't know or care that their way off Manhattan is leaving soon, stranding them for another hour.

You pass through the waiting area, pass beneath the yellow LED sign telling you to Have a nice day, and make your way onto the ferry.

The metal and wood bench seats are hard and uncomfortable but they do the job of keeping you awake. The ferry, like the terminal, is eerily quiet. The overhead lighting is glaringly bright when compared to the outside darkness.

The engines roar to life and the ferry captain slowly guides the boat away from the pier. The floorboards begin to vibrate. Even the windows rattle. You wonder how the boat hasn't sunk to the bottom of the harbor by now. Shouts of alarm can be heard outside as the ferry pulls away. Someone is being yelled at. The distance between you and the dock quickly widens.

A few weary souls are peppered throughout the deck. The vessel is emptier than you've ever seen it. But then again, it'll be dawn soon.

You'll be in Staten Island in twenty-five minutes, but between the walk and long night of numerous seltzer waters, your bladder demands attention. Reluctantly, you decide to hunt out the men's room.

The stench hits you even before you reach the door. For a moment you contemplate trying to find another one. Maybe it'll be more sanitary. But you really have to go, so you begin breathing through your mouth and hope that it looks better than it smells.

Inside, from the way the floor is rattling, you would think the engine room is right below your feet. You pick the cleanest stall and hope you don't come down with a case of shy-bladder syndrome. The boat is swaying more than usual and you clutch the stall railing as if you were riding a bronco.

Once you've finished, you unlock and open the stall door. Immediately you wish that you hadn't.

Baldy is leaning against the sink, his arms crossed. He takes the toothpick out of his mouth and flicks it onto the floor. For a moment you think it's an illusion. But then the illusion starts to talk.

"That was pretty tricky of you, trying to give me the slip. But I found out which direction you were heading." He sneers. "And you were dressed like someone who lives on Staten Island. Jumped onto the boat just as it was sliding away from the dock." He cracks his knuckles. "You have no idea how long it's been since I did some ass-kicking." He ponders that for a moment. "At least five weeks, I think."

You look to the exit door. His buddies aren't there.

"Don't worry about us being interrupted. I've got a janitor's cart blocking the doorway. We should have enough alone time before anyone gets curious."

"I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. I promise to get that shirt dry-cleaned."

"Jacket. You fucked up my jacket."

"Hey. No problem. I'll dry-clean them both."

"Shut up. You sound pathetic."

"I'm really not looking for any trouble."

"Well, you certainly found it." He steps a little closer and you can smell the reek of alcohol on his breath. There's not going to be any reasoning with him.

Baldy cracks his knuckles again, forms two fists, and you think, How did it come to this?

He takes another step forward. His massive frame blocks out the sink lights behind him. You take a step backward. Take another and you'll find yourself back inside the stall. You consider that for a moment, but it would only provide a barrier for a minute at most, before he rips the door off the hinges. You look to the ceiling. There're security cameras on the ferry, but none in here.

Baldy brings his pair of sledgehammers into view. His left is above his right. You take him for a southpaw. He swings. You duck and he slams his fist into the stall door, shaking it violently. This serves to enrage him even more.

He shoots out a left hook. You spin sideways and it passes by your ear. The move has boxed you in somewhat and reflexes kick in. You throw a hard right jab. Nothing fancy, but you put your weight behind it and twist your hips and remember to retract it a little, just like you were trained.

Or at least that's the plan.

As your punch is unleashed, Baldy makes an unexpected move. He steps in closer, thinking he can hit you better. It's something an amateur or a drunk would do. During your days in the ring, you would never expect someone to do that. Certainly not at the beginning of a bout when the fighter still has his wits about him.

There's nothing you can do. It's too late. It all happens in slow motion. Your fist connects against the top of Baldy's nose. A loud crack echoes through the bathroom. Cartilage snaps. But that's not what concerns you. You hear bones break. From the neck. Just below the occipital. Baldy stares at you for a moment before his eyes roll back into his head. He lets out a short gasp and his body spasms, causing him to spin around and collapse face first against the countertop. Even before he strikes the surface you know he's already dead.

His head hits the edge of the chrome sink at the exact spot that your fist connected. A loud gong is heard as the wash basin is shaken from its mooring and hops up into the air.

Baldy collapses onto the metal floor and doesn't move. There's blood everywhere. Time grinds to a halt. You don't even hear the boat's engines anymore.

You stare at yourself in the mirror. Calmly, but quickly, you straighten your clothes and smooth your hair. None of Baldy's blood is on you. You steady your breathing just as if you were in the ring. You compose yourself one final time and open the bathroom door. There's no one in the corridor outside.

You slip out of the bathroom and quietly slide the janitor's cart back in front of the door. You make your way to the outside of the ship.

The night air over the water has grown cold, but it feels good. The waves crash against the bow and the smell of salt hangs heavy in the air. You sit down on an orange metal bench and stare out at the far shore. The lights from the St. George Ferry Terminal are faintly visible in the distance.

The boat lurches as it strikes a swell. Sweat beads on your brow. Nausea begins to overtake you. You try to clear your head, but it's not working. Your hands are shaking just like they did when you first started using the heavy bag. You clench them into fists and jam them into your pockets.

The area is empty. At least you think it is. A drunk college kid stumbles over and slumps down on the bench near you.

"Goddamn, it's cold out here!" he shouts, and then laughs at himself in amusement. He looks over at you. "You cold there, bro?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine. You look sick. You know, I should be the one who's going to be sick." He begins to detail how many shots of Absolut he's had. You're not responding and he scratches his head, peering at you intently. He says you look familiar. Has he seen you before? Maybe on television? Are you some sort of actor? You shake your head. No, you answer, looking out over the water. The sky is now a gun-metal gray but the water remains ink black. Sorry to disappoint, you tell him, but he's mistaken.

You're no one special.

* * *

It takes two days for the incident to hit the local paper. It's on the bottom of page eight next to an article about a dentist in Castleton Corners expanding his practice. The reporter explains how Baldy, a.k.a. Lloyd Peterson, blood alcohol level of 0.15, passed out on the Staten Island Ferry and broke his neck against the bathroom sink. It turns out that Lloyd had done two years in Altona Correctional Facility for aggravated assault. The funeral is on Tuesday.

You're about to toss the paper into recycling when you spot an article about the boxing match you saw on television at the club. The fighter you thought was going to win did so. It turns out he's undefeated. The reporter is comparing him to another boxer, Louis Cartwright. They wonder if this fight will make Cartwright come out of retirement to defend his title. Apparently he lives in the paradisiacal neighborhood of Emerson Hill.

You walk outside onto the porch and look up and then down the street. The birds are chirping. A slight breeze blows through your hair.

It's nice. Real nice.

But paradisiacal?

ABATING A NUISANCE

BY BRUCE DESILVA

Tompkinsville

The Suzanne, under the command of Captain Robert Beveridge, sailed from the Cuban port of Mataznas on April 20, 1858, bound for Liverpool with a rich cargo of sugar. Two days out, the captain died of yellow fever. The following night the disease took the cook and the cabin boy. The next day five seamen, too ill for duty, shivered in their sweat-drenched hammocks.

The first mate steered the ship toward New York City and dropped anchor in the lower bay. Surviving crew members were loaded into a smaller boat named the Cinderella for a short sail against the tide to the northeastern tip of Staten Island. There they were stripped naked, and their clothes were burned. Then they were wrapped in thin blankets and carted into the New York Marine Hospital, more commonly known as the Quarantine.

Soon, they would have company.

By August 16, forty-one barks, brigs, sloops, and schooners lay at anchor in the lower bay, all of them banned from putting in at the Port of New York. Their colors had been struck and replaced with the flag that inspired more terror than the Jolly Roger ever had.

The Yellow Jack.

From the library on the second floor of his fine house atop Staten Island's Fort Hill, Dr. Frederick Hollick studied the harbor through his spyglass. He counted thirty-four ships at anchor beyond the four piers that jutted from the grounds of the Quarantine. Each vessel had arrived packed stern to bow with riffraff from Ireland and Germany, all of them exposed to—or already deathly ill with—typhus, cholera, and smallpox. The forty-one yellow fever ships, the ones that frightened the good doctor the most, were too far out for him to see, but he knew they were there. He'd read all about it in the New York City newspapers.

Dr. Hollick panned his glass across the rolling thirty-acre grounds of the Quarantine: St. Nicholas Hospital, a huge, hotel-like redbrick structure where the disease-carrying first-class passengers were housed. The old, ramshackle Smallpox Hospital. The two-story Female Hospital. The squat brick dormitories for the boatmen who ferried passengers from infected ships. The eight wooden typhus shanties that were home both to diseased steerage passengers and to the stevedores who had the filthy job of unloading contaminated cargo. The wooden offices, stables, barns, coal houses, storerooms, and outhouses. The three fine doctors' residences. The vegetable gardens. And the cemeteries where one out of every six persons who entered the Quarantine would spend eternity.

When the state of New York first located the Quarantine here in 1799, it seemed to make sense, Dr. Hollick had to admit. The island was lightly populated by farmers and clam diggers, most of them living miles away along the island's south shore. But then a landing for the ferry from Manhattan was built beside the hospital. And well-off city dwellers seeking a few days in the countryside began to arrive. And hotels to serve them were constructed near the landing. And the villages of Tompkinsville, Castleton Corners, Clifton, Stapleton, New Brighton, and South Beach just grew and grew. There was industry here now: breweries, brickmakers, the Dejon Paper Company, New York Dying and Printing, and Crabtree & Wilkinson—makers of brightly colored head scarves that the servant girls favored.

Now more than 20,000 people lived on the island, most within a morning's walk of the Quarantine. In Tompkinsville, where the good doctor resided, wood-frame houses, general stores, tobacconists, saloons, and hotels stood directly across the road from the six-foot brick wall surrounding the pestilent hospital grounds.

And every year, people of Staten Island fell ill.

The worst was 1848, when one hundred and fifty islanders contracted yellow fever, and thirty of them perished. The rest of the populace fled in terror. That summer and fall, vegetables rotted in untended gardens. Unpicked fruit dried to husks in apple and pear orchards. Hotels and stores stood empty, and grass grew in the streets.

Every year since then, there'd been smaller outbreaks of smallpox, cholera, and yellow fever; and this year, the situation was becoming grave. Something had to be done. Dr. Hollick put down his spyglass, sat behind his desk, took up pen and paper, and began to write.

* * *

Three days later, the local worthies who had received Dr. Hollick's written invitations filed into his drawing room and settled into his upholstered, Empire-style furniture:

John C. Thompson, the general store owner known as Honest John—not so much for his business practices as for his rants against political corruption.

Ray Tompkins, whose family owned much of the empty land south of the Quarantine, and whose ancestors had given Tompkinsville its name.

Thomas Burns, the leader of Neptune Fire Engine Company Number 9, and owner of Nautilus Hall, a hotel and saloon located directly across from the Quarantine's main gate.

Henry B. Metcalf, the county judge.

And Dr. Westervelt, Hollick's neighbor from the foot of Fort Hill.

Two latecomers, Attorney William Henry Atherton and real estate agent John Simonson, had to settle for hard-backed chairs dragged in from the dining room.

All sat in grim silence, waiting for Dr. Hollick to start the proceedings.

He began by reading the roll of the summer's yellow fever victims.

"Mr. Kramer, who was employed by the Quarantine to burn infected bedding, took sick at his residence in mid-July and died soon thereafter. A few days hence, his wife succumbed. The German tailor and his son, who lived at the end of Minthorn, just one hundred feet from the Kramers, were the next to contract the disease. By the grace of God, they have recovered. Mrs. Neil, wife of one of the hospital's stevedores, was not so blessed. She died at home at the end of July. Then Mrs. Halladay, who owned the house occupied by Mrs. Neil, fell ill and died. Her boy also sickened, but he has recovered. In the first week of August, Mr. Young and his daughter came down with the fever, as did Mrs. Finnerty, who lives on the same block. They appear to be recovering, but their neighbor, Mrs. Holland, has perished. Mrs. Cross and her servant fell ill two weeks ago, and both died last week. Mrs. Quinn, who lives between Townsend's Dock and the gas works, took sick last week, and I do not expect her to survive."

When Dr. Hollick was finished, Dr. Westervelt added more bad news: "Mr. Block, who lives at the corner of Jersey Street and Richmond Terrace, died of the fever this morning, and his widow has taken to her bed with it."

"I hadn't heard that," Dr. Hollick said.

"It is an outrage," Thompson sputtered. "The Quarantine does little to confine the disease within its walls. Some of its nurses and orderlies are permitted to reside in the village of Stapleton. They pass by my door every day, spreading disease among us as they go to and from work. Others who live and work on the grounds venture out to trade, mainly in establishments that deal in spirituous liquors."

"Of late, patients are also roaming free," Simonson, the real estate agent, said. "Under cover of darkness, they scale the walls and wander aimlessly through the town, horrifying the good people of Tompkinsville with their indecency and filth. And stevedores in the Quarantine's employ loot cargo from infected ships and peddle it on our streets."

"And now that the cemeteries on the grounds have filled," Attorney Atherton added, "the dead cart rolls out of the gates at twilight two or three times a week, spreading disease as it makes its way to the new cemetery north of town. Three nights past, the cart broke down; a corpse lay in the road for nearly an hour before a relief cart was brought out."

Dr. Hollick knew this was not how yellow fever was spread. The disease lurked in the miasma that drifted from open hospital windows and rose from the holds of infected ships. Winds swept the foul air through the town, putting everyone at peril. That was why, even in the heat of summer, the doctor kept his windows closed. But this was not the time, he decided, for a science lesson.

"This is all terribly bad for business," Burns broke in. "The guests in my hotel can look out and see right into the windows of the hospital wards. At night, they hear the cries of suffering. It is no wonder that so few of my patrons book a return visit."

"The very existence of the Quarantine is injurious to property values," said Tompkins, who stood to make a fortune from his holdings if the Quarantine could be made to magically disappear. "It has created a prejudice against the entire island."

Burns and Tompkins could always be counted on to bring any discussion around to money. That wasn't Dr. Hollick's main concern, but he held his tongue. He'd take his allies where he could find them.

"So, my friends," he said. "What are we prepared to do about it?"

"Perhaps we might make another appeal to the state legislature," Judge Metcalf suggested.

"Not this time, Henry," Dr. Hollick replied. "We've petitioned Albany for more than a decade, but our pleas for relief have gone unheeded. The time for action has come."

With that, Judge Metcalf rose to leave. "Perhaps it would be best if I remain ignorant of your intentions," he said. "I fear you may all be appearing before me before the month is out."

* * *

A few days later, under cover of darkness, a wagon rolled up Fort Hill toward Dr. Hollick's residence. It drew to a stop beside his fence, and its contents were hastily unloaded. The following evening, the same wagon trundled through Dr. Westervelt's gate and continued to the rear of his holdings, which abutted the northern boundary of the Quarantine. There, its cargo was stacked against the hospital's six-foot-high brick wall.

* * *

Shortly after eight p.m. on the evening of September 1, a red signal lantern was hung from the branch of a tree on Fort Hill. Thirty of the area's leading citizens, four of them carrying muskets and two with pistols in their belts, gathered in its glow to hear Dr. Hollick read three resolutions from the Board of Heath of Castleton, the largest town in the area. As some of those present surmised, the good doctor had composed the words himself. He had secured the board's official blessing that very afternoon.

Resolved: that the whole Quarantine establishment, located as it is in the midst of a dense population, has become a nuisance of the most odious character, bringing death and desolation to the very doors of Castleton and Southfield.

Resolved: that it is a nuisance too intolerable to be borne by the citizens of these towns any longer.

Resolved: that this board recommends the citizens of this county protect themselves by abating this abominable nuisance without delay.

The men let loose with three huzzahs. Then they gathered up the goods that the wagon had dropped off three days before: ten boxes of wooden matches, twenty-five bundles of straw, and twenty quart bottles of camphene.

With Thompson and Tompkins in the lead, the group proceeded down the hill. Dr. Hollick, however, withdrew to his home to observe the evening's festivities from his library window. Arson, he told himself, was a job best left to younger men.

At the foot of the hill, the men crossed a dirt road and approached the gate to Dr. Westervelt's property. Normally it was locked, but on this evening it had been left open. The men walked across an unmowed hayfield to the north wall of the Quarantine, set down their loads, and hefted what had been left there for them: four wooden beams, each affixed with handles.

The men grunted as they swung the battering rams against the brick. In minutes, they reduced an eight-foot section of wall to rubble.

In Manhattan, five miles across the harbor, the shops were bedecked with placards and ribbons celebrating the completion of the Ocean Telegraph, over two thousand miles of cable that connected New York with London. A torchlight fireman's parade marched through the city. Fireworks bloomed in the night sky.

The men in Staten Island gathered up the matches, straw, and camphene, and streamed through the gap they had made.

They came first to the wooden typhus shanties, assembled before one of them, and hesitated—as if suddenly realizing the enormity of what they were about to do. Then Thompson raised a bottle of camphene over his head and smashed it against the side of the building. Tompkins struck a match and tossed it.

Whoosh! The men heard the rush of oxygen as the front of the shanty exploded in flames. Inside, someone shouted: "What in God's name was that?"

Red tongues leaped up the dry shiplap siding and licked the tar-paper roof. Oily black smoke billowed into the overhanging oaks. Inside the shanty, the patients began to scream.

A nearby sentry sounded the alarm. Stevedores raced out of their dormitories. Thompson and the rest of the townsmen stood by and watched them run into the burning shanty and stagger out with invalids in their arms. The stevedores laid the patients in the grass and covered them with blankets. Then they grabbed more blankets from a nearby storeroom and tried to beat out the fire.

As smoke and embers spiraled into the night sky, Dr. Daniel H. Bissell, the hospital superintendent, dashed from his residence with a musket in his hands. At the burning shanty, he confronted Thompson and ordered him and his men to leave the premises.

"We shall not do so," Thompson replied. "It is our duty to help put out this fire."

"This shanty is lost," Bissell said. "Help us pull it down, and perhaps we can prevent the flames from spreading to the others."

Instead, Thompson and Tompkins led the men to the adjoining shanties. They streamed inside, dragged out straw mattresses, set them ablaze, and tossed them back in. Bissell confronted Thompson again, brandishing his musket. Thompson wrenched it from his hands and clubbed him in the head with it.

Bissell fell. In the flickering firelight, his blood looked black as it leaked onto the grass. He clutched at his wound and moaned.

The townsmen took up a chant: "Kill him! Kill him!"

They might well have done so if Tompkins had not intervened. "We are not murderers, my friends," he said. "But we shall complete the job we have come to do."

While the shanties burned, the townsmen roamed across the grounds, setting fire to the coal houses, barns, and stables. Panicked carriage horses burst out and galloped off into the night. The men torched the ramshackle smallpox hospital and broke into one of the physicians' residences to loot the liquor cabinets. Then they tossed camphene bottles through the windows and tossed in matches.

A few minutes later, Michael McCabe, a Quarantine watchman, discovered several men stuffing bundles of straw in the doorways and stairwells of St. Nicholas Hospital. He ordered them to stop. They ignored him and set the straw on fire. The building's patients, most of them ambulatory, streamed out of the doorways in their nightclothes.

Outside St. Nicholas, Dr. Theodore Walser, one of the three Quarantine physicians, encountered Tompkins and pleaded with him to stop the mayhem. "Some of our patients are very ill," he said. "Shall they have nothing but damp ground for a bed?"

Tompkins looked around and saw that the Female Hospital had not yet been set on fire. "Take the patients there," he told Walser. "I pledge to you that the building will not be touched." Then he hurried off to post a guard by it.

Outside the brick wall, about two hundred more townspeople gathered to cheer the arsonists on. Several of them fired muskets into the air, adding to the growing panic inside. Walser heard an insistent pounding. Someone was trying to break through the Quarantine's main gate. He and McCabe grabbed firearms from a storeroom and ran toward the sound.

As they approached, the gate burst open. Through it came Thomas Burns and the men of Neptune Fire Engine Company Number 9, some of them lugging hoses and others dragging their steam-powered pumper truck. To Walser, this was not a welcome sight. Burns was one of the most vocal opponents of the Quarantine.

"I know you, Mr. Burns!" Walser shouted. "We don't want you here!"

Burns and his men moved forward. Walser and McCabe pointed their muskets at them. "Stand back!" Walser ordered. "We will put out the fire ourselves."

But now, the mob that had gathered behind the wall pressed through the gate. Some of them had guns too. Walser and McCabe were hopelessly outnumbered. Reluctantly, they stood aside. The entering mob rushed off to set more fires.

The firemen set down their burdens, sat in the grass, and watched the hospital burn. "Should have brought sausages for roasting," one of them said.

A boat docked at one of the Quarantine's wharves and disgorged a squad of Harbor Police. Their arrival had been delayed a quarter-hour by a 150-pound sturgeon that leaped into the boat. Its thrashing had threatened to break a hole in the hull, but the beast was finally wrestled overboard. As the squad debarked, it was met with hoots, howls, and a barrage of rocks. Most of its members retreated, but two of them joined the mob and rushed off to set fires.

Flames reached the roof of St. Nicholas Hospital now. In minutes, it collapsed. The statue of a sailor that had long stood on its peak toppled into the rubble. Inside, the floors gave way. One hundred iron beds crashed through them into the basement.

From his library window, Dr. Hollick watched the fires burn all night.

* * *

At dawn, smoke curled from the rubble. Hospital staff herded ambulatory patients onto the Cinderella for transport to makeshift quarters on Wards Island. Those too sick to be moved crowded the two floors of the Female Hospital. Remarkably, no patients had died in the fires; the stevedores and orderlies, with help from a few members of the mob, had managed to get them all out. But overnight, a yellow fever patient had perished from his disease. His body lay on the grass, covered by a blanket.

A stevedore was dead, a musket ball buried in his back. Perhaps he had been struck by a random shot fired over the wall. Perhaps one of the mob had killed him deliberately. But Dr. Walser suspected another stevedore had done it, perhaps taking advantage of the panic to avenge an old grudge about a woman.

That morning, handbills were distributed in Tompkinsville and the neighboring villages, inviting all to a community meeting at Nautilus Hall to celebrate the destruction of the Quarantine. At seven thirty that evening, two hundred people crowded into Burns's hotel. There, amid much drinking of beer and hard liquor, they unanimously passed a resolution affirming the right of the people of Staten Island to rid themselves of the hazardous facility.

At ten p.m., Tompkins and a local hothead named Tom Garrett led celebrants out of the hotel. They crossed the street, pushed through the Quarantine's shattered front gate, and attacked the handful of buildings that had been spared the night before. They wrenched shutters and porch rails from Dr. Walser's and Dr. Bissell's residences, piled them inside, doused them with camphene, and set them alight. Then they swept across the grounds, burning the coffin house and several cottages where the boatmen lived. When that was done, they burned the wharves.

They surrounded the Female Hospital and gave the staff fifteen minutes to get the patients out. After the sick had been placed on the grass beside the brick wall, the building was torched. It went up like a bonfire.

At the wall, hot cinders fell on the prostrate patients, and the heat from the fires grew unbearable. Quarantine staff poured buckets of water on the sick to cool them.

Around midnight, as the mob straggled out of the gate, it began to rain.

* * *

The next day, Tompkinsville's saloons were packed with revilers. A thousand members of the Metropolitan Police arrived from Manhattan to restore order. The following week, the 8th Regiment of the state militia set up in the foothills outside the village to discourage any further disturbances. Sixty US Marines were deployed to protect federal property in the area.

There proved to be little for any of them to do.

Local police, under pressure from state authorities, reluctantly rounded up a dozen members of the mob. They were promptly released, their bail paid with cash that Cornelius Vanderbilt sent over on the ferry. New York's favorite tycoon, it seems, had been born on Staten Island.

In the end, charges were brought only against Thompson and Tompkins.

New York City newspapers demanded retribution. The New York Times was especially relentless, branding the two ringleaders "diabolical," "savage," and "inhuman." The pair had been motivated not by fear of disease but by greed, the Times thundered. They had cared about nothing but the Quarantine's deleterious affect on the value of their property.

That fall, Thompson and Tompkins were tried before Judge Metcalf. Dr. Walser and Dr. Bissell testified about what they'd witnessed on the nights of the fires. So did the watchman, McCabe, and a host of others.

The defense, led by Attorney Atherton, disputed none of their testimony. Instead, they offered a string of witnesses, including Dr. Hollick, who testified to the sickness and death the Quarantine had long visited upon the people of Staten Island. And they entered into evidence the Castleton Board of Health's resolutions as proof that the townspeople were justified in taking action "to abate a nuisance."

At the conclusion of the three-week proceeding, Atherton rose to make his closing statement: "I demand their immediate release on the grounds that they have committed no crime, but have simply done their duty as citizens and men. Here among their fellow citizens and neighbors, they will be looked upon as men of noble hearts who have acted fearlessly and zealously for the public good."

Judge Metcalf issued his ruling without delay: "Undoubtedly, the city of New York is entitled to all the protection in the matter that the state can give, consistent with the health of others. She has no right to more. Her great advantages are attended by corresponding inconveniences; her great public works by great expenditures; her great foreign commerce by the infection it brings. But the legislature can no more apportion upon the surrounding communities her dangers than her expenses; no more compel them to do her dying than to pay her taxes. Neither can be done."

And so he set Thompson and Tompkins free.

The decision surprised no one. The judge's sympathies were well known. His house was located just a quarter-mile from the Quarantine. And a decade earlier, he had attended his own brother, caressing his brow with cloths dipped in ice water and changing the sweat-drenched bedding three times daily, in the week that it took him to die of yellow fever.

PAYING THE TAB

BY MICHAEL LARGO

Four Corners

Eddie Lynch had opened the doors every afternoon at two since 1980. Even when his mother died, he came back in his funeral suit to fill the bins with long necks and dump them over with pails of ice. He wiped out the speed racks, dipped the glasses in the first sink of soap, and the two others for rinse. The day he bought the Sunnyside Lounge from old man Sully he promised not to change a thing, and he hadn't. The same wood panels painted black, L-shaped mahogany bar with a pipe for a foot rail, and swivel stools with red seat pads. He had reskinned the pool table in the back room many times, but always in red felt the way Sully said a bar pool table should be.

"Character," Sully had said. "Bars take on their own—and you can tell it by its aromas, if you let them fester. If I hear you add hanging ferns or make this shithole fancy, I'll come back from my urn and burn you alive."

Eddie knew that Sully was selling it to him for less, and not giving it to Sully's daughter like she wanted, because of his name: Eddie Lynch, the onetime famous local kid who had his name stolen as an alias by one of the greatest banker robbers of the twentieth century.

"Every busted nose, clogged toilet, and last-call puke lives in the walls." Sully wanted Eddie to know what he was getting into. Eddie remembered that day, looking at the small hexagonal floor tiles, and came to know that no matter the mopping of ammonia, Sully was right.

Today, Eddie left the front door unlocked while he stocked. He knew the soda gun guys were coming, wanting their cut, once again raising their fees. He saw the wedge of bright daylight slice in when the inner doors opened and thought it was them. But it was the first customer of the day, a man in a suit carrying a long-stemmed rose. When he took the stool that was normally Max's, he asked for a glass of water, bourbon in a rock glass, and a glass of red wine.

Eddie served him what he wanted and figured he'd have plenty of time to hear the winded BS of why the man was putting a flower in a water glass—since they all had their stories. That was what bars were for: telling your side of life's injustices to the captured bartender. But Eddie went outside to see if they had picked up the black trash bags piling ever higher on top of the dumpster. He'd start getting fines from the health department soon. Eddie refused to pay the rate hike on trash pickup and could get no new service to break waste removal routes and territories, all of that racket long established and divvied up.

Eddie went out the back door and surveyed like he always did before he opened for business. The bar's sign was white script letters painted on dark blue glass-paneled siding. The plate glass windows that ran on the Manor Road side were so dark he saw only a reflection of himself when he passed.

The last month or so, especially now with the garbage problem and the soda gun guys, he realized he was getting too old for this. He thought he saw Sully's face, the big cigar in his mouth, never lit and soaked at the end like a soggy dipstick, instead of his own reflection. Sully was laughing at him, giving him his classic nod that he gave to the parade of the misguided who sat on the swivel stools waiting for the bartender's verdict: Now you did it, you went too far.

"Everybody thinks owning a bar is easy, but it's a rock in your shoe, and a revolving hand in your pocket," Sully had told him.

It had been a dive, the Sunnyside, and would remain as such as long as Eddie could manage to keep its "character." But he was starting to understand how Sully one day said yes, and took Eddie's bag of cash, signing over his license. Red-faced Sully, with his permanent six-months-pregnant beer belly, never did make it to Florida like he planned, and died during a bypass in the hospital. No sunshine for Sully, and the curse of the Sunnyside got Eddie too, just as Sully predicted.

Eddie had been famous when he was a kid. Everyone knew the story of how the legendary gentleman bank robber, Willie Sutton, a.k.a. Willie the Actor, stole his name. There was a yellow newspaper clipping framed and hanging near the register to prove it. "You'll add a splash of character to the joint," Sully had said.

Continuing his daily outside survey, Eddie turned the corner onto Victory Boulevard. The street was empty, not a car up or down, like it was four a.m. Sunday, but the sun was out. Eddie stopped. There was a body on the sidewalk. A chubby guy, looking to be maybe twenty, dressed in a 1950s suit and overcoat. He was sprawled in that odd way only the dead can land, one leg out, one hand turned sideways. His fedora resting neatly two feet away, while a pool of blood slowly ran from the crotch of his trousers. His eye sockets were pockets of red, filled to the brim and dribbling down the sides of the head. Eddie knew it was the kid who'd spotted Willie Sutton on a bus in Brooklyn and then went and told the cops. It was the classic snitch shooting, with the first bullet dropping him to his knees and the eyes telling you to keep what you see to yourself. Eddie backed away and hurried along the Manor Road side and into the rear door of the bar.

"What the . . . ?"

The man with the rose pushed his rock glass forward and tapped the side. Eddie reached for the bottle and poured more by reflex, though he wondered what the hell was happening to his mind. He had seen that sprawled body a hundred times in his dreams, but never while he was working. Why were there no cars?

"You," the man knocked back the drink in one gulp and pushed the glass forward for another. "You're the owner, right?" He took the rose from the water glass and smelled it.

Eddie put on his reading glasses and looked for the numbers of services the bar used, and found the one for garbage pickup taped to the side of the ice machine. He'd call the trashmen and agree to pay most of the rate hike if they'd come and empty the dumpster today. It was the stress, he knew, and before he called, Eddie broke his own rule by pouring himself a scotch, which he never—almost never—took until after midnight. "You got to keep an eye in the back of your head," Sully had warned, "or they'll steal the shoes off your feet while you're walking."

"Sutton broke out of a Philadelphia prison. He tunneled, didn't he, like in a movie, in 1947," the man said as he put his rose back in the glass. "Another." He pushed the rock glass forward again, but left the wine untouched.

The trash number was a busy signal. "Listen, pal, I'm not even opened yet," Eddie said. "Drink, relax. I see your hundred there on the bar, so you can drink until you tell me to call you a cab. But—" Eddie dialed again and it was still busy, "I got business."

The man took out a pouch of tobacco and began to hand roll a cigarette.

"No smoking. You know the laws."

"You ain't open, pal," the man said, mimicking Eddie. He reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of cash in a bank wrapper, placing it on the bar. "That's ten thousand dollars, unmarked. I'm gonna smoke and you're gonna stay closed until I tell you."

Eddie looked closer at the man and he seemed familiar, but Eddie couldn't place him. He paused, then picked up the bundle of cash and fanned through the bills. "Never take their money," Sully had said, "or then they will really own you." Eddie poured the man another drink and put the money next to the rose.

"This is for?"

"So I can smoke. No strings. Take it." The man looked around the bar. "The floor is filthy. You haven't mopped and the tables are filled with bottles and glasses. You're a long way from opening, anyway."

Eddie always cleaned the bar after last call, turned on the bright lights, switched the setting on the back of the juke and played whatever while he got rid of the bulk of the night's mess. He never liked to close the doors and deal with it the next day, when the stench of yesterday's drinking was even too much for him. Eddie couldn't remember why he didn't clean up last night.

"You were, what, ten?" the man said. "And the story goes that Willie Sutton bought a newspaper from you and asked you what your name was."

Eddie was going to pull down the framed article, like he'd done a thousand times, to show new customers the history he had, describing how the bank robber used Eddie Lynch as his alias while laying low in Staten Island. But the garbage line was busy, and there were no cars on Victory. He never left bottles on the table from the night before.

"Sutton worked in the Farm Colony for almost three years." The man lit his rolled-up cigarette. "It was an old folks' home, near Seaview Hospital. He worked as a janitor, with everybody calling him Eddie Lynch."

Eddie put down the phone and looked at the man closer. "You. Who are you?"

"Sutton's time at the Farm Colony was the best, where he took care of the old ladies." The man closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead like something pained him.

"He lived a few blocks from here on Kimball Avenue, while he was hiding out on Staten Island. I know all about Sutton," Eddie said.

"No you don't. It really broke his heart, the way they sat there in their wheelchairs with nothing but memories, waiting for their kids who never came. Or when they did visit—what do you think they brought their mothers who wiped their tears and bandaged their cuts? A bag a candy or a five-cent comb. Like that was enough, all that was needed for the payback."

"I might take that money," Eddie said. "I should get out of this business. Do something different. You want to buy this place?"

The man rolled another cigarette. "We waste so much time, don't we? Everybody does. There's no way around it. Robbed banks for thirty years, bagging more than two million, when a million was something. But half of the time in the joint, for what? For the money, I guess, but—" The man let out a deep breath. "It don't matter now."

Eddie poured the guy another drink and another for himself. He picked up the bundle of cash. He peered closer at the man's face. "You look like . . ."

"You still didn't figure it out yet, did you?"

"The body on the sidewalk. No cars."

"Take the cash, if it makes you feel better. You don't need it anymore, but take it. It took me some time to understand how it all works too," the man said, "why I wasn't going."

"Going where?"

"I don't know exactly. But where we all go. Where Sully went. Where the poor guy on the sidewalk outside went. Where you'll go. You got to clear the slate, pay off everything before you go. This I finally got."

"Willie."

"That's why I'm here with the dough, kid. I caused you a lot of bad dreams. Who knew dreams had a price? They do, though, so try to remember who you give bad dreams to and you'll go faster." The man stood, glanced at the wine, but didn't drink it. "That was for my landlady Mary, over there on Kimball. And the rose is for when I see her. She's gone; I know she is, since I never saw her waiting around like us."

"I'm not going anywhere," Eddie said. "I'm not waiting."

"Kid, you already are." The man took the rose from the water glass. "Now we're square, ain't we, Eddie?" He left the bar.

* * *

When the health department citations piled up and no more could fit stuck in the front door, that's when they found Eddie. The Sunnyside hadn't opened for a week and the regulars banged on the door, tried to peer through the thick plate glass, could see the bottles on the dirty tables. They figured Eddie had just closed and run off like he always said he would. That's when they broke open the locks and found him on the floor behind the bar. The cops covered their mouths with handkerchiefs.

"One in the back of the head," a cop said. "And shot in both hands."

"That's it," the other cop said. "He owed somebody."

"Yeah," the older cop said. "Garbage or soda. Look at the tickets from HD. He was stingy, not paying up, or he just got tired of playing by the rules."

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR LODGE

BY BINNIE KIRSHENBAUM

Grymes Hill

It was autumn. Late October. Evening, early evening, but the sky was midnight dark and the moon cast a silver glow; the air, crisp like a red apple, was redolent of autumns past: dried leaves, pumpkins, ghost stories, all manner of things Halloween-related. It was that kind of autumn evening. I buttoned my coat for the walk across the campus from Parker Hall to the Grymes Hill bus stop.

Parker Hall, neo-Gothic, lugubrious such as it was, inspired the whisperings of a dark history, but the story that it had once been a Dickensian orphanage where terrible things happened simply wasn't true. There are always stories. Another Wagner College legend, the one about Edward Albee, that he taught here in the early 1960s and that Wagner College was the setting for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, that wasn't true either but, unlike the Parker Hall story, it was rooted in fact. In the early 1960s, Albee did participate in a summer literary conference at Wagner College that was organized by a friend of his who was a professor in the English Department. It was common knowledge that this mess of a professor and his spectacularly boozy wife were the inspiration for Albee's gin-soaked brawling love birds, but the setting for Virginia Woolf was Trinity College in Connecticut. Not Staten Island.

But just how Parker Hall looked as if it had been an orphanage, I'll say this: the Wagner campus looked spot-on right for the part in Albee's play.

There was definitely that bucolic New England-y small college thing about the place. It photographed well, like Williams or Bennington, it made for a nice brochure. The Main Hall was, as was Parker Hall, early-twentieth-century Gothic. Both buildings were ivy-covered and shrouded by trees. Evergreens mostly, and there were lots of squirrels around. Even a few of those all-black squirrels, which are rare. The lawn for playing frisbee was oval-shaped. Eponymous Cunard Hall was originally the Cunard family mansion and its guest cottages were once faculty housing, but now one of the cottages was the chapel; the other was the admissions office.

Never before had I been on campus in the evening. True, this was largely a commuter school, but that not one other person was out and around was curious, until I realized why I was, seemingly, all alone. The student union, the cafeteria, the dormitories, the library, all the buildings busy at this hour were the newer ones. Cement and plasterboard institutional-ugly, they were constructed out of view.

I was there late because I was with a student. It wasn't often that students wanted to meet with their professors, but this one was in the throes of discovering literature and he had that kind of enthusiasm going, the naïve kind, unaware that there were professors out there who couldn't wait to piss on his earnestness, to jade his sincerity, to mock his wearing white T-shirts with the cuffs of the short sleeves rolled up in homage to Jack Kerouac. But that wouldn't happen for years to come.

The previous spring, he took Comp and Lit with me. Last fall semester, I taught three sections of Composition without the Lit, the same as this fall. Required courses for freshmen. Students who had so much as a crumb of interest in literature were fewer in number than the black squirrels, which should not have come as a surprise to me. They were eighteen years old. A lot of the girls looked like beauty pageant contestants, and it seemed like all of them were majoring in Education with the intent to teach kindergarten or first grade until having families of their own. These girls appeared to me to be without rebellion, and they elicited not my anger exactly, but an impatience, a lack of generosity. I wanted to shake them and say, There's a world out there! The way I remember the boys, they were business majors, their intended careers were vague. The boys—party boys, fraternity boys, athletes. In the end, I felt sadder for the boys. They were not, as I saw them, young men of promise.

Although I am not generally inclined to indulge in psychobabble, at this point in time, as I am looking back, it occurs to me that my perceptions of the students, the what seemed likes and the as I remembers, could well have been my projection. I might well have been reflecting my own fear of the future outward onto them. My fear that this was it. Not all, but some of my colleagues, once dreamed of grand places in academia. They saw themselves as professors at Harvard or Stanford, but that didn't happen. Their dreams denied caused them to turn bitter and mean and petty. Despite how their dreams were not my dreams and how this was only the start of my second year here, I feared getting stuck like a mastodon in a tar pit. I feared becoming one of them.

I wasn't off about the beauty pageants, though. Two years in a row one of the students was crowned Miss Staten Island. Not the same one twice. Two different Miss Staten Islands, back to back.

The student who came to my office that afternoon took off his varsity jacket—he was on the baseball team—draping it over the back of a chair which he then turned around and straddled. His arms were crossed and he leaned forward as if he were in an acting class. Method acting. He told me that he'd been reading the Beat poets. This semester he was taking Survey of American Lit I—Whitman and Dickinson. "Professor Lodge suggested I read some of the contemporary poets."

"John Lodge? You're in John's class?"

"Yeah, he's great. He said I had to read John Ashbery and Seamus Heaney. What do you think of them?"

"Definitely worth reading," I said. "Who else did he recommend?"

"That's it for now. But he's going to give me copies of his books. His books of poetry. Ones he wrote."

"You know what I really think?" I said. "I think you should transfer to some other school."

Professor John Lodge. No, no relation to the fancy-schmancy Lodges, but oh, please, if only you assumed he was, he'd be afforded a moment's pride. It wasn't that he wanted to be rich. What he wanted was to be a snob, or at least have some excuse to be a snob. His books of poetry—his books of poetry were not books. They were xeroxed copies of maybe twenty poems or so laid out two on the front and two on the back of five or six sheets of regular paper. Regular paper folded in half and three staples made the spine along the crease. Also, there were cover pages: an illustration set between the title and the by John P. Lodge, an epigraph or two or three epigraphs, a notation of copyright which was too sad to consider, and a page devoted to a dedication of this book to his wife. His emaciated wife, with a clavicle that would snap like a wishbone, had an emphatic nervous twitch that put me in mind of Bette Davis smoking a cigarette, although entirely unlike Bette Davis, John's wife had no juice. John aspired to be a snob, but his wife succeeded because she believed that to be painfully thin and in possession of one very good suit entitled her to be condescending to others.

John wrote a new "book," on average, every six weeks. He'd leave a copy of this "most recent volume" in my mailbox where I'd find it with a Post-It affixed on the front asking me to Enjoy! Or beseeching If you have time, causing my heart to twist like a wet washcloth wringing out that last drop of pity. Pity that, after a while, turned to resentment because of the responsibility of it. What was I supposed to say to him about his "books" of poems? Never mind the sorrow of book form. Each poem, individually, judged on its own merits, stunk. Seriously stunk. Mostly they were about gin and alienation. The very worst ones were about sex. If the author of these poems were a student and not a professor, I'd have been less embarrassed by them but I would not have encouraged them, either.

It wasn't possible to avoid John. The department was small. We both often took the 4:20 ferry home to Manhattan, and he urgently wanted to be my friend. I didn't dislike the guy. Wagner College was no different from any other college when it came to the professorial pecking order. As the newest member of the faculty, I was expected to prove myself somehow, and until I did, I was to be excluded from the circle. For that first year, John was the only member of the faculty who was at all nice to me, which I sort of appreciated.

One morning, near the end of the last term, I found yet another of John's "books" in my otherwise empty mailbox. I took it to my office where I was intending to spend the twenty minutes before class whipping up that day's lesson plan. John's "book" I tossed in the previously empty wastebasket where it landed with an appropriately dull flump. Flipping the pages of my legal pad past the to-do lists and doodles, I reached a page that was pristine and on the top line I wrote: Compare and Contrast. That's as far as I'd gotten when John interrupted me. He had a Styrofoam cup in each hand. "Coffee," he set one cup on my desk. "Black, right?"

I nodded and thanked him, which he took as an invitation to pull up a seat. "Did you get the book I left for you?" he asked.

"Yes. Thank you. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but I will."

"You don't have to read it now, but I just want to see you open it."

Sure, I could've looked under my notepad and fished through my briefcase, pretending I'd misplaced the damn thing—except, as guilty as the cat with the canary in its mouth, my gaze went like a laser beam, a straight line of light from my eyes to the wastebasket, and John too saw his book discarded. After an extremely uncomfortable pause, he said, "Don't worry about it."

As if I didn't already feel like four pieces of crap, it was dedicated to me: A new friend, but a valued one.

I apologized of course. More than apologized. I apologized in writing. I wrote him a letter of apology about how my own writing of stories wasn't going well and how I'd had a fit of envy over how prolific he is and how it was a rude tantrum for which I am ashamed, and I thanked him profusely for the honor of the dedication. All of which I thought was remarkably kind of me, self-sacrificing, in the way that allowed me to think I was a good person.

My apology was accepted, and everything was the same as it was before with John and me, which amounted to chatting for a few minutes before classes began, and some days sitting together on the ferry going home. And let me not forget the time John was able to cajole me into joining him for a four o'clock cocktail in the back room of the chapel which had been turned over to the faculty, a designated place for them to gather for lunch or a drink at the end of the day. I would've gone there a second time if ever I needed a reason to kill myself.

The Kerouac-enthralled student sitting in my office told me, because I'd asked, what led him to choose to come to Wagner. He was not from Staten Island, and he lived in the dormitories. "The photographs," he said. "The old buildings, the lawn, people carrying books. It was how I imagined college would be."

Along with a list of contemporary poets, I gave him a list of some other schools where the buildings were old and the students carried books and where there was no John Lodge teaching in the English Department. And no me either, for that matter.

On his way out I called the student back and said, "Read those poets first. You can read Professor Lodge's poems later. After you have a foundation."

When he left, I stayed for a while longer in my office. A fairly long while, just thinking. That's how I came to be there in the evening, and I was glad of it. The quiet reverberated in the dark. Quiet, this kind of quiet, did that: it reverberated like a pulse of a heart until the wind picked up and brought with it another kind of quiet.

Evenly spaced lampposts illuminated the footpath.

The leaves rustled.

The Trautmann Square Clock Tower, a four-sided clock showing the time no matter where you stood, was lit.

That night, when the hour seemed much later than it was and the clouds, the incandescent night clouds, moved across the sky, and the dried leaves swept along the path, for a fleeting moment, I considered the notion that teaching forever at a small school set on a bucolic campus might be a good life for me after all.

The footpath narrowed. The trees were more dense. If this were a movie, here's the part where the heroine would get that creepy feeling, a sense that maybe she was not alone. She'd pause to listen. And of course the sicko following her would also pause because he might be a sicko, but he's not stupid. But this wasn't a movie, and I stopped only because I was no longer in a hurry.

It was then that I knew for certain that I would not return the following semester. And with the decision not to return absolute, I was overcome by cheap sentiment for a place where my connection was slight. Cheap sentiment that manifested as longing, a reluctance to part when the parting was inevitable, which was why I lingered there to experience the cottages deep in the shadows of a perfect autumnal night.

I was maybe twenty feet away at most, looking head-on at the smaller cottage. A halo softened the light above the door, and even though I knew for a fact that Albee's play was meant to be set at Trinity College and not Wagner College, this cottage, in the dark, evoked the very essence of the house where George and Martha tormented each other and their guests.

Yet, it was from the porch of the larger cottage, the chapel, that the noiselessness broke like a glass when I heard a woman say—no, no, that's wrong, she didn't say, she enunciated. As if the words were scripted, she enunciated, "You. Disgust. Me. There. I've said it now. You. Disgust. Me."

I could not have recalled all of Martha's lines verbatim, but surely this had to have been one of them, and the voice, the woman's voice, also sounded familiar. I was trying to place it—a student or maybe that professor from the history department, the one who wore serapes and necklaces made from walnuts—when the man said, "Please. Don't do this." His voice I knew. John Lodge said, "You're upset."

John Lodge and his twitchy wife.

They were not directly under the porch light, but off to the side. Having no idea if they were able to see me or not, I stepped behind a maple tree where it was less likely I'd be spotted. I'm not proud myself. They thought they were alone, and I should've respected their privacy. I should have, but I didn't.

"I'm upset," she said, "and you are pathetic. Where does that leave us?"

"Let's go home."

In all likelihood they'd been in that makeshift faculty room hitting the hooch since the onset of happy hour or maybe lunchtime. John always struck me as one of those sad-sack drinkers, the sort who drink a lot and often but never get sloppy drunk or have any fun, either. And her? I'd have bet she hadn't seen a sober day since her Sweet Sixteen.

"Home? You dare call that a home? It's a closet. We live in a closet, a broom closet, but what choice do we have, on your salary, Professor Lodge? Oh, excuse me. Assistant Professor Lodge."

That explained the address. When the ferry docked in Manhattan, John and I would part company. We did not take the same subway line home, and I did wonder how he afforded that neighborhood, that address which declared, I have old money. I am stuffy. I am not even the least bit hip. His wife, I knew, did not work. Supposedly she was going for her PhD but the particulars of that were never clear.

"Claire, please. I'm tired," he said.

"Tired? You're not tired. You're dead. And boring. You are deadly boring."

She was right. He was boring, but it wasn't like she brought sparkle to a room either.

"Please," John said. "Please stop."

"A pathetic, boring loser and you are never going to be anything but—"

"Stop it. Please. Stop it."

"A boring loser. And if you think anyone is ever going to publish that drivel—"

"Please, Claire. Don't."

"That drivel you write—"

John let go with a groan, a groan that I would've associated with a spectacular orgasm except that it was impossible to think of John Lodge or Ms. Twitch in such a state. The groan was followed by a thud. Or a crack. A sound of some sort or another.

If I hurried, I could catch the 7:20 bus and make the 7:40 ferry.

The next day John's class waited the twenty minutes allowed a tardy professor. I can safely assume that some of the boys high-fived each other before all the students flooded from the room. A no-show professor was as good as a snow day.

The chairman called John at home. He called again. And again. No one had seen Professor Lodge or his wife since the day before when a lot of people saw her waiting in the hallway for his class to end, pacing as if she were anxious, nervous about something, which was a lead to nowhere. Anxious, nervous was her natural state. A professor from Romance Languages said that as he was going into Main Hall, they were walking out. Holding hands, he claimed. But after that—nothing. John Lodge and his wife seemed to have vanished. After two more days of calling, the department chairman gave up and hired someone to cover John's classes for the remainder of the semester.

Unless there is some sort of evidence to the contrary, the disappearance of a husband and wife does not constitute a crime, which means nothing in terms of rumors spreading and theories zinging around like electrons in an atom. Everyone had an idea as to what really happened: they were the victims of a psycho-killer, they'd been kidnapped and were being held for ransom, they joined up with a cult, they had a suicide pact, they moved to Paris on a whim, they were abducted by aliens, devoured by coyotes. I steered clear of the gossip. I accepted the fact that sometimes that's how it goes, that sometimes you'll never know what really happened.

After that semester's end, I did not return to Wagner College.

Time passed and I can't say that I gave John or his wife a whole lot of thought, but when I did, I wished for them a rosy scenario: that the light of the next morning brought clarity; realizing how perilously close they'd come to being George and Martha was sobering, so they decided to make a fresh start and move to a small town where he would teach school and write bad poems and she would be super-snooty to all the rubes and it would all turn out happy in the end. That's what I wished for them because—why not?

More time passed. Years. It was three years later when I got the envelope in the mail, a five-by-seven manila envelope, the return address a post office box in Maine. No name, but I recognized John's handwriting as surely as I had recognized his voice that night.

There was no Post-It affixed to this "book" but there was a letter paper clipped to the "cover," which read:

Dear M.,

I look back on our days at Wagner College with love. Yes, I loved teaching there. I loved having an office in Parker Hall (which, did you know, was once an orphanage), and I loved having you as my friend and colleague. I greatly valued our talks, our time on the ferry. I believed that you understood me, and I continue to believe that to this day. It is that very faith in our friendship that enables me to swallow my pride and tell you that, although I live modestly, I am not always able to find work. I now have found myself in difficult circumstances of a financial nature. It is terribly awkward to ask for money, and I am intending this request to be a loan, but on the chance that I can't pay you back, I will give you the publishing rights to my books. Please know how hard this is for me.

One thousand dollars would make a world of difference right now. I hope you are well.

Love,

John P. Lodge

p.s. I saw you hiding behind the tree. I know you were there.

PART III

BOROUGH OF BROKEN DREAMS

. . . SPY VERSE SPY . . .

BY TODD CRAIG

Park Hill

I don't understand how niggers do it to themselves, ya know?" Officer Lillmann exclaimed in the middle of the PS 57 community playground. Even Schmidt stepped back and looked at him.

"I mean, better they do it to themselves than us, right? Seriously, say I woulda shot one of 'em . . ." Everyone looked. Another officer on the scene grabbed at Lillmann's shoulder as if to say, Quit while you're ahead.

Detective Schmidt grimaced and mumbled under his breath, "Are you kidding? You do realize we're in the middle of a crime scene surrounded by hundreds of black people? At a Troy Davis rally sponsored by Wu-Tang? Really?"

But Lillmann was a standard-issue blue wall dirty cop. "If I did this, it'd be a whole big thing," he bellowed. "And I'd get off at the end of it all, cuz that's how we work, but good it's one of their own that did it. So now, no big deal. Badda-boom-badda-bing. What do they call it, black-on-black crime? What a waste of bullets!"

Lillmann jeered, sawing sugar away from his mouth with the back of his wrist. They called him D2 in Park Hill . . . he spent more time in Dunkin' Donuts on break than on patrol or on duty. The whole Killer Hill loathed Lillmann. But D2 was po-lice, so what could they do? One thing was for sure, though . . . in the midst of the Raekwon and RZA–sponsored Free Troy Davis rally, tolerance for police foolishness was little to nil, especially for Lillmann's racist politricks.

* * *

Mease sat in the car, waiting. He looked around, getting pissed at his brother's constant lateness, which was happening again. While waiting, all he could do was constantly check his cell phone to see if the newest text message had arrived. While Mease scanned the street on the left, he suddenly heard on his right:

Click-CLICK . . . SLAM!!!

"GOGOGOGOGO!!!"

Sy's shouts shot Mease right out his yin and into the thick of all yang. Without even looking, Mease slammed the tranny into drive, swerved out of his parking spot and into the street. Sy guarded the rearview, while it took everything Mease had to swerve back. Mease and Sy leaned hard left. Then Mease swerved back right, away from oncoming Manhattan traffic, and back into his lane.

The only thing they seemed to avoid was death, as a redheaded woman stopped running, flipped open her cell, and started dialing.

"Hahahahahahaha!!!! You shoulda seen ya fuckin' face, sun!" Sy squawked. Mease realized his brother was not only late, but joking with antics Mease hated with a passion.

"Yo, is you fuckin' crazy? I almost killed people, almost killed us!"

Sy giggled at his brother's reaction to impending death, but he could tell Mease had been pushed beyond the edge.

"Word to mother, I should pull over and take your stupid ass out myself! Where you goin', sun? Cuz I'ma drop ya crazy ass off e-mediate-ly!" Mease proclaimed.

"I'ma go uptown real quick and git right."

"Yeah, a'ight," Mease said as he switched lanes, speedballing up the West Side Highway, hoping no police had seen his jeep or license plate. Little did Mease know that po-lice would be the least of his worries.

* * *

The brisk winter wind blew party fliers across the windshield. Sy jumped, coughing up chronic smoke. Mease slowly turned his head. They were sitting in the jeep a couple blocks away from The Tunnel. A few blocks off the West Side Highway—and the water—it was no wonder the wind curled in the quick of this night. It was cool, though . . . all Mease had to do was push the button on the dashboard to adjust the climate control, and all indications of frío in the Land Cruiser were nil. Problem was, Mease was so damn high and that button was so damn far away . . . when he reached for it, he could hear the ticking sound like when the Six Million Dollar Man flexed his bionic muscles to make some superhuman physical movement.

"Damn, sun . . . that shit . . . took a lot," Mease said, finally lowering his arm after pressing the button to increase the blower speed.

"Oh, you fucked up, B. You only turned the heat up, it's that deep?" Sy snickered.

To Mease, it had been ten minutes . . . in real life, a twenty-second motion, the longest twenty seconds of his life.

"I told you, sun!!! I got the Billy Joel, cuzzin!"

Mease couldn't front on Sy for this one. He didn't even want Sy to pass it back to him. As far as their peoples were concerned, his younger brother was his twin. Only a year younger, Sy stuck to Mease like glue; thus, their street names: Symease Twins. They were sneaky, moving with a stealth unlike any other two-man crime team. Where you saw Sy, you always saw Mease.

Sy held the eL below the window and turned toward Mease as two people walked past the blood-maroon Land Cruiser that Mease had bought with straight cash. Out the corner of his eye, Sy saw this dude's coat: a bubble leather bomber, the identical color as the Land Cruiser.

They didn't even have to go in The Tunnel anymore. After all, why pay forty dollars–plus when you could do laps around the block with liquor and weed in the car and have your own party? Since it was Sunday night, Hot97 broadcasted Funk Flex live from The Tunnel. And everybody knew the system in Mease's car—it was legendary in his hood, you could hear it clear all up and down Vanderbilt Avenue. And that made it harder to understand how these two moved in absolute silence.

But The Tunnel wasn't their modus operandi tonight. This was a business trip—and they sat and smoked, waiting for Quentin to return so they could take flight back to Shaolin.

"You know you're a dickhead?!? Who's gon' believe that you, of all people, got Billy Joel's weed connect? Better yet, who the fuck's gon' believe Billy Joel even smokes weed?" Mease's words slid off his tongue like molasses. He couldn't even begin to conceal his highness.

"Nah, sun, fuck that . . . If these fools don't believe me, fuck'em—I just won't sell them shit! Dudes on these streets'll have to respect my pedigree after this one!" Sy took another pull, but coughed his lungs up. After he found oxygen again, he said, "That's my word! Kids that don't believe me don't need to be fuckin' with me anyway, strictly because they not acknowledging how gangsta I am with this shit, yo, word up."

Mease shook his head. He tried real hard to make it fast, but everything was slow. Mease dreaded the moment when Sy would pass the eL . . . and that was when Sy extended his arm, pinching it in his fingers. Mease turned his whole body away, toward the driver's-side window. Even blinking his eyes to focus became hard as all hell.

"BA-uuuh-Bah-Bah-Battle anybody, I don't care you TELL!" Funkmaster Flex blared through the Land Cruiser system. They sat there listening to Flex scratching double copies of "Rock the Bells." Mease finally focused in the mirror to observe a redheaded woman on the phone. As quickly as she noticed Mease through the mirror, she turned and scurried off. Mease didn't even really see this woman . . . but she most certainly saw him and Sy.

Mease was too stuck in perpetual tortoise trots—his mind felt like it had just stopped moving. He looked back over at Sy, a task that felt like a short moment in forever.

Sy started laughing. "Damn, sun, it got you like that? I told you."

Mease couldn't even argue.

As Sy opened the ashtray and outted the eL, he said, "Besides, look at the dude—mufucka's just like us, yo! You ever listen to that 'Uptown Girl' joint he made? You ever see the video? That mufucka's a broke-ass mechanic tryin' to get wit the high-siddity rich bitch . . . Man, that nigguh just like us, and we smokes weed!"

Mease started giggling, and knew once he started he'd be laughing entirely too hard for the next ten minutes. They were each other's other side. Mease was always so serious, he needed to laugh. And his comedic younger twin was known for splitting stomachs, stitches, and tear ducts with his sharp tongue.

"Homie bleeds just like us, and I'm sure he choke just like us on this shit too!!! That's what I'ma do: put this shit out on the streets and tell nigguhs I got that Uptown Girl . . . better yet, I got that BJ!"

Mease was trying with all he had to stop laughing. As he finally caught his breath, he said to his brother, "You really think people gon' buy yo shit? They gon' think you got that blowjob, stupid mufucka!"

Sy screwfaced his brother. Mease always shot down his get-rich-quick schemes. Mease always felt Sy should let him do the thinking . . . all little bro had to do was follow. But Sy wouldn't let Mease's reality-based pessimism take the glimmer out of his eye, which he felt was clearly on the prize.

"Nah, dude, it's the BJ . . . it's that Bomb Joint from Billy Joel's connect. They gon' feel me on this one. Just taste that shit, it's crazy . . . I'ma have the hood fucked up like the guy on the couch in Half Baked, sun! Watch me . . . I may even sell this shit as doobies on some real old-school shit. They ain't gittin' no chronic like this in the whole tri-state fam."

"Yeah," Mease jeered, "there's one thing you do got right about this shit . . ."

Unable to moderate himself, Mease reached into the ashtray, lit the eL, and took another pull, inhaling then pressing chronic steam out his spout just before he choked. Pounding with a closed fist, hoping to thump the cough outta his chest cavity, he pulled in enough air to say, "This some good-ass shit! Nigguhs in the hood ain't smoking nuffin' like this. Shiiiiit, you could call it the flying chocolate-dookie-smellin' bombazy and mufuckas gon' buy it. And if they don't come back, they fools!"

Mease put the eL back in the ashtray; he couldn't take anymore of the pure bubonic goodness. He looked at Sy and shook his head. For the first time, Mease really felt his brother was onto something. He reached over and gave Sy a pound. "I can't even front—this might just work."

Sy's eyes immediately brightened. "I told you, sun, what I tell you?!" Sy couldn't contain his happiness. He'd reached his long-awaited goal—his older brother's approval on his street-corner operations. Normally, Sy stayed getting shut down by Mease. His schemes were always missing something. But this time, Sy got it right.

Mease looked at him and said, "Tomorrow we'll get up, I'll use some of this paper Quent's gittin' right now, and we'll cop a couple pounds of that shit. I can't believe I'm financing the fuckin' Billy Joel."

Sy started bouncing up and down in his seat.

Mease immediately sobered up. "A'ight, sun, chill—yo, chill!!! I just got the leather detailed, yo, be easy on that shit!"

As Sy calmed down, Mease began to settle back into his seat, remembering why they were parked there in the first place.

"Where's Quentin?" he asked, as he glanced past the rearview mirror. "Damn, dude's coat is ill, that shit matches my car."

Mease sank into his seat, not really paying attention to the motions of the coat . . . and the three other dudes with the wearer of the coat. As he closed his eyes and opened them again, he leaned over and his vision lazily landed on the driver's-side mirror. When he focused, he realized the wording was indeed true . . . Caution: Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.

Now Mease could not only see the blood-maroon leather bubble, he could also make out the mask and the all-too-familiar hand motions. Neither Sy nor Mease were unidentifiable, and this was part of the problem. And Sy didn't realize this. He'd meant to tell his brother about the robbery he did earlier in the day, on his way to cop the Billy Joel sample. Sy's blooper session was a joke, but every joke contains an ounce of truth. Normally they always filled each other in on the solo dirt they did. Yet Sy was so high, he'd forgotten about this particular ounce he owed Mease.

But dude who walked past the car had confirmation that the dude sitting next to the dude was starring as the dude who had robbed him earlier in the day, who now played the role of the dude playin' Big Willie, suckin' down ganja smoke. He thought it was luck. Sy thought it was Billy Joel. Mease thought it could never happen, but now it was.

"Oh shit, sun—move, git down!!!"

Mease wasn't quick enough to put the car in reverse and navigate out the parking spot this time. Bullets riddled the car. Mease and Sy yelled to each other between the cannons blasting at them. Innocent bystanders ran for cover. Mease and Sy balled up in the foot panels as they heard shots whizzing around them.

Pingpingpingpingpingping . . .

Everything was slow motion like empty shells hitting the concrete in The Matrix. Mease couldn't see Sy, but heard him screaming. Sy couldn't see Mease, but even the voice of his older brother didn't slow the sparks where metal ripped through metal, where hollow points pointed at their target. Who was it? And how had this happened? Normally, a shootout this close to The Tunnel made squad car sirens light up and wail.

Four and a half clips worth of slugs later, all that could be heard were screams, blaring car alarms, and the footsteps of people fleeing in every direction. As quick as it started, as long as it lasted, it came to a screeching halt.

Mease slowly lifted his head, and banged it on the steering wheel. It all happened so fast, neither he nor Sy had a chance to reach into the glove box and handle their own business with the Desert Eagles. They weren't usually that slow.

As Mease eased his way up the seat, he checked himself to make sure he wasn't hit.

"Fuck was that shit? Yo, Sy . . . yo, sun . . ."

Mease quickly got up to see his only brother slumped in his seat. Blood oozed from Sy's body, which was peppered with gunshots.

"Yo, Sy . . . no . . . NOOOOOOOOO!"

Mease slapped his brother's face, trying to wake him up.

"C'mon, Sy, stay with me, stay with me, yo!!!"

With what little life he had left in him, Sy coughed up blood, then slowly whispered to his brother, "My fault . . . I meant to tell you . . . on the way to git the Billy Joel, I robbed thi—"

"Yo, Sy . . . Sy!"

Mease cupped his brother's face as Sy's life slid through his fingers. Mease had always been his brother's keeper. What would he keep now? He kissed his brother's forehead.

Mease stepped out of the truck and gave himself a thorough looking over. Not a drop of blood, no trace of gunshot residue. The cold didn't even bother him. He was in a daze, high off his brother's death, and sober to the Billy Joel. Now he looked at the bullet holes that splattered the back door of the truck. Still dazed from what happened, Mease saw the blue and white lights approaching as he walked over to the other side of the truck.

The blood-maroon Land Cruiser was bullet-riddled on the passenger side too, just like Sy. But Mease was not even scratched.

"How the fuck?"

Mease was in awe. And for a split second, what locked his brain wasn't the fact that his brother was slain, but that he was still standing there in one piece.

"MEEEEEEEEEEASE!"

Quentin, with gat in hand, screamed at his man from the opposite corner. He tucked the weapon between his jeans and hipbone, and ran over. "What the fuck is this, sun?"

Mease stood in utter shock. "Yo . . . I really don't know—"

"C'mon, sun, we gotta motivate! Them boys is on the way!" Quentin could see Mease wasn't moving, and the people who had fled the street were starting to return. He leaned through the shot-out window to grab Mease's coat, then went to the side of the truck to pull Mease away from the scene of the crime.

"My broth—"

"We gotta fly, Mease. If they catch us here, we finished! We gon' find out who did this, but right now, we gotta motivate!" Quent pulled a shell-shocked Mease away from the horrific sight while trying to force him into his coat.

In a moment of clarity, Mease broke away, leaned back into the truck, reached into the ashtray, and took the only memento left from his brother. They quickly skated around the block, into the entirely too long Tunnel line, then blended into the night on their way to the subway.

* * *

"License and registration."

Damn, Mease thought, heeding the words of Officer Lillmann. How the hell did the parking lot turn into a checkpoint? He was fine until he'd turned off Jersey Street to park, where he saw the usual routine—barricades with one of the po-lice looking and the other one pointing. Of course, Mease got pointed before he could straighten the nose of the Lexus and keep it moving. He'd made it all the way here—now he saw Quentin walking past. Mease knew not to drive the solo car alone. But he was gonna be hard today . . . hardheaded. And they told him not to sniff nothing, but he was coooool, he could make it. And he almost had. But then he remembered that factoid—most fatal car accidents happen within a one-mile radius of the driver's home.

Here he was, skeed out his mind, about to be hemmed up by po-lice in the dirty car with three gats: one four-pound, one nine, and one Tec. All that and the half-kilo of coke . . . with his boss witnessing this spectacle.

Mease tried to slyly wipe the white powder away from his nostrils while po-lice checked his vitals. "Damn, I was just tryin' to git to my fuckin' son," he said in the empty car. Clearly the coke was getting to him—so much, in fact, he didn't even notice Lillmann back at his window.

"Well, all your info is fine, but here's a ticket . . . Put that in the visor so ya don't lose it."

"What's this for, I wasn't doin nuffin'!?"

"Nothin' except for ridin' with a passenger that looks like a half-ounce of that Pet Shop 'dro from uptown."

Mease looked to his right. Sure enough, he was so worried about the coke, he'd forgotten all about the bright-green bag of Mary Jane he'd copped for the crew to burn down during their cook-up session.

This was why Quent specifically told Mease not to get high.

"Don't worry, me and my old lady'll—how do you fools say it?—burn it down, right? Yeah, me and the old lady will burn it down in your honor! As for you, get outta the car slow. I been waitin' for this moment! And don't worry—I'll have a cruiser pick up Sy so you ain't too lonely. How 'bout those apples?"

* * *

Mease woke up in a cold sweat, drenched and so scared that he'd pissed on himself. Mease wasn't scared of po-lice, but had a pinch of fear when it came to Lillmann, because D2 had the power to take his freedom. He'd done it before to other dudes in Stapleton, Park Hill, Richmond Terrace, and every other hood on the Rock. But since Mease had nothing to care for anymore and no one to keep, he figured he'd body a cop before going to jail.

"Shit . . ." was all he could say when he realized he'd just awakened from a nightmare. He rolled over toward the window, saw that daybreak wasn't yet approaching. He could hear American Splendor on the TV, the part when Harvey is diagnosed with cancer and tells his wife, "I can't do it . . . I'm too scared and not strong enough to fight it."

Mease responded: "I feel you, homie."

Shit. Mease was pissed because he pissed, but couldn't really flip. Instead, he collected the soiled sheets and made moves from the Richmond Terrace apartment he'd acquired from an old customer just before crack got her evicted. Richmond Terrace was ideal—the hilly concrete terrain enclosed a murky urban underbrush perfect for the movements Mease needed to make. He hopped in the whip with the saturated laundry bag and skated from the Terrace over to CNB Laundromat—the twenty-four-hour spot—at three thirty a.m.

Mease watched the sudsy clothes and sheets spin through the glass window while reflecting on his dream. Every day was hard since he lost Sy, no doubt about it. And somewhere along the way, he'd lost it all . . . and not by bad decisions, but simply by choice. Without Sy around to balance him out, Mease quickly fell—from crime boss controlling the majority of illegal operations in Killer Hill to low-level crime flunky. He now commuted from Richmond Terrace to finish jobs for Quentin, who had been one of his workers and at one point had owed Mease money. He couldn't care less, though. Without Sy, he did the bare minimum to survive. No more smart maneuvering, no more planning and calculating. Mease would go in, kill you, drop the gun at the crime scene with his prints, and dare you to detain him.

Now, six years after Sy had been shot, Detective Schmidt was frantically searching for Mease, always just a step behind. But Mease's whole existence resembled the motion of the soiled fabrics in the washer. He watched as his pissy shit got clean.

* * *

Then Schmidt's worst nightmare materialized. The Troy Davis rally was pretty tame—Shallah Raekwon made sure the word throughout Park Hill was "PEACEFUL," even toward po-lice. Two years before the miscarriage of justice that led to Troy Davis's 2007 execution date, Rae had approached the man known as The Abbott of the Wu-Tang Clan. He coerced RZA to couple some of that Quentin Tarantino Pulp Fiction Hollywood clout with his hip-hop pull to fund the rally supporting the wrongly accused black man. But no one could've anticipated this move.

While Schmidt tried to secure the crime scene in the area between Hubert H. Humphrey School and Targee Street, things began to spiral out of control. He asked, "What's the victim's name?"

"Quentin Montgomery," Lillmann snickered. "That asshole finally got his just desserts!"

Schmidt's face turned sheet-white. He looked at Quentin's body—no open casket for him. "Forty-five-caliber hollow tip wounds? You can't be serious!" Schmidt knew the work of this hollow-tip Desert Eagle executioner.

"I need you to put out a BOLO on—"

"On who, Schmiddy? Every nigger in the projects? We really gonna waste that much manpower on these savages?"

"Cut the shit, Lillmann!" Schmidt screamed, but it was entirely too late. In the lull between the chants of "Free Troy Davis!" someone turned the tide. The onlookers, overseeing the po-lice's treatment of Quentin's body, were already disgusted with Lillmann's foolishness. All it took was one "FUCK the PO-LICE!!!"

"Nah, FUCK D2, yo!"

"Yay-yea-yeah!!!"

Before he knew it, Schmidt was witnessing a riot unfold. The rustling amongst the people focused, becoming unified.

"Yeah, FUCK D2!"

* * *

Mease got off the bus on Tompkins Avenue clenching an aluminum briefcase. He began walking toward the hood. He kept an indiscreet hooptie in the parking lot; after losing his Land Cruiser, he had no desire for upscale luxury. "From point A to B" was Mease's vehicle motto now. He heard the project's heartbeat quicken as he walked through Stapleton Playground into the hood, and soon saw there was an outside event. A theater company was putting on an interactive play entitled Bamboozled for the kids in the projects.

"And that's exactly what it is," Mease murmured as he proceeded through a parking lot toward the interior of the projects. He passed familiar faces and landmarks like the teens with their pit bulls engulfed in blunt smoke.

Quick glares showered Mease, but no one thought twice about who he was. I wish a mufucka would, Mease thought, as he opened and closed each finger around the briefcase handle. He was blind to everything but his destination.

People knew Mease as the gangster gone wash-up. He was simply a lackey for Quentin, the dude who somehow usurped Mease's power once Sy was slain. Everyone knew Mease didn't care anymore. He was to Stapleton what Omar was to The Wire—when you saw him coming, you either ran, hid, or prepared to dodge slugs.

Mease followed the path into the double-sided building Stapleton was so well-known for. On the benches, another kiddie crew was drinking, smoking, selling crack, and clowning all the addicts who walked by. Spanky always sicced his pit on fiends who didn't look or smell right, which included damn near every customer. When Mease walked past the crew, they stopped talking until he made it to the lobby.

The Warren Street building was commandeered by Casper's crew for purposes beyond just family living. The lobby reeked like a Port Authority restroom. Mease made his way to the elevator, but couldn't enter because it was caught between the first and second floors, exposing the elevator shaft. He turned around and saw three more soldiers standing right behind him, guarding the building entrance and watching his every move. He took the stairs, and passed three-man crews on each landing.

He finally made it to the fourth floor. At the terrace entrance, Mease held his arms open, spread eagle, never letting the case go. He was patted down by two burly security guards, who then opened the door to "The Dub": two apartments connected by a wall removed. Mease and the briefcase were directed to the bathroom, which had been converted into a recording studio vocal booth. A small note taped to the mic read, PUT THESE ON. Mease set the briefcase down, stepped into the bathtub, stood in front of the mic, and slipped on the headphones.

He immediately heard Casper: "I see you still remember your way to the hood, huh?"

"Yeah, it's been awhile, but I made it," Mease replied.

Feeling awkward holding a conversation with a microphone, Mease scanned the room from floor to ceiling and located the camera posted on the wall above the mic, aimed at him.

"I see some things never change," Mease said, referencing Casper's anonymity. The crime boss had committed so much dirt in Stapleton that he had to remain nameless and faceless. And since there was already a Ghostface in Stapleton, he got stuck with the next best moniker.

Casper cackled through the headphones. "No doubt. I called you out here for a reason, so lemme give you the details."

As he listened, Mease's face told it all.

"You really think that's gonna work? He's gonna be there for that?"

"Fuck you think you talking to, nigguh? Look, I understand you outta the hood now, and I can even sympathize with the reason behind it. But you ain't been here, so don't question how I make moves. You here for a fuckin' job, so do as you told! Leave all the thinking to me, ya heard?"

"A'ight . . . I got it . . . and you got me, right?" Mease countered.

Casper let out a deep sigh. "Yeah, nigguh, I got you! You know the whole hood asking why you sleeping with the enemy? You ever think of that?"

Mease looked puzzled.

"I'ma put you outta this misery, cuz I know you really want out. And given what you been through, I'ma hook you up. One of my mans just ripped this jump-off he met in Manhattan. What's bugged is she talkin' 'bout how she messed with Harvey and was delivering paper for him. She told my dude that one time she got robbed by a kid from Killer Hill that Harvey's brother bodied."

Mease's brain began to move again. It hadn't in a very long time. "And . . ."

"And my man said shorty was brunette up top . . . but was fire-engine-red down below."

Mease's face blanked. He couldn't believe it.

"Yeah, believe it, fam. Don't never say I ain't do nuffin' for you, homie. Leave the case in the bathtub and break north. Do my job—that'll be your last. Then do what you need to, and don't fuck it up! Make sure you git it right, yo! Now get the fuck out my hood 'fore I sic some killuhs on that ass! You've been warned, ya heard?"

"No . . . no doubt," Mease stuttered, puzzling the pieces together.

He took off the headphones, placed them back on the mic, stepped out the tub, and sat the briefcase where he once stood. When he opened the bathroom door, an identical briefcase was sitting in his path. Mease quickly picked it up and left.

It was starting to make sense to Mease. Harvey was Quentin's brother. They were both from QB and acted like they hated each other. Problem was, it was all game—all for show in the hood so they could extort info from people. This dude might tell Harvey about some bullshit Quentin did. Meanwhile, Quentin found out from someone else why they were scheming on Harvey. They had it down to a science.

No wonder Quentin never had my money that night, Mease thought. Sy did a robbery. He robbed the fire-engine redhead Mease remembered from that night . . . Harvey's girl. And now Mease woke up.

He proceeded to his usual escape route; after sliding the briefcase into a duffel bag slung across his back, he moved briskly across the terrace to the adjoining building and noticed the uniforms running into the other entrance.

And at the back of the pack was Officer Lillmann. As Detective Schmidt cautiously hopped up the stairs, gun drawn, to the fourth floor, Mease was already on the other side of the building. When he reached the far end of the terrace, he hopped the enclosure gate and climbed down. Mease was tall enough to hang from the outside of the terrace fence and plant his feet on the top of the third-floor fence.

Maneuvering onto the third-floor terrace, Mease opened the apartment window from outside. Casper's instructions were good, and Mease darted through the apartment to the far wall, opened the window, and climbed onto the cemented air conditioner. From there, he sprang down to the curved lamppost jutting from the building. He let go, landing on his feet.

Mease was track-star status to his hooptie in the parking lot. While he was pulling outta Stapleton Houses, Schmidt and the po-lice brigade knocked down the door to find the apartment empty, except for the mic and headphones in the bathroom.

Mease knew Schmidt would be pissed that he had just missed him . . . again. But Mease was awake now, and back to his Harry Houdini when it came to Schmidt's pursuit—always a step ahead.

* * *

"FUCK D2 . . . FUCK D2!"

Schmidt slapped his palm against his forehead. For the first time, Lillmann looked at Schmidt helplessly, his eyes opened wide, irises big as saucers with hole-punched black spots in the center.

"FUCK D2 . . . FUCK D2!"

The other officers on the scene approached the crowd tentatively, trying to calm them down. Lillmann walked up to Schmidt.

"Schmiddy, what are we gon—"

Schmidt saw Lillmann's eyes pop out of his head in slow motion. A spatter of red liquid hovered in the air like late-July humidity. Schmidt didn't recognize what was happening. Then he gasped as Lillmann's face was pulled from his head.

"What the . . . ?" Schmidt tried lifting his hand toward Lillmann, but the gesture took a lifetime. And then it all resumed in real time.

The thud of Lillmann's body bouncing against the concrete echoed in Schmidt's ears. The angry mob screamed, swaying in various directions. Po-lice on the scene ducked, squawking like pigeons, searching for the assailant's angle. But Schmidt stood erect, scanning with his eyes. He'd been told Mease was working on a big job for Casper that would allow him to exit the game. At first, he figured it was Quentin; but then it dawned on him that was Mease's thing—the job was a hit on the most hated officer in Park Hill history.

As the crowd dispersed, the remaining residents saw that Lillmann had been hit.

"DAMN—they shot D2 in the face!!!"

"Rude bwoy . . . bo-bo-BO!!!"

"YEAH . . . FUCK D2 . . . FUCK D2!"

A few po-lice grabbed their walkie-talkies, calling for backup, the riot squad, any extra manpower to contain and control a steaming hood crowd. Schmidt was still, craning his neck, surveying the landscape for the culprit.

Just then, a black Lincoln livery cab turned the corner from Park Hill Avenue onto Palma Drive. While everything seemed slow to Schmidt once again, this cab existed in the same wrinkle of time he now occupied. His head and eyes stopped, locking in on the moving vehicle. The driver was unrecognizable—until he pulled the black bandanna off his face and the black hood off his head.

"Mease," Schmidt whimpered.

Mease winked at the detective who'd been following him since Sy's death. "This one's on me, Schmiddy!"

Focused on his getaway route, Mease's fingers stumbled through the ashtray. He'd killed Lillmann for Casper . . . Shit, he'd killed D2 for the whole hood! But Quentin was responsible for the death of his baby brother Sy. Finally, his fingers fell on their target. He picked up the small clip left from that night's eL. He put it to his lips and lit up. He had kept this clip for a long time, and promised himself he'd dead it when he deaded his brother's murderer.

When Mease turned onto Targee with the hood in an absolute frenzy, he cracked the window and let the smoke fly as he choked on his last few pulls of that Uptown Girl named Billy Joel.

[Editor's Note: all characters in this story—even those based on real people—are fictional or used in a fictional context.]

BEFORE IT HARDENS

BY EDDIE JOYCE

Annadale

His parents called it his graduation barbecue but Mikey knew better. This was their party, their chance to show off their oldest son. So he stood there, in the tiny fenced-in backyard, and answered the same questions over and over. Yes, he was glad that school was over. Yes, he was excited to go up to LeMoyne. No, it wasn't a full scholarship, just half. Baseball was different than basketball. The coach only has a dozen scholarships to divide among twenty-five players. He wasn't sure what he would major in. No, he probably wouldn't start freshmen year.

After a few minutes, his cheeks started to ache.

When they were done congratulating Mikey, the well-wishers—neighbors, old friends, twice-a-year cousins—walked over to his father, cooking burgers at the grill, and slapped his back, or they sidled up to his mother, standing on the small brick patio drinking Chardonnay, and kissed her cheek. They all said something and then glanced back at Mikey. Something like Good job or Great kid, like it was all his parents' doing, like Mikey had played no role at all. His graduation party. Right.

Sure, Pete and Benny were there. Jenny, of course. And Jenny's best friend Amy. But that was it, as far as his friends went. Mikey didn't even mind because these were the only people he might actually stay in touch with when he went away to college. At graduation, all the kids around him were crying and hugging, promising to hang out this summer, swearing they would keep in touch. But Mikey just smiled and shook hands and wished them good luck. His life, his real life, was in front of him, not behind him, and he saw little sense pretending otherwise.

As soon as he could, Mikey retreated to the picnic table in the back of the yard.

"Dude, how long do we have to stay here? This is boring as balls."

"Benny, do you have to use 'balls' in every sentence?"

"Yes, Amy, I swear on my hairy balls that I do."

Amy stuck her tongue out at Benny, who gave her the finger in response. They'd been flirting all year; nothing had happened. Mikey sat down, picked at a plate of pasta salad. He looked back toward the patio and saw his uncle Tommy letting himself in through the chain-link gate at the side of the house. His uncle—squat, mustachioed, and grim, raising three kids on his own—was wearing construction clothes. He'd come straight from a job, on a Saturday.

Tommy plucked two tall boys of Bud from the enormous white cooler stationed near the grill and walked over to their table. Every stiff-legged, achy stride pushed a wince across his face. He handed Mikey one of the cans and took a long, foamy pull on his own.

"Congrats, Mikey." Tommy brought his beer can down, knocked it into the one he'd put in Mikey's hand. He looked around the table at the others. "Having fun?"

Mikey cracked his beer, took a surreptitious sip.

"Yeah, I am now."

Tommy laughed. "Good. Well, enjoy your day. Enjoy your day."

He turned away and then turned back, a quick pirouette that caught Mikey in the middle of rolling his eyes at Jenny.

"Because a week from Monday, you come to work with me. Gonna teach you a little something about hard work before you head up to that country club."

He walked over to the other adults huddled on the patio. Benny started to laugh. Mikey told him to shut up.

"Sorry, bro. That sucks. That really sucks."

Pete shrugged his shoulders. "At least he gave you a beer."

* * *

The next morning, Mikey got up early and went down to the kitchen. His mother was cooking bacon and eggs. A white box from Galluccio's bakery peeked open on the kitchen table, the red and white twining already cut. He walked up beside his mom and kissed her cheek. He glanced out the window above the sink to the backyard. Already clean. The chairs folded, the trash collected in four tidy white bags.

"Mom, you should have waited. I would have helped you clean up."

"It was nothing. Took no time at all."

With her spatula, she lifted a few pieces of bacon out of the hissing pan and dropped them on a plate covered with a paper towel. Mikey grabbed a piece of bacon and put it in his mouth.

"Christ, Michael, at least wait for it to cool off." She laughed. "You know, I saw that beer Uncle Tommy gave you yesterday. I let it slide but don't get used to it. You're still living under my roof."

"Jesus, Mom, it was one beer."

"I don't know what my brother is thinking sometimes."

Mikey reached for another piece of bacon from the plate. His mother put the last of the bacon in the fat-filled pan and it crackled before fading into an agitated sizzle.

"Yeah, Mom, about Uncle Tommy, I don't know about this construction job. I thought I'd work at the CYO camp again."

"Michael, the pay is great. You'll make three times what you did at the camp. You'll have some pocket money at school."

"I don't need money for school, Mom. I have a scholarship."

"That doesn't cover everything. You want a bike to get to class? Or some CDs? Or what if Jenny comes to visit, you want to take her out to dinner? These things cost money." She pointed the grease-coated end of the spatula at him to accentuate each point.

"But Coach Whelan said I need to gain weight this summer. He said I need to gain ten to fifteen pounds of muscle."

"This job will help. You'll be lifting things all day."

Mikey knew he wouldn't win. He retreated to the kitchen table and flopped into one of the chairs.

His mother talked at him over her shoulder, her voice raised so he'd hear her above the frying bacon. "Michael, you know how things are right now. Money is tight. This will really help."

She turned off the burner, brought the plate of bacon over to the table. She sat down next to him.

"And look, you have a week before you start. Go and have some fun. No moping."

Mikey's pout eased into a reluctant smile. He knew he was being selfish but he couldn't help it. He'd worked hard for four years. He hadn't slacked off his senior year like most of his friends. He'd kept his grades up even though it didn't come easy, had never come easy. He'd busted his ass, in the classroom, in the batting cage, on the field. He'd earned that scholarship. He figured he was due a breezy summer.

Mikey's dad walked into the kitchen, took a crumb bun out of the bakery box. He'd probably overheard their conversation and waited things out in the living room. Left all the heavy lifting to Mom. As usual. He stood there for a minute, taking small bites out of the crumb bun. He'd been on furlough for four months. Not sure when it would end. Money was tight.

"Tommy told me that you'll be working out at Shea Stadium. That'll be cool, right?" Powdered sugar stuck in the corners of his father's mustache. He said this seriously, like it made up for the fact that Mikey's summer was ruined.

Mikey stood up, put on his baseball cap, and stared straight at his father. He was already a few inches taller and now he was actually taking his father's place, bringing in money for the family. He pointed to the emblem on his cap, filled his voice with sarcasm. "Yeah, it'll be cool. Except for the fact that I'm a Yankees fan and except for the fact that Shea is a fucking dump."

Mikey didn't wait around to be reprimanded. He walked out the side door into the bright morning sun. He didn't see his father turn to his mother for an explanation, didn't see his mother shrug her shoulders in response.

* * *

Mikey did what his mother suggested: he tried to squeeze a whole summer into one week. Went down the shore with Pete to his parents' house for a few nights. Took the 4 train up to the stadium and caught a Yankees game with Benny. Bought a twelve-pack of condoms and made his way through them with Jenny. Picked her up from work in the afternoon, went straight to her house, up to her bedroom, her parents still at work.

One night, he took Jenny into Little Italy for dinner. Mikey ordered a carafe of red wine. The waiter didn't react, didn't give him the once-over or ask for ID. He just brought over two glasses and a full carafe. They giggled at their good fortune. Mikey poured some for each of them and made a toast, like a big shot.

On the ferry back, they sat outside looking at the long, graceful span of the Verrazano, lit up against the night. Jenny's head was on his shoulder, her hand rubbing his leg, just above his knee. Her fingers were tucked inside his shorts, touching the inside of his thigh, the spot that drove him nuts. His face felt hot, flush with wine.

"Mikey, have you thought at all about what we're going to do when we go away to college?"

He hadn't. Not really. They'd be dating for six months. He really liked Jenny, maybe even loved her. He wasn't sure. How could he know? He loved it when they were alone together, the way she made him feel. And he got pissed when he thought about her with another guy. Not just kinda pissed. Rip-your-head-off pissed. Can't-hold-a-thought-in-your-head pissed. Maybe it was love. It was definitely intense.

He still thought about other girls. Wanted to do with them what he did with Jenny. But that was normal. Everyone had thoughts like that.

When he'd started dating Jenny, he asked his dad what he thought of her. They had just picked up bagels at the Annadale Deli and they were back in the car, his father driving.

"She's nice, Mike, she's really nice. Cute girl."

That had made Michael happy, his father liking Jenny, approving of her. And then, a few minutes later, the car parked in their driveway, his dad had ruined it. He turned to Mikey.

"You're young, Mikey, you're very young. And just remember: even if you're banging Miss America, you still wanna bang the runner-up." He got out of the car quickly, embarrassed by what he'd said.

Mikey was furious. Just like his dad to taint something good. But that's what he thought of now, with Jenny's hand on his thigh and the question about their future hanging there, unanswered. He thought about his dad's stupid advice and the fact that he was gonna be in Syracuse and Jenny would be three hours away in Albany.

"Yeah, kinda."

"Well, what were you thinking?"

"I thought, like, that we'd stay together but also, you know, see other people. Still be together but be allowed to see other people."

Jenny didn't respond for a little while. Her fingers kept massaging his thigh.

"Why? What were you thinking?"

"I mean, I don't really want to see anyone else. I just want to be with you."

The warm feeling from Mikey's face crept down into his chest. He felt bad and he was pissed that he felt bad. He didn't want to talk about this now. He didn't want to explain. He was about to say something when Jenny continued.

"But I guess that makes sense. I guess."

That was enough for Mikey. He didn't think about it again, not on the ferry, not on the train, and not when they got back to Jenny's house and used the last of the condoms on the couch in her basement while her parents snored two floors up.

The week drew to a close. On the Sunday before he started working, Mikey went with Jenny to Amy's house. It was hot and muggy; Amy had a pool, a small above-ground number, but it did the trick. They took dips then dried themselves in the sun on the small wooden deck next to the pool. Jenny wore a one-piece blue swimsuit that accentuated her compact figure; she had small, pert breasts and a pleasantly thick rear. Amy wore a halter top green bikini, displaying a voluptuousness Mikey hadn't realized was there. His eyes kept wandering to Amy's hips, her bare stomach, her large breasts. He hoped Jenny didn't notice.

When Jenny went inside to call her parents, Amy turned her entire body to face Mikey. She brought one hand above her temple to shield her eyes from the sun. She'd gotten out of the pool just a few minutes earlier. Droplets of water trickled across the goose bump–covered flesh of her stomach.

"When do you head up to school, Mikey?"

"Week before Labor Day."

"Oh, that's late, right? Isn't Jenny leaving in the middle of August?"

Mikey nodded, a slow, uncertain movement. Amy wasn't going away to school. She was staying home, going to CSI.

"We should hang out. If you want to come over and jump in the pool or something. You know, after Jenny goes away."

Mikey couldn't see Amy's eyes under the cup of her hand. He nodded again, less uncertain. He raised his right knee and shifted his towel over his groin. With his left hand, he guided his developing erection flat against his thigh. He tried to keep his gaze on Amy's forehead.

He heard the porch door slide open, then the pad of Jenny's bare feet on the deck. She sat down on her lounger, her sunglasses perched on her head.

Amy completed her rotation onto her stomach, her face turned away from Mikey. "What did your parents say?"

Her voice was a lazy slur. "Nothing. Same old stuff."

Mikey stood up and slipped into the pool in one quick motion. He turned back to Jenny, pushing himself right up against the side of the pool to stifle his erection. He felt it bow against the wall of the pool and slowly recede.

"My father said good luck tomorrow. Ame, his uncle is picking him up at four thirty in the morning. Can you believe that?"

Mikey smiled. He'd managed to keep the job out his head most of the week, even though it popped in here and there.

"How bad can it be?" he said. Then he bent his knees and dropped his head below the water's surface.

The next morning, Mikey waited outside his parents' house in the predawn blue. Per Tommy's instructions, he wore jeans, boots, and a long-sleeve T-shirt. He stood there half-asleep until his uncle's battered gray van turned onto the block and cruised to a stop in front of him. They drove in silence to a deli near the expressway. Mikey ordered a ham and egg sandwich on a sesame bagel. His uncle paid the tab, handed Mikey a tall coffee as they walked back to the van.

"Thanks, Tommy, but I don't drink coffee."

The driver's door creaked open, slammed shut. Mikey could hear the words before his uncle opened his mouth.

"You will."

Tommy was so predictable.

The highway was empty. They flew across the island, the complaints of sports fanatics drifting out of the radio. The Yankees had blown two games in the ninth inning over the weekend. The callers were apoplectic; they wanted a new closer, a new manager, a new owner. Mikey took a few sips of coffee. It wasn't terrible but he'd rather have a Coke. Or a Snapple. Something cool.

As they ascended the upper level of the Verrazano, the sun crept into the sky. A soft yellow haze spilled out over the whole city. Mikey could see the rides out on Coney Island, the skyscrapers at the base of Manhattan, a pair of yellow ferries passing in the harbor.

Mikey let out a long, silent yawn that pushed his chin down to his chest.

"You should sleep now."

The van descended into Brooklyn and the highway thickened with cars, buses, and trucks. The callers had moved on from the Yankees; they were decrying the Knicks' latest draft pick.

Mikey closed his eyes and nodded off.

* * *

"What do you think, has the kid gotten a taste?"

"I don't know. Ask him. Kid, you gotten your first taste yet?"

"He hasn't gotten a taste. Look at him. He's all skin and bones."

"Kid, stick out your tongue. Let us see if you've gotten a taste."

"Nicky, take a look at the kid's tongue. Tell us what you think."

Big Nicky strode over to Mikey. He was huge, a colossus.

"Let me see your tongue, kid."

Mikey stuck his tongue out. He already knew that you didn't say no to Nicky, even for something this stupid. Nicky leaned down and inspected Mikey's tongue. He took his time, rotating his head so he could examine the sides. He stared down Mikey's throat. The other guys were laughing, enjoying the performance. Mikey felt ridiculous, standing there, tongue extended, but he couldn't show it. Nicky lifted his hands from his knees, delivered the verdict.

"This kid has definitely gotten a taste."

The others broke into hysterics. A few even cheered. Nicky thudded a hand on Mikey's shoulder, lowered his voice.

"Kid, young pussy is the best fucking thing in the world. Enjoy it while you can."

His uncle piped up, ending the party: "All right, all right, you've had your fun. Enough fucking around. Back to work."

The guys shuffled off, their bodies tilted one way or the other by the pails of concrete they carried. Nicky reached down and lifted two of them with ease, one in each hand, like they were cans of soup. He walked down the ramp and winked at Mikey as he passed. Mikey retrieved another bag of dry cement and carried it over to the mixer.

His uncle slapped him on the back. "Having fun yet?"

Mikey tore the bag open. A chalky gray mist rose into his nose and then down to his lungs. He coughed; the spasm knocked a dose of sweat off his face. He felt an ache in his lower back, in a spot he never knew existed. He glanced at his watch. It was just past nine. The day wasn't even half over.

* * *

At the end of the shift, Mikey was whipped. He'd spent the whole day mixing cement. Eight hours. A rushed half-hour for lunch. His hair was caked with tiny flecks of concrete and his jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt were heavy with sweat. His forearms throbbed and his legs hummed with nascent cramps. Two oysters of ache lay tucked behind his shoulder blades. He sat on the asphalt of the enormous parking lot and waited for his uncle. The other guys split into groups of three or four and piled into cars, except for the handful of Mexicans who just walked out of the lot into the bustle of Queens. Mikey closed his eyes, fell into a grimy half sleep.

Tommy flicked Mikey's ear, waking him. Mikey pushed himself up and lurched toward the passenger door of his uncle's van. Tommy laughed and tossed him a set of keys.

"You slept on the way in."

Then Tommy climbed into the emptied-out back of the van and laid down. He was asleep before the van left the parking lot. Mikey was terrified. He'd never driven in traffic like this. It was chaos, every man for himself, stop-and-go speeding up to a harried group crawl before reverting back to stillness. Sudden explosions of movement, cars swerving across two lanes, the noses of yellow cabs butting in everywhere.

And Mikey's eyes were shutting on him, despite the fact that it wasn't even three o'clock and the van was beset on all sides by hostile, honking drivers. When the van settled into line for the toll on the Verrazano Bridge, Mikey engaged the cigarette lighter. He pulled it out, and when the concentric circles had faded from orange to brown, he singed his left forearm. The pain jolted him awake and he drove the rest of the way home watching a blister form where the lighter had touched his skin.

His house was empty. He took a quick shower, turned on the fan in his bedroom, and slipped under the sheet. He'd just rest for a half-hour, an hour at most, and then he'd go the gym and lift or take some swings in the backyard. The phone rang but he didn't have the energy to get it.

Mikey heard his mother calling him. He opened his eyes, looked at the clock. It was almost eight. He'd been sleeping for three hours. He was still sore. He threw on shorts and a T-shirt and staggered downstairs. His mother and his brother were waiting for him at the kitchen table. He gorged himself on chicken cutlets and rice for twenty minutes and then excused himself and went back upstairs to sleep.

Later, he heard his mother yell something up to him but he didn't answer. He just rolled over and went back to sleep. When the alarm clock sounded at four a.m., he sprung awake, reinvigorated but miserable, astonished that people actually lived like this.

* * *

The week took forever. Every day was a marathon of dust and toil. Mikey stopped showering in the morning, slept the whole way in. He started putting names with faces. A few of the guys were all right. They joked around, they made him feel welcome. A few of the guys were assholes. They didn't like him, could never like him. This was their life; he was just visiting.

The Mexicans didn't joke or judge. They just worked.

On the drive home every day, he stopped at a deli near Shea and bought a liter of Coke. It kept him awake but overfilled his bladder. One day, he pissed right into the empty Coke bottle as the van sat in traffic on the West Shore Expressway. The sound woke his uncle, who peered in from the back, laughed, and went back to sleep. It wasn't ideal but it beat the cigarette lighter.

At the end of his first week, Jenny offered to cook him dinner. He hadn't seen her all week. He'd been too tired to do anything but sleep, eat, and watch television. Her parents were away for the weekend. Tommy dropped him off at her house.

He was going to take a shower and then maybe a nap but within two minutes, he was on the floor bare-assed and Jenny had him in her mouth. He was in ecstasy, the job a distant memory, when she said she wanted to feel him inside of her. She told him it was safe because she had just finished her period. She crawled up his torso and lowered herself onto him, slick and easy. It was different with nothing between them, primordial and elemental, the mystery finally revealed. He felt out of time, alone in the world with Jenny. After a few minutes of euphoric thrusting, they came together. She collapsed onto his chest, breathless.

He fell asleep right there on the hardwood floor with his shirt off and his jeans and underwear clustered at his ankles. When he woke up, Jenny was setting the table and the air was thick with the smell of homemade tomato sauce.

Mikey took a quick shower. A bolt of anxiety rippled through him as he loosened the grains of concrete in his hair. They were always careful; they'd always used condoms before. He hadn't even used the "pull and pray" method that Pete joked about. Jenny had just slid down on him, hadn't even really asked. Sure, it was fantastic, but it was too risky. She shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have let her. He wouldn't let it happen again.

When he got out of the shower, dinner was ready. Spaghetti and meatballs with her grandmother's gravy, a simple salad, a fresh loaf of bread from Galluccio's. Jenny stood at one end of the table, a kitchen apron around her midsection, a satisfied smile on her face. In that light, in that pose, she looked like her mother. Mikey sat down. Jenny brought the platter of food over to his plate and loaded it with pasta and meatballs.

"Isn't this nice?"

Mikey didn't answer. He ushered a large meatball into his mouth and tried to ignore the dry aftertaste of cement that lingered in the back of his throat.

* * *

The summer droned on. July was brutal but fair; blistering heat but no humidity. The sun baked them in the still air of the empty stadium. Mikey understood why they started work so early: the mornings were bearable, the afternoons hellacious. After lunch, time hit the brakes. Mikey's legs grew sluggish and his stomach swelled with bread and meat from lunch. The air stung like lava. Nothing to rush the day. A nerve-wracking drive home on the horizon.

Most days, Mikey worked by himself, mixing load after load of cement. The other guys would arrive in groups. There'd be a few minutes of companionship as he shoveled concrete into their pails. Fucking brutal today. See the Yanks last night? Look at Mikey, his tongue's hanging down to his chin. Mikey, you up all night eating pussy again? Mikey didn't mind. He'd stick his tongue out, reach it up to his nose, wink at Nicky. I can still taste it, he'd say, and the guys would laugh. The same jokes every day. Jokes you could lean on.

He tried out his Spanish on the Mexican guys, all the dirty words he knew. Coño. Pendejo. Tengo grande pene. They laughed, maybe with him, maybe at him. He didn't care. It passed the time. A few minutes of fun in the soup. A flutter of camaraderie. Then he'd be alone again, for an hour at least, maybe longer.

When he was alone, his mind drifted to the Sunday before he started working. Jenny and Amy lying by the pool in Amy's backyard; Mikey nestled on the lounger between them. He thought about his conversation with Amy, what she'd said to him about Jenny leaving for school early. He thought about some of the looks Amy had given him. Looks that said all things were possible. He thought about her green bikini, all the flesh it covered and all the flesh it didn't. He thought about these things until his groin stirred, until he felt half alive again in the scalding gray haze.

* * *

Jenny called him every night, complaining that they weren't spending any time together. When he hung out with one of his buddies or tried to slip in some batting practice or a lift, she protested, whining into the phone that she was leaving in a month, in three weeks, in two weeks. Did he even care? While she pestered him, he cursed her silently. He cursed his parents for making him take this job. He cursed his uncle for making him drive home every day.

And he cursed the weather because his uncle had told him they couldn't work if it rained and it hadn't rained a single fucking drop the whole summer.

* * *

In August, the weather turned diabolical. A humid front squatted over the city. The air swelled thick. Every night, the weathermen predicted thunderstorms and downpours that never came. The sweat came off Mikey in sheets. It was too hot to even laugh. Even the Mexicans slowed.

Mikey barely saw his parents or his brother. He woke before them, got home before them, went to bed before them. When he did see them, he floated past, a ghost stuck between two lives, not fully there but not yet at college. He counted the days. Just a few more weeks. Then he'd never mix cement again.

* * *

One day, a week before Jenny left for school, his uncle sent him and one of the Mexicans, Renny, to knock out some cement in the ceiling above the concourse. They had to stand on a platform and use a mini-jackhammer. The motion was awkward and painful; Mikey had to switch shoulders every few minutes.

Renny was the hardest-working and happiest guy in the whole crew. He spoke no English. He smiled constantly. They fell into an easy rhythm. A few minutes of attacking clatter, thirty seconds of rest. The same exchange filled every silence.

"Renny, yo quiero muchas cervezas? Coño-faced."

"Coño-faced?"

"Yeah, coño-faced. Shit-faced. Borracho."

A big laugh from Renny. Then back to the jackhammers.

One time, Mikey pulled the trigger a second too early, while he was still looking at Renny. The jackhammer's blade spurted to life, found something metal, recoiled, and popped him below his left eye. Mikey stumbled back and his feet slipped off the platform. He had a moment of complete terror, like dropping into a dark cave, until his right ankle found the ground and buckled. The rest of his body followed, pain reverberating through him as his right knee, elbow, and shoulder impacted. He flopped over onto his back, throbbing everywhere. Ten feet above, Renny looked down, surprise and concern on his face.

Mikey closed his eyes, tried to assess what hurt the most. His ankle was screaming; the bone below his eye felt like it had been pushed back into his mouth.

He heard Renny climb down from the platform, heard the scamper of his boots on the concrete, and heard his uncle name's being yelled in a panicked Mexican accent.

* * *

His uncle drove home, annoyance slowly losing out to compassion. Mikey wasn't really hurt. No permanent damage. He had a sprained ankle, a skinned knee, and an ugly black eye; his ribs and back were tender and sore, but he was otherwise fine. An ice pack dangled over his bare ankle. He held another up to his eye.

"Renny thought you were dead."

"I did too."

Tommy chuckled. "I'm glad you're not. Your mother would've killed me." He glanced over, gave Mikey a tight smile.

He does this every day, Mikey thought. Then he goes home to three kids.

They drove the rest of the way without talking. The incessant heat had sapped the whole city of energy. Even the callers on sports radio could only register mild complaints; their quibbles were swatted away by an aggravated host.

Hot air rushed in through the open windows of the van. Mikey peered out on the highway and watched the blurry lines of heat rise. Every bump renewed the pain in his joints; still, his eyes fell shut.

A gentle flick on the ear woke him.

"Keep icing your ankle, Mikey, though I don't think we'll be working the rest of the week."

Mikey was still groggy, didn't understand. He followed his uncle's gaze until he saw a fat drop of rain land on the front windshield of the van. The sky had darkened during his snooze. The temperature had dropped a few degrees. Mikey hobbled out into a sudden downpour, feeling better than he had all summer.

The house was empty. Mikey checked the weather report. Rain for the rest of week and through the weekend, bringing much-needed water to the drought-plagued tri-state area. He felt renewed, alive for the first time in many weeks, despite the pain all over his body. His thoughts turned to Jenny. He wanted to be with her right now, wanted her to fawn over his wounded, tired body.

She answered on the second ring. She sounded like she'd been sleeping.

"Hey, it's me."

"Hey."

"Looks like I won't have to work tomorrow or Friday. Maybe we can go to Denino's tonight, stop at Ralph's afterward. We can hang out all day tomorrow."

"I'm sick, Mikey. I've been nauseous all day. I didn't even go into work today." She sounded awful.

"All right. Well, I'll come over then and we can just hang out in your room, watch a movie or something."

"Right. Or something. I don't feel good, Mikey. Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow."

This was bullshit. She'd whined all summer that he wasn't spending any time with her and now she was too sick to hang out? A nasty thought popped in his head.

"Okay, Jenny, maybe tomorrow." He softened his voice, tried to sound spontaneous. "Hey, do you know if Amy's around?"

He could just imagine the look on her face. He waited.

"What do you mean?"

"No, I just figured if you're not feeling great, maybe Amy would be up for some pizza."

"What do you mean?"

He'd hit his target. He could hear it in her voice.

"Well, I've been so busy all summer, I haven't seen anyone. I just thought maybe I'd—"

"Why would you say that?"

"Forget it, Jenny. I was only asking."

"Why would you say that?"

"Jenny, just forget it."

He heard her start to cry. A dose of guilt shot through him. Then he felt something fierce and explosive, an anger that shook his hands. He screamed into the receiver.

"You're not the only one who had a shitty day, Jenny!" His face was burning. "My whole summer sucked. And all you did was make it worse!"

Jenny was sobbing. Mikey wasn't even sure whether she'd heard him. He repeated himself.

"All you did was make it worse!"

Then he hung up.

* * *

He wasn't serious about calling Amy. Sure, after he had a shower, he took out his address book and turned it to the page that held her number. He looked at it for a long time, imagined how the conversation would go, and thought about what would happen if she said yes. But he wasn't really serious. He just wanted to try it out in his head. He ended up calling Benny, who he hadn't seen in weeks.

Mikey'd heard about the place. It was a few miles over the Outerbridge in Jersey. Benny had gone a few weeks earlier with his older brother. He described it to Mikey on the drive over. They had split a six-pack in the basement of Benny's house and were feeling pretty good

"What if they don't let us in?"

"Relax, Mikey. They don't care. They just want your money."

"Shit, I hope we get in."

"We will. Wait till you see these chicks, bro. Wait."

The big neon sign out front read, Molly's. The lot only had a few cars in it. Benny parked near the entrance. The rain had thinned to a drizzle.

The doorman, a hulking figure in gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt, didn't even want to see ID. He just took their twenties and waved them in.

Inside, a few customers sat at a rectangular bar that surrounded a stage. Soft light filtered through the room, dying in the corners. At either end of the stage, a scantily clad stripper was wrapped around a pole. The woman nearest Mikey was topless. She titled back, hands around the pole, bare legs stretched up to the ceiling. Her breasts hung back toward her face. Blond curls of hair dangled down to the stage floor. She flashed Mikey an upside-down smile.

The bartender—an older woman, all business—interrupted their reverie. "Boys, what are you having?"

Benny stepped forward, put a crinkled ten on the bar. "Two Buds."

The bartender put two bottles on the bar, flicked them open. "Try not to fall in love."

* * *

Mikey had never been inside a strip club. He was overwhelmed; his eyes flitted around the room, trying to take it all in. There was flesh, a cavalcade of it: curved rears, hardened nipples, bruised thighs, lithe necks. It was all on display and you were supposed to look. The dancers wanted you to ogle them, to desire them. They cavorted and gyrated and contorted. They took the stage and stripped down until only a sliver of fabric remained between their legs. They pulled and tugged at that fabric until what was behind swelled into relief.

After they danced, the strippers walked straight up to you, unabashed, and pulled their tits apart so you could place a dollar bill between them. Most of them weren't beautiful, most weren't even cute, but it didn't matter; their appeal was primordial.

After a few hours, it was time to leave. They'd had their fun, slipped a single between the tits of every dancer in the place three times over.

Mikey was drunk; all the beer had dulled the pain in his ankle and the soreness everywhere else. He took a difficult piss in the bathroom and when he came back to the bar, the blond dancer was seated on his stool and Benny was whispering in her ear. Mikey saw Benny slide a twenty into her hand. She was wearing a see-through white teddy and she extended her hand. Mikey shook it.

"I'm Mandy. Looks like you had a rough day."

She brought a soft finger to the cheek below his left eye. She was younger than the other dancers. Less worn out. She had a pretty face that was somewhat familiar; she looked like a friend's older sister, someone you once pined for. She scooted from the stool and took his hand.

"Well, you are certainly tall and long. Bet you're long in all the right places."

No one had ever talked to him like this. This was the talk of porno movies. This wasn't real. Benny was leaning onto the bar, a sleepy grin on his face.

"Your friend wants to give you a little going-away present."

She led him over to a little side lounge, darker than the bar area and separated by a sheer black curtain. He was unsteady on his feet, a mixture of the beer and his swollen ankle. She pushed him down on the couch and removed her teddy. She started dancing, brushing her bare tits across his face. She smelled like perfume and sweat. She placed Mikey's hands on her hips. She turned, grinding her bare ass into his groin.

This was a real woman with full tits and an ass you could mount. Jenny might be like this some day but she wasn't yet. Mikey was excited and embarrassed and trying to hold himself back. After a few minutes with her ass rubbing against him, he was ready to go. He tried even harder to hold back. But when Mandy turned again and slid her legs over his hips and lowered herself onto him, the whole throbbing bit of him, he came right in his boxers.

Mandy relaxed in his lap as she felt him retreating. The euphoric feeling faded and left Mikey feeling hollow. Mandy smiled and kissed his forehead. He thought he might vomit.

* * *

The next morning, Mikey woke to the sound of rain pounding outside his window. The end of the night was a blur, just vague unconnected bits: a hasty exit from Molly's, Benny's car drifting across the narrow Outerbridge, Benny faking sobriety at the toll, Mikey sneaking under the covers as his alarm clock pulsed 2:57.

His head throbbed. His body ached. At least he didn't have to work. He could sleep for a few more hours. He looked over at the alarm clock. Just after nine. The hostile red digits reminded him of the sign in the strip club's parking lot. He tried to ignore the guilt that was gathering in the back of his head. Better to sleep it off. It was just harmless fun.

The door to his bedroom creaked open and his mother peered into the grayness, concerned. "Michael?"

"Yeah, Mom, what's up?" He didn't open his eyes, hoped his nonchalance would throw her off.

"Tommy called. He wanted to see if you were feeling okay. Why didn't you tell me about the accident?"

"It was nothing, Mom. Just a sprained ankle and a black eye. It happens."

He could tell she wanted to come in, to inspect him and confirm that he was fine.

"Are you sure you don't need a doctor?"

"Mom, I'm fine. I just need some rest. Can I just get some rest?"

"Okay, Mikey." But she didn't leave. A thin slice of light from the hallway lingered on the bed. "Jenny's downstairs."

"I'll be right down."

He swung out of bed and gingerly placed his swollen ankle on the floor. It was twice its normal size and bluish streaks were visible on the swell. He threw on a T-shirt and the jeans he'd worn the night before and hobbled downstairs.

Jenny sat at the kitchen table, still wearing her yellow rain slicker. His mother was at the sink, washing dishes but attentive. Jenny stood and he could tell that she had been crying. She looked like a little girl lost in a mall; she couldn't contain the panic on her face.

He knew right then, knew before they left the house without a word, before she drove a few blocks away and pulled the car over. He knew before she started to cry, before the crying turned into great heaving sobs. When he reached over to comfort her, she blurted it out.

"I'm pregnant, Mikey. I think I'm pregnant. I missed my period and I feel sick in the mornings. Mikey, what are we going to do?"

Now it was solid, in the world. It was spoken fact. Desperation flooded through Mikey. LeMoyne was a million miles away, its campus sliding away in the rain. He saw his future harden into something ugly, something clichéd. The summer and its miseries had smothered the memory. A few thrusts on a hard wooden floor. One time. It wasn't possible. He started to cry.

They drove to a pharmacy and Mikey bought a pregnancy test. They chose a sleepy diner on Hylan as the place for her to take it. Mikey's skin hummed, his stomach churned. This would not happen. He would will it not to happen.

No, it would. He was powerless to stop it. His life was ruined. He was soaked to the bone, shivering despite the month. Jenny was a zombie, gliding through the streets, all cried out.

They parked the car across from the diner and Jenny dashed inside. Mikey waited in the car, making promises to God if He would only let Mikey escape this. He could not shake the image of Mandy on top of him the night before, smiling at him; his jeans were still seeped with that betrayal. This was punishment.

No, this was Jenny's fault. She wanted to trap him.

Fifteen minutes ticked by, an eternity.

Mikey left the car and hobbled into the diner. An older man was mopping behind the counter and there was a solitary customer reading the paper at the far end of it. The customer looked at Mikey and then pointed to the bathroom door.

Mikey heard Jenny sobbing. He opened the door to find her sitting on the floor, wedged between the toilet and the wall. The test was facedown on the mopped linoleum, a few inches away from her splayed feet. Jenny reached for Mikey. He reached for the test.

A single pink line. Negative. He tucked it into his rear pocket. He helped Jenny to her feet and they floated out of the diner into the rain. He checked the test again as they crossed the street. Negative. He placed her in the passenger seat. He didn't care about the rain. He was floating. He was free.

When he got into the car, Jenny was still crying. She reached over and hugged him. She said she knew he hated her, she knew she'd lost him. She asked Mikey whether he loved her. Rain pounded onto the car.

Mikey said that he did love her, that he would always love her. He said it because it didn't matter, because she was already in his past. The whole miserable summer was just concrete that had already hardened and he had somehow escaped it and he would never let it touch him again.

THE FLY-ASS PUERTO RICAN GIRL FROM THE STAPLETON PROJECTS

BY LINDA NIEVES-POWELL

Stapleton

She was last seen sitting on the front steps of PS14, on the Tompkins Avenue side, across the street from the New York Foundling, the place that finds homes for unwanted or abused children. The day before the Fourth of July. The old church lady with the crooked brown wig and thick glasses, who lived close enough to the Foundling to volunteer from time to time, saw her sitting there. Waiting.

The Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl lived in the Stapleton projects with an elderly grandmother who was always too tired, too ill, too medicated, too unlucky to hit the numbers, too stuck in her novellas to keep track of her granddaughter's whereabouts. So she had no idea that the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl was the most hated girl in the hood. Unlike her daughter, her granddaughter was too perfect to live in the Stapleton projects. She was nothing like the rest of them who lived or hung around in the hood. She was different. She was like the star of that Twilight Zone episode where the lone gorgeous female is considered a freak among monsters.

They wanted a piece of her. And more. Dudes wanted bragging rights. "Yeah, I fucked that bitch. Hard."

Common-law wives wanted to kick her ass far out of the projects: "I will slice that bitch's throat if my man even sniffs the air around her pussy."

Little did they know that you can't break a bitch if she's already been broken. Inside.

But he and everyone else saw perfection. Outside.

That made him crazy. That made them all crazy.

He swept the grounds, unraveled the twisted swings, made sure the community pool was safe and nontoxic, tried to teach the hood kids how to use the chess tables the right way. They tried to convince him that "Boogie Nights" was on the flip side of "Always and Forever," a steal. He collected three hundred a week for eight weeks. Easy summer job. Even if he had to cover for his boss who used the Parks & Recreation uniform to impress prepubescent females who were easily impressed by any man in a uniform, no matter the rank.

No one messed with him. Everyone, including his father, seemed to know this.

"You coulda had a job workin' for Esposito, organizing shit. Instead you want to work in the fucking jungle, with the monkeys? I dare you to bring home a monkey. I dare you. I fucking dare you. Monkey-lovin' fuck."

He had just turned seventeen, like her.

So many, like his father, had it out for her. Wives, girlfriends, and ex-boyfriends stayed up at night hoping that the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl from the projects would step on a needle, get hit by a Cadillac Seville, or walk into the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. For the following reasons:

Hair too bouncy, too soft, too straight, too manageable. Skin unblemished, olive, more European than Latina. Taller than the average tall girl. The space between a set of perfect thighs, a perfect view. Her heart-shaped ass. Heart-shaped face. Full ruby-colored lips, not too plump, not too thin, like her nose that was always buried in a library book. Curves and narrow hips, more in line with Patti Hansen, the Tottenville supermodel who married a Rolling Stoner, than Iris Chacon, the big broad on Spanish television.

And she spoke English. Well.

Who the hell she think she is? She ain't better than nobody. Why she don't talk like the rest of them Puerto Ricans talk? Like Jesenia, the one with the cottage cheese thighs, the pockmarked sister who talks all half Spanish and shit. Calls dudes papito, says coño every two seconds, and eats plantains like she's making money on every one she swallows. Or Mary Poseur or Mariposa, whatever the fuck that girl's name is, who lives in 2B, or not 2B. Why she don't act like Mariposa? Mariposa talks like a real bitch talks, she blows real good, she almost black. That's how a real Stapleton bitch talks. That's how a real Staten Island bitch walks. Hunched. She walk like she got a stick up her ass. Too straight. Too white. Who the fuck she think she is?

The old woman told the detective that a white car had picked up the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl from the projects. All white. White tire rims. White interior. White paint. White.

"So you're telling me you saw nothing but white?" the detective asked.

"Sir, I saw what I saw."

"Those glasses are really thick."

"But I knows what I see."

"You knows the difference between a German and Jew?"

She glanced at his badge. Esposito. She'd run into a few Espositos on Staten Island. There was Esposito's Bakery.

Esposito's Car Wash.

Esposito's Pizzeria.

Esposito's Salumeria.

Esposito's Bagel Shop.

Esposito's Car Service.

Esposito's Dry Cleaners.

Esposito's Liquor Store.

Esposito's Nursery School.

Esposito's Hardware Store.

"No sir, I don't, but I think he be Eyetalian."

"Eyetalian? You mean Italian."

"You Eyetalian?"

"It's none of your business."

"Okay, well, he looked like he could be you."

She wanted to lick her index finger to gauge the temperature in the space between them, hoping that the frigid air was biting enough to make him leave. But he pushed her down into her armchair. Accidentally. She felt a loose spring stab her in her back. Pain. Always by the hand of a man.

Mostly always white.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Let me help you." He reached out his hand.

She ignored it.

"Well, thank you for your time. If you can make it down to the precinct, we'd like for you to look at a couple of mugshots to see if you recognize anyone. Oh, wait." He flashed a mugshot he conveniently had in his pocket of a young black boy, no more than eighteen years old. "Is this him, the boy you saw?"

She shook her head.

"You sure?"

She nodded.

"Hmm, okay. Looks like you might need a new pair of glasses."

He left the front door open on his way out.

She wished that he'd trip, fall, and twist his ankle on the open cracks on the concrete steps.

When the news broke out, about how the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl from the Stapleton projects was missing, most folks in the hood thought that the young nickel-bag seller had something to do with it. Everyone knew that although he and the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl were kind of together, he hated the thought of a smarter, better-looking brother tapping that ass. The thought just fucked with him.

She had that kind of ass, though. The kind that once he hit it, it made him cry and he knew no other ass would ever compare. No matter how many other fly-ass girls he tapped. They were all imitations, forgeries. Her ass made a brother take a trip back to the cocoon. It was safe, warm, nurturing. No fear of pain. No fear of being rejected. No fear of having to prove his worth. It was a place where knives, guns, drugs, poverty, welfare cheese, and absent parents were as real as unicorns.

The brothers in the hood called it electromagnetic pussy vibes. But what it really was, what it really really was, was love.

That is what she threatened all of them with.

She made him fear the warmth he didn't know he yearned for. If he let go, she could undo his carefully constructed defense mechanism, his brick wall, his chip on his shoulder. Could make a brother weak. Gotta be smarter than a bitch. Tighten up. Hurt a bitch, before she hurt you.

Lucky for him, though, one of his other, not-so-fly girls assured the detective that he'd been with her the night the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl from the projects disappeared.

"You don't believe me? I got a Beta tape, a little nasty, but all the evidence you need to see."

Her grandmother called the police forty-eight hours in. Not because she had been worrying. But because the gossip had landed at her dirty sandaled feet while she washed her clothes at the neighborhood laundromat.

* * *

They found the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl's size-eight sandals from Kinney's in the wooded area behind Greenfield Avenue near the A&P, under the high concrete arch, the entryway to Rosebank, better known as No Niggerland.

Those words were painted on the highest point of the arch. In black.

* * *

A few weeks earlier, he boarded the R104 bus with some of his teammates from the Curtis High School football team, a.k.a. the offspring of the Rosebank Boys, whose reputation was equivalent to that of the KKK—sans the burning cross, since they were all devout followers of Jesus. He sat in the back of the bus. Slid the window open, stuck his hand out, and flipped the bird to the quarterback waiting for the bus to Grasmere, the town on the right side of the Staten Island Expressway. In return, he got a flip and a glob of spit on the window. That's when he saw her black hair blowing in the wind. He tapped Esposito's arm so he, too, could glimpse the girl standing on the corner. Esposito checked her out, then violently snapped his head. "You fuckin' kiddin' me, douche bag. She's a spic."

"I know, stupid. I was just playing."

"Don't fuckin' play like that. You know I heard she fucks teachers, old men, and homeless dudes for money."

"Right."

"You a nigger lover?"

"Joking, stupid."

"Yeah, well, don't say shit like that. It's bad enough your hair looks like fucking Brillo."

His father hated his hair.

"Now that's a hot babe right there!"

Esposito was pointing at Liberty. Talk about whores. Between Liberty's legs was a neon sign that read: Enter, 24 hours a day, at your own risk. But he wasn't one to play follow-the-leader, even if Liberty did have a bodacious rack. He wasn't interested in what Liberty had to offer.

* * *

He'd invited her into the woods, a few feet beyond the arch, the midway point, because that's where you went when you wanted to experience that thing, that thing, that thing. It would eventually become the place that would be known as the scene of the crime.

She went anyway, knowing the danger, but trusting his pretty green eyes.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her into the sharp brush. He scratched his arm trying to stop the branches from poking her eyes out or, worse, ruining her perfect skin. Finally he found the dirt path, the one that lead to the wide tree stump where young couples had carved and revised their love for one another.

She turned a full 360, taking in the dense, almost impenetrable brush, and sat next to him on the wide tree stump.

He said, "If you didn't know that there was advanced civilization just fifty feet away, you'd think you'd just stepped—"

"Onto an island," she said.

"Yeah. If you listen carefully, you can hear the ocean."

"Really?"

"Close your eyes. Use your imagination. Do you hear it? Do you hear the waves hitting the shore?"

He stared at her perfect face, moving closer to it, looking for something wrong with it. Anything to not want her.

"Not really."

"You have to listen, shhh. And keep your eyes closed."

"I hear it."

"You do?"

"Yes. I can hear ships in the distance."

"You hear ships?"

"Yes, I can see them now. Oh my god, it's the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María."

She opened one eye and waited for his laugh.

"Funny."

A rustling sounded in the bushes. He jumped up. Then stood still. Dusk had set in.

Squirrels ran past their feet and up into a tree. "Aww, how cute. We scared them," she said.

"We scared them?"

They laughed.

He'd never gotten this close to a girl like her before.

"So, how can someone as beautiful as you not have a boyfriend?" He stroked her hair and watched the strands of black silk fall between his fingers.

"I don't know."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Why do people ask permission when they're going to say or do what they want anyway?"

He chuckled. "Why did you come here, with me?"

She rolled her eyes. "You invited me."

"That's the only reason?"

"I like you. You're different."

She took her hair back. He watched as she twirled a thick strand around her finger.

A rustling sounded in the bushes again, but this time they ignored it. As he moved in closer to her, three intruders crashed through the brush. His older brother and two others, all bored and angry, all high, circled around them. He and the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl jumped up.

"What the fuck, dude? Are you fucking serious? You do know that Dad will beat your ass if he finds out about her? Come on, get your ass home now."

"I'll be home later."

"I said come home now."

"I said I'll be home later."

When his younger brother didn't follow him, he moved closer to the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl, circled around her, and asked, "You live in the Stapleton projects, don't you?"

But before she could answer, his younger brother squeezed between them.

"Does Dad know you're still smoking pot?"

"Does Dad know you're still smoking pot?" mimicked the older brother.

The friends laughed.

"It doesn't matter, we know how to find her."

He spat at his little brother's feet. She felt some hit her open toes.

"You're dead."

The three intruders walked out of the brush and disappeared into the darkness.

"Meet me tomorrow in front of PS14," he told her.

"Okay."

"I'll pick you up. We'll take a ride and talk."

"Okay."

They walked out of the woods together, holding hands. But outside they let go. She walked north, head up high. He walked south, head down.

* * *

It was the day before the Fourth of July. Most folks were off from work and school was out. The firecrackers were going off full force in the baseball field nearby and the neighborhood deejay had successfully cold-lamped the streetlight, giving juice to his ones and twos. Everyone was in the baseball field celebrating America's birthday a few hours early. The rest of the neighborhood was empty except for the corner near PS14.

He pulled up in a Sedan DeVille. All white. He called her over. She hesitated.

The old woman with the crooked wig was across the street at the Foundling, picking up her reading glasses that she'd forgotten to take with her the last time she was there. She stood on the hill, waiting for her item to be brought to her. That's when she noticed the Fly-Ass Puerto Rican Girl sitting, then standing, then hesitating before walking toward the white car.

"Little girl walked, then she stopped. She peeked inside the car. But then she looked up. Over at me. That's the thing that always stabs me in my heart when I think about that girl. The way she looked up at me. Like she was asking if it was okay to leave. Why she get in the damn car if she wasn't sure? I wanted to yell out, Baby girl, don't trust it! But it was like it was meant for her to leave cause I sure couldn't do nothing for her from where I was standing."

That's what the old woman told her pastor, over and over again.

* * *

Thirty years later, he came back. Leaving his apartment outside of New York, he connected to the R train toward South Ferry to attend his father's funeral. He hadn't been on the island since leaving for college, then joining the service, then opening up his software business.

Though he had a car, he took the ferry. He knew that he would never come back and he wanted to see everything for the last time, in the way he had remembered, by bus.

He boarded what was now the S52 bus with the other Saturday-morning riders. First stop, the bus shelter in St. George.

When the doors opened, three teens boarded. Maybe two were Ecuadorian, possibly Honduran or Peruvian, the other blond, maybe Albanian, maybe Russian, but definitely not Italian. One was wearing a red, white, and blue T-shirt of an African-American presidential hopeful. Another boy was holding a skateboard, talking about a professional skateboard champion, the son of a Mexican comedian who beat the hell out of the white boy. They all spoke English.

Well.

A conversation like that, thirty years ago, could have cost you your life. Now it was small talk.

He watched the neighborhoods morph into hoods, then back into neighborhoods, then back into hoods. What was once a Burger King was now a variety of places to eat, a Sri Lankan restaurant, a Dominican luncheonette, a West African coffee shop. As the bus made its way closer to Stapleton, he took in all that was there and all that had changed. The small post office across from the train station was gone, the Genovese was now a Rite Aid, C-Town was now Western Beef, and the White Castle that sprung out of nothing, in the middle of nowhere, had moved closer to the motorcycle shop. New African-owned shops replaced some of the old African-American-owned shops and the Paramount Theater was still standing strong. Steckman's, the place that made him his number 76 football uniform, was no longer in business.

The bus turned the corner near the best pizza on the North Shore and the three boys started talking about girls. In the distance he could see PS14. He put his head down, holding onto the cold silver bar, and waited for the nausea to pass.

Her body was never found. On days he felt nostalgic, he would search for her name on the Internet, just to see what he could find. But what he found were similar names living different lives.

"Yo, check it out."

"What?"

One of the boys pointed outside the window.

He looked out and saw a beautiful girl, very familiar, not your average pretty, sitting alone on the steps.

Waiting.

"Who is she?"

"I don't know her name but isn't she that fly-ass Mexican girl from the Stapleton projects?"

He glanced at the girl again, then closed his eyes for a few stops, trying to stop the images of his past from flooding his mind.

The bus continued south on Tompkins Avenue, past the arch—the old midway point. He got up, rang the bell, and turned back to glance at the young teens taunting each other as they played video game battles on their cell phones, before he exited the bus. He stood on the corner of St. Mary's and Tompkins Avenue watching as the bus drove the boys toward the right side of the Staten Island Expressway.

Time had changed some things. But the memory of her would haunt him forever.

TEENAGE WASTELAND

BY ASHLEY DAWSON

Tottenville

The crowd started throwing shit at the stage when the band lit into "Heart of Glass." Angry chants of "Disco sucks!" bounced off the low roof, cutting through the percolating synth rhythms and lush purr of Blondie. Sunny hopped up and down, bouncing in time to the music and catching glimpses of Debbie Harry and her band dodging gum, spit, bottles, and various other projectiles. What was the band thinking, she wondered, performing this disco version of their song at CBGB's, the mothership of punk music in NYC?

The crowd surged ominously toward the stage. Sunny felt the song's beat all the way down in her stomach, felt its rhythms transporting her through the skyscraper jungle of Manhattan like an elevated subway on speed, but she realized how sacrilegious the band was being with this new, amped-up version of "Heart of Glass." Her magic Manhattan carpet ride got bumpy as she collided in midair with Totò, her cousin, who was bouncing even higher than her and yelling through the din at Jimmy Destri. Blondie's keyboard player, Destri was one of the prime movers steering the band toward the electro-sound that was shaking their bones silly.

Sunny and Totò had grown up running into the older Destri, whose given name was James Mollica, on hot summer days in Brooklyn. Standing onstage with his hair coiffed in a Beatlesesque New Wave mop, he didn't look much like the Jimmy Mollica she'd seen drenched in sweat, hauling the towering Giglio statue of the Madonna of Mt. Carmel through the streets of Williamsburg with a hundred or so other guys, but she still felt some kind of loyalty to him. Besides, there were Totò's feelings to consider. Pogoing there beside her, he was all smiles. Who really cared whether Blondie was playing punk or disco? All that mattered was that she and Totò were dancing together at CBGB's, in the heart of the East Village. At seventeen, they were finally making it out of Staten Island, just like Jimmy Destri had escaped from Brooklyn. Fleeing the island's claustrophobic suburbs, messed-up families, and time-capsule fashion sense. About time, Sunny thought.

* * *

Later, as the ferry carried them home across the dark waters of the harbor, Totò's enthusiasm for the band's new direction bubbled over.

"Ain't Jimmy's new synth cool? Sounds just like Kraftwerk!"

"Yeah, I guess," Sunny replied, "but I kinda miss the anger."

"Whad'ya mean, the anger? There's loads of anger in stuff like 'Heart of Glass.' It's all about being screwed by a boyfriend."

"I know, but Debbie Harry don't exactly sound angry," Sunny said. "She sings like she's a freaky robot or something."

"Yeah, okay, but that's the whole point, ain't it? I mean, she's been screwed over so much that she's kinda hollow inside."

"Maybe, but I figure Blondie is just trying to cash in. Next thing they're gonna be singing 'Stayin' Alive.'"

"That's total bull. Besides, disco gets a bad rap. It's not all about dickheads like Tony Manero . . ."

"Yeah, the other night I saw the Corleones at Studio 54."

"Oh, fuck you," Totò said with a grin, "you can't swallow all that Hollywood crap. There's a whole lot going on that those assholes don't know nuthin' about."

"You're only saying that cuz ya got a crush on Jimmy Destri."

Totò made a grab for Sunny, who was already convulsed with giggles. She slid quickly down the graffiti-scarred wooden bench, leaving Totò pummeling the air. Overcome with laughter, the two splayed out on the hard seats of the sparsely populated night ferry. Totò's laugh suddenly turned into a sputtering cough, which shifted into a wracking paroxysm.

"What the fuck, Totò, what's the matter with you?" Sunny gasped.

Too convulsed to reply, Totò staggered toward the bathroom. Sunny caught up with him and stuck her head under his arm to offer support. The two lurched into one of the open stalls of the men's room; Totò put his head down and started puking.

"Fuckin' kids these days," a wino pissing in an adjoining stall groused.

"Eat me, asshole!" Sunny yelled back, as she held Totò's head over the filthy john.

Gradually the shudders that had wracked Totò's body died down. When he'd recovered enough to stand up in front of a sink and splash cold water on his face, Sunny turned on him.

"What the hell's the matter with you, Totò?"

"I dunno. I ain't been feeling so hot lately. But it ain't what you think. Ever since Vito died, I swear I been off the stuff."

"You better not be lying to me, Totò."

"No, I swear, it's something else, like I can't breathe. Maybe I shouldn't go in the clubs no more, but I swear I can't smell nothing in there, cigarettes or anything, my nostrils been so eaten up by the shit smell waftin' off the dump."

Just then, a crackling metallic voice announced that the ferry was about to dock at Staten Island.

"Yeah," Sunny replied, "it's a bitch livin' in the city's asshole."

* * *

The next morning, Sunny's dad pounded loudly on her bedroom door.

"Annunziata Cacciatore, you get your ass up outta bed. I don't care if you stayed up all night, you still gotta come to mass. Jesus Christ, it's Pasqua!"

"Va fan' culo, Dad. It's too friggin' early!"

"Jesus! If it weren't Easter I'd smack you upside your head so hard. You get your ass outta bed and get some clothes on, Annunziata. And I don't want you wearing no dog collar, neither! Get some decent clothes on for a change."

Sunny dragged herself out of bed and over to her closet. There wasn't much in there that wasn't black or leather. Her dad would flip out if she wore any of her street clothes to church, but she wasn't about to go dressed like she was heading to her First Communion. Or, on second thought, maybe that was exactly the look she wanted.

Sunny pulled her old communion dress out of her closet and over her head. Not half bad, she thought, looking in the mirror. The white lace trim on her dress suggested a virgin innocence completely at odds with her tightly sheathed body. I like to keep them on their toes, she thought, without really thinking who the them was.

Sunny was lithe and tall like a boy, and scared off most Staten Island guys with her ripped-up clothes and Dr. Martens. She teased her black hair up into a billowing Siouxsie Sioux coif, layered white foundation over her face, and finished things off with a thick smear of coal-dark eyeliner.

Her dad was just finishing his breakfast when Sunny came down the stairs. His mouth dropped open.

"Madonna! There's no way you're going to church like that, young lady."

"Whaaat! But Dad, it's my communion dress."

"I know, but that was four years ago. You're busting out all over it."

Sunny gnashed her teeth. Her dad was getting more conservative every year. It was as if he wanted to take all his anger at the counterculture of the last ten years out on his daughter, grinding her down into a Catholic schoolgirl Barbie doll. Life with him was becoming impossible.

Seeing Sunny smoldering, her dad called for backup: "Toni, get a load a this!"

Sunny's mom stuck her head into the kitchen. "O Dio!" she blurted out. "You look ridiculous. But we don't have any more time. We gotta hurry up or we'll miss the procession."

"No way. I'm not taking my daughter out looking like that."

"We don't have time to argue, Pippo. Senti, we gotta go now or we won't make it."

"Non mi frega, Toni, there's no way in hell we're gonna take Annunziata to church dressed like some kinda puttana."

He grew more and more red in the face as he argued with his wife. Sunny was left standing in the middle of the room while the two of them argued backward and forward, their voices rising and their vocabulary veering toward scatological Italian. In the middle of a tirade about his honor as a father that involved multiple references to his dick, Pippo suddenly choked and began coughing. Hacks wracking his body, he lurched toward the bathroom.

"Che cazzo, Pippo?" Sunny's mom yelled. "What the hell's da matta with you? This is the third time this week. Get your ass outta that bathroom."

"What's going on, Mom?"

"I don't know, Sunny, he's been coughing and getting sick for a few weeks now. You know him, though, of course he's trying to act like it ain't nuthin'."

"Wow, that's exactly the same thing that happened last night to Totò."

"Your cousin Totò is into some bad stuff. I'm not surprised he's sick."

"That's not fair, Mom. Totò doesn't do that anymore. Besides, last night he said he thought it might have something to do with the stink off the dump. Maybe dad got sick from the same smell."

"Look, Sunny, that's ridiculous. Your dad puts on a mask every time he goes to work. He couldn't smell a raw onion if you held it right in front of his nose. Besides, I'm gonna kill Pippo long before the Fresh Kills cough gets 'im. Pippo," she yelled, "you get your ass outta that bathroom! We're gonna miss communion at this rate and I ain't gonna burn in hell cuz of you!"

* * *

Around midnight, Sunny woke to a rain of pebbles on her window. She pulled on a leather jacket, slid down a drainpipe, and followed Totò into the dark alleyway behind her house.

In a heavy whisper, Totò told her the news: "My dad said he heard something's going on over at Fresh Kills. When I tol' him I been feeling bad lately, he said lots of other people been sick too. But I couldn't get him to say anythin' else, he just got real sad and stared off into space an' shit. I say we check the place out. You in?"

Sunny still remembered how confused she'd been as a young girl when Totò's dad Enzo started growing his hair out long. Enzo went over to Vietnam a year after his older brother, but he came back earlier and even more messed up in the head than her dad. Sunny's dad and Enzo had long shouting matches about 'Nam. Eventually, they stopped talking to one another entirely.

When Totò and his brother Vito were younger, their dad would often be gone, traveling around the country protesting the war. After the troops came home, Enzo still wouldn't settle down. He kept his hair long and refused to take a job working for the city like her dad and so many other men on Staten Island. He was unemployed for a long time, his wife left him, and Totò and Vito spent a lot of time with their grandparents. Totò went through a rough patch, and his brother Vito went completely off the rails. But now Enzo owned a small guitar shop and was trying to make things right with Totò.

"Yeah, sure, I'm in," she said.

It was a chilly night, winter not yet having loosed its grip on the city. The moon was scudding between clouds, casting a silver light on the leafless trees. It looked like a thin coat of snow had just fallen on the island. Totò and Sunny walked away from her pale blue two-story house in Tottenville, down Lighthouse Avenue, and then cut off the road and headed across the Jewish cemetery toward Fresh Kills Landfill.

Sunny's dad had worked for the Department of Sanitation for years, so she knew something about the history of garbage on the island. Fresh Kills was opened after World War II. It was only supposed to stay open for twenty years, but dumping is a hard habit to kick. Fresh Kills was still accepting hundreds of tons of garbage every day. It seemed like her dad had a job for life at the dump.

As they climbed through the jagged teeth of the chain-link fence that surrounded the place, Sunny whispered to Totò, "Ya gotta watch your ass. There's packs of wild dogs on the hunt at night in here."

"Yeah, lots of fresh-killed meat around here, I guess."

"No, wise-ass, that name means the place was filled with fresh creeks."

"Ain't too fresh no more."

"No shit, Sherlock."

"Oh man, it stinks!"

"Yeah, shit buried in Fresh Kills don't stay underground for very long," Sunny said.

"Hey, I think I hear something."

As they climbed over a rise in the rolling landscape created by decades of accumulated garbage, Sunny and Totò were blinded by a half-moon of arc lights. When their eyes had adjusted, they saw a couple of huge yellow bulldozers moving across the reeking piles of waste like giant prehistoric insects. The stench was overwhelming, hitting like a swift kick to the head.

"What're they doin' workin' here at night?" Sunny whispered.

"Looks to me like they're digging holes."

"Oh yeah, you're right, but what the hell for?"

Sunny and Totò crouched and looked down into the garbage valley until their legs as well as their lungs were ready to give. Just as they were about to walk back down toward the fenced-off perimeter of the dump, a truck came rumbling up the access road, its running lights a piercing red in the near total darkness. It pulled off the road and headed toward the brilliant circle of light where the bulldozers were at work. Sunny and Totò held their breath as the truck pulled up alongside one of the holes dug by the bulldozers. The bed of the truck cantilevered slowly into the air, and some sort of dense liquid began pouring out into the hole. The acrid smell of garbage, which had begun to recede as their senses grew accustomed to the reek, became overpowering. It was as if someone had flung acid into their faces.

After the truck had emptied all its foul liquid into the hole, one of the bulldozers pulled up with a jerky motion and began to push piles of garbage into the hole, gradually burying the sludge under a mountain of junk. All evidence of the truck's dark contents was soon obliterated.

Communicating with hand gestures, Totò and Sunny turned away from the infernal scene and headed back toward the hole in the fence through which they'd entered Fresh Kills. As they walked back across the cemetery, their lungs filled with relatively clean air.

"What the fuck's going on, Sunny?"

"I dunno. I don't get why they're dumping shit at night, and why they're bringing it in trucks. Usually all the garbage comes in on barges during the day."

"Whatever that shit was, it stank even worse than the rest of the dump."

"Yeah, that's the truth. Must be some evil stuff."

"Just thinking about it makes me wanna start pukin' again."

"My dad's been coughing too."

"What're we gonna do about this, Sunny?"

"I dunno, Totò, I dunno. You think I should talk to my dad?"

"Well, he works at the dump, right? Perhaps he knows about what's going on at night."

"Yeah, and even if he don't, maybe he can find something out. Okay, I'll talk to him."

* * *

The next morning, Sunny crawled out of bed at what felt like the crack of dawn. Her dad was busy putting on his heavy overalls when she stuck her head into her parents' bedroom. Sensing her presence, Pippo stopped dressing and turned toward his daughter.

"You going to school today dressed in your pajamas or what?" he said, an amused glint in his eye.

"Nah, Dad, I still gotta get ready for school. I wanted to talk to you about something."

"O Dio! Don't tell me you're pregnant."

"Naah, course I ain't pregnant! I wanted to talk to you about Fresh Kills. Some kids told me that they heard weird noises coming from the dump at night. And it's been stinking even worse than usual recently. You know about something strange going on there?"

Pippo's dark eyes flashed, all signs of amusement suddenly draining out of his face.

"Sit down, Annunziata."

Oh shit, Sunny thought. Now I'm really gonna get it. He's gonna take out all his shit on me, as usual. Don't dress that way, don't listen to that crap music, don't cut Sunday school.

It was worse than the Ten Commandments. Ever since her dad came back from Vietnam, he'd been obsessed with how he and his buddies who stayed to fight the gooks had been betrayed by the hippies and his sack-of-shit brother. He lashed out at anyone who questioned the hell he'd gone through and the sacrifices he'd made. Now that Sunny was no longer a cute little innocent kid, he was starting to see her as in league with the Great Betrayal as well.

"No, there's nothing strange going on at the dump," Pippo said. "I been working there for twenty years, and the place reeks worse every year. After a while, though, you don't smell it too much. So don't worry about me or Fresh Kills."

"Yeah, but Dad, it's not just you that's sick. Totò and a bunch of other people are getting sick. Shouldn't we do something if the dump is leaking poison into the neighborhood?"

"Listen, Annunziata: I don't want you nosing around there, okay? It's not just that the place stinks. Fresh Kills is like an iceberg. There's a lot more to it than meets the eye. You don't want to start digging up trouble. That's an order. Stai zitta, capisci?"

"Okay, Dad, I hear you," Sunny replied. She did her best to put on a sweet smile as she stood up to walk out of the bedroom. I shoulda known it's no use talking to him, she thought. Never question authority—that should be her dad's motto. He's just like all the other idiots on this island, Sunny thought. A buncha sheep. 'Cept he's worse: he probably knows how fucked up the situation is, but he's too chicken to do anything about it.

* * *

"Wha'd he say?" Totò asked when Sunny arrived at the playground, where they and the other students of Tottenville High waited before the first bell rang, summoning them to morning assembly. He, Sunny, and the rest of the punks always hung out in a corner of the playground as far away as possible from the other kids, with their elaborately blow-dried Farrah Fawcett and Leif Garrett hairstyles, their atrocious leisure clothes, and their spine-chilling love of the Bee Gees.

"He told me to shut up about Fresh Kills."

"Wha?"

"Yeah, he said there wasn't anything funny going on there, and that I should stop talking about it."

"No way. But what about his cough?"

"I get the feeling he's scared of something. It's like he knows something's up, but he don't wanna let on."

"I hate to say this, Sunny, but maybe there's a reason he ain't talking. Maybe he ain't scared. Maybe he's on the take."

"What're you talking about, Totò?"

"I mean, don't get offended or nothing, but we both know that the garbage biz is pretty mobbed up."

"No, Totò, he can't be a part of that."

"Look, I ain't saying he's a made man. I mean, you know how things work around here. You wanna keep your job or your business, you gotta learn to be a little cooperative. Sometimes you gotta learn to look the other way, or to take a little kickback that makes you part of the whole thing. You get dirty once, and you can't never get clean."

"I can't fucking believe it. If he did that, then he's even more of a jerk than I figured he was."

Maybe this was the explanation for the glint of fear she'd seen in her dad's eyes. Maybe he was terrified of what was going on at Fresh Kills, but also part of it. While the thought didn't make her feel much more sympathetic toward her dad, it did make her really angry. Who, she wanted to know, was screwing around with her dad? Whoever it was, they were victimizing not just her dad, not just her family, but Totò and the rest of the people living near Fresh Kills too.

"Listen, Totò, I wanna find out what the fuck's going on at Fresh Kills. I don't care what my dad says. Can you meet me again tonight?"

"Sure thing, Sunny."

"What about a car? Can you get us a car?"

"Yeah, I think my dad will probably lend me his. But we better not fuck it up. He'll fucking kill me. He don't give a shit about most things, but he really loves his Camaro. We ain't gonna take it into Fresh Kills, are we?"

"No, Totò, we ain't going driving through the dump. I wanna find out where those trucks are coming from."

* * *

That night, Totò parked his dad's Camaro on a dark stretch of Arthur Kill Road near one of the main feeder roads to the dump. He and Sunny slumped down in the seats and waited for something to happen.

"Hey, Starsky," Sunny said eventually, wiping some of the fog that was accumulating on the windows off with her sleeve, "it's starting to get cold in this fuckin' jalopy of yours."

"Yeah, I don't know 'bout you, Huggy Bear, but I'm getting cold and sleepy."

"We been sitting here for hours. Detective work ain't all it's cracked up to be."

"Right on, I'm bored stiff."

"Yeah, me too."

They sat for another hour or so, their shivers the only thing keeping them from drifting off to sleep. Suddenly, Totò snapped awake.

"Hey, Sunny, wake up, I see some headlights."

"Oh shit, you're right. It's one of the trucks. Start the fucking car. No, wait, don't start it. Wait until the truck goes by."

"Make up your mind, why don'cha?"

Totò turned the ignition key but kept the Camaro's lights off. The truck pulled out of the feeder road and onto Arthur Kill Road. Totò turned the lights on and drove off after the truck, which was headed toward the expressway.

"Don't get too close to them, okay, Totò?"

"Course not. Hey, check it out, they've got outta-state plates."

"Holy shit, you're right. So whatever they've been dumping, it ain't from around here."

"Jesus."

"Yeah, looks like we're not just the asshole of New York City. Looks like someone else is shitting on us too."

As Totò followed the truck up onto the narrow steel span of the Goethals Bridge, the industrial landscape of northeastern New Jersey rolled out before their eyes. A fairyland of glinting white lights sprang up in front of them as they sped toward the oil refineries and tank farms clustered along the shoreline of Elizabeth. Driving down the far side of the bridge, they could make out a forest of snaking pipes running for miles through the refineries, illuminated by twinkling lights strung along every inch of them, as if to demonstrate to the heavens how much energy they could pump out. Above it all hung many tongues of blue flame, burning off waste gases and belching fire and smoke into the atmosphere.

"Holy crap, looks like Christmas in hell," Sunny whispered.

"Amen, sister."

"I had no idea that we lived near all this shit."

"Me neither."

The truck barreled along the densely intertwined roads leading to the New Jersey Turnpike. Just before hitting the highway, it took a sharp right and drove down a small backstreet near the entrance to the sprawling port. The truck turned into a large lot surrounded by a high fence, to which were affixed neat white signs emblazoned with blue letters: Refinement International.

"Whadda we do now?" Totò asked as he pulled the car over down the block from the lot.

"I say we try to find out more about what they been dumping," Sunny replied.

"You crazy or what?"

"Well, you just wanna go home after we came all this way?"

"Okay, okay, but don't tell me I didn't warn ya."

They got out of the car and walked along the fence. It was impossible to see through the canvas that covered the wire mesh. There was a gate at the entrance through which the truck had driven; it was still open. There, on the other side of the lot, was the truck. Sunny and Totò looked around the yard but couldn't see anybody. After watching awhile, they decided that the driver must have gone into the office building, which stood on the opposite side of the yard.

After a quick whispered consultation, Sunny and Totò headed over to the truck. Totò went around to peek into the cab while Sunny looked into the back of it. They had just met up on the far side of the truck and were about to head back out of the lot when a loud voice stopped them in their tracks.

"Who the fuck are you and what're you doing here?"

Two men were moving fast toward them from the office building. The one who had spoken was big and burly, and was dressed in a suit.

"We ain't doing nothing, mister," Totò blurted out. "We was just looking for a place to be alone."

"Just looking for a place to be alone, huh? You planning on getting some action tonight, huh? Well, let's take a look at your girlfriend."

The two men were now standing right in front of them. The suit walked up to within a foot of Sunny while his partner, a short guy dressed in jeans and a nylon jacket, hung back.

"Oh man, she's pretty weird looking. What's with the spiky hair? You put your finger in an electric socket or something, sweetheart? And why're you dressed like a boy? Not very attractive, I must say, but I bet your pussy is still sweet. Say, my friend, I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing some of that sweet poontang, now, would you? What you think, Joe, shall we sample this funky thing's merchandise?"

"Sure thing, boss," the short guy said, "even if she is kinda scrawny."

Totò lost it and made a run at the suit, who saw him coming and punched him hard in the stomach. Totò reeled backward, into the arms of the suit's partner, who grabbed him from behind, threw him onto the ground, and started delivering a series of thudding punches to his head.

"Now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?" the suit said, as he advanced toward Sunny. "Oh yes, I was speaking admiringly of your pussy. I'm sure you don't want to disappoint my great expectations, do you now? So, let's get down to business, shall we?"

Sunny stood still, paralyzed by fear. But just as he reached her, she yelled "Stronzo!" with eardrum-popping volume and swung her steel-capped Dr. Marten–clad foot up into his kneecap. The suit screamed out in pain and toppled over. Sunny stepped back and delivered another carefully aimed kick to his stomach. The suit's high-pitch screeching turned into a deep groan.

Sunny wheeled around just in time to see Totò leap onto the back of the short guy, who had stopped punching him and was coming over to help his boss. Totò couldn't see much since his eyes were already swelling up from the punches, but he did momentarily distract the guy. Sunny cocked her leg back and delivered one more kick, this one straight to the man's groin. He howled and crumpled to the ground.

Sunny grabbed Totò by the hand and dragged him out of the yard and down the street. As they approached the Camaro, she grabbed the keys out of his pocket, pushed Totò into the passenger seat, climbed in, and gunned the car's engine. They took off back toward Staten Island in a screech of burning tires.

"Oh fuck, they sure kicked the shit outta me," Totò moaned as they flew back across the Goethals Bridge. "But I gotta hand it to you, you really saved my ass."

"Don't mention it. Those assholes really had it coming to 'em. They didn't even know what we was doing and they still wanted to fuck us up!"

"Fuck you up, more like it."

"Well, they won't be trying that stunt again anytime soon."

"Yeah, you were so cool! They really picked the wrong chick to fuck with. Watch out, muthafuckas: she's got DMs and she ain't afraid to use 'em. So cool! Oh shit, I'm bleeding all over my dad's car. He's gonna fuck me up even worse than those guys did."

"Don't sweat it, Totò. I'll explain to him. I have proof that we weren't just fuckin' around. Check this out!"

Sunny took a small plastic container out of her jacket.

"What the fuck's that? You gonna show him that you been eating yogurt for your diet or something?" Totò quipped, and groaned as his joke brought a painful smile to his face.

"No, dipshit, I scooped some of the liquid from the back of that truck into this yogurt container. This is all the evidence we need to bust those sons a bitches."

"Jesus! Nice move, Sunny, but get that shit away from me."

* * *

Two days later, Sunny was standing in the usual corner of the playground waiting for the morning assembly bell to ring. Today she was alone. She didn't feel like shooting the bull with the other kids. Debate about the merits of Patti Smith's collaboration with Springsteen on Easter or even about the death of Sid Vicious, so significant just a week ago, seemed pretty tame in comparison with what she'd been going through. Like a giant toxic whirlpool, Staten Island had sucked Sunny back in, but it left her even more alienated from everyone around her than before.

And Totò was still out of school. His dad had been pretty cool about the blood in his car when they explained what they'd found at the dump. Turned out he was actually pretty worried about Totò's cough, and angry at the authorities for not doing anything. Typical fucked-up way they treat people, he'd said. Then he started railing at the government for dropping Agent Orange on the Vietnamese and dumping heroin and other shit here in the States. Damn, he really is like the complete opposite of my dad, Sunny thought. But Enzo didn't have any good ideas about who to turn to. And Totò wouldn't be back in circulation for a week or so while the bruises on his face healed.

Sunny's fear that the suit from Jersey would track her down somehow was starting to fade, but she was still feeling really jumpy. She had all the evidence that she needed to bust Refinement International, or whoever was behind it, but she didn't have any way to figure out what was really in that yogurt container, which she'd been keeping at the back of the fridge, hoping none of her family would accidentally eat it. And even if she could figure out what that pungent black liquid was, who could she tell about it? Even if her dad wasn't involved in any way, Totò was probably right that the local authorities in the Department of Sanitation were on the take. Despite having come so far in such a short time, Sunny felt totally stuck.

The assembly bell rang and Sunny started toward the school auditorium for another day of mindless tedium. She hadn't gone more than a few steps, though, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned and found a man in a dark suit and tie standing a few feet away from her. No, not the same suit, not the same guy, she thought. The man smiled at her.

"Hello, Annunziata. I'm a friend of your dad's. I and my associates would like you to talk to you about what you've been up to lately."

"Do I have any choice?"

"No, mi dispiace, cara, you don't."

Sunny walked slowly over toward the black car indicated by her dad's "friend."

The two got in and drove in silence for about fifteen minutes. Sunny tried to sit like a statue as her mind flipped backward and forward between white-hot rage and blind terror. Come what may, she wasn't going to let this asshole see what was going on inside her.

After the car pulled up outside a place called Joe and Pat's Pizzeria, the guy in the black suit took her into the joint and led her over to a table near the window, where another man, also wearing a suit, was sitting. He pulled out a chair for her and asked if she'd like something to eat or drink. Sunny declined and sat waiting to hear some sort of explanation. The driver strolled out of the store.

The man who'd been waiting for her in the pizzeria began: "Hello, Annunziata. My name's Rocco. I'm a friend of your dad's. You don't need to know anything more about me. But I want to know more about you. I hear you've been doing some investigations at the dump recently?"

"Did my dad tell you about this?" Sunny asked, her anger barely in check.

"No, but we have our ways of getting information about matters in the community."

"Okay," Sunny said, knowing that it wouldn't make much sense to lie about the basics, "I found out that a lot of people in my neighborhood were getting sick. I figured it might be related to Fresh Kills somehow, so I checked it out one night. What's it to you?"

"I'm askin' the questions for now, Annunziata. What did you find during your investigation?"

"I saw some trucks dumping stuff."

"That's all you know?"

"Yeah, that's all I know at the moment, Rocco. Why do you care?"

"Let's just say that it's a matter of territorial integrity, Annunziata."

"What?"

"My associates and I like to take care of the people who take care of us. We don't like anyone else comin' in an' messin' with La Cosa Nostra, with our people and our business, if you understand me. We got wind recently that someone has been dumpin' somethin' at Fresh Kills. Bad stuff. Really bad stuff. Cyanide, naphthalene, and all kinds of other very unhealthy chemicals. Now, we like to think of Fresh Kills as part of our garden, even if the rest of New York City believes it belongs to them. We admit, there's a lot of unpleasant material in that garden of ours. But there are limits. And we like to make sure those limits are properly observed, you get me?"

"Sure," Sunny replied, "I get you."

"So we want to know who's behind this dumpin'. We don't know yet, but we heard that you might know. Is that true, Annunziata?"

Sunny's heart leaped into her throat. How much did these guys really know? Were they wise to her trip to Elizabeth? She decided to gamble.

"Well, I saw that the trucks had outta-state license plates."

"And that's all you know?"

"Yeah, that's all I know."

"Okay, but just in case you learn anything else, let me leave you my number. Remember, Annunziata, we're only trying to protect you and the other good people of this island."

"Thanks, Rocco. I'll be in touch if I find out anything else."

"Va bene, Annunziata. Ma stai attenta, be careful. Garbage is a dangerous business."

"So I've heard."

Rocco got up and sauntered out of the pizzeria, leaving Sunny staring at the opposite wall. What the hell was she going to do? Had her dad ratted her out because of some kind of twisted desire to protect her? Should she confide in these genteel thugs? The idea of turning to them to save the neighborhood from the shit at Fresh Kills was ludicrous. After all, they were the ones who helped make sure the place stayed open all these years in the first place. But where else could she turn?

As her thoughts became increasingly agitated, her eyes slowly came to focus on a headline in a copy of the New York Times lying on a nearby table: Love Canal Is Extra Tough on Children. She walked over to the table, sat down, and began to read. The article told the story of a toxic waste dump in upstate New York. Local authorities had built a school on top of land sold to them by a chemical company, and now kids from the community were starting to get sick. Local women were having miscarriages and giving birth to kids with horrible defects. The article talked about a housewife, Lois Gibbs, who'd demanded that the government pay for people to be relocated from homes built near the dump. When she got no response, she started organizing the community. Gibbs, the article said, had held government officials hostage, feeding them milk and cookies for days and demanding that they release information about the waste buried in the community. She'd even formed an organization to push for what she called environmental justice. She was a real fighter.

Sunny looked up from the paper. Her mind gradually settled. She knew where she was going to send her toxic waste.

LIGHTHOUSE

BY S.J. ROZAN

St. George

It sucked to be him.

Paul huffed and wheezed up Lighthouse Avenue, pumping his bony legs and wiping sweat from his face. His thighs burned and his breath rasped but he knew better than to ask if he could stop. One more uphill block, he figured, then he’d turn and head back down. That would be okay. That would take him past the mark one more time, even though there wasn’t much to see from the street. A wall with a couple of doors, a chain-link fence, raggedy bright flags curling in the autumn breeze. The building itself, the little museum, nestled into the hillside just below. Paul didn’t really have to see it. He didn’t have to do this run at all, truth be told. He’d been there a bunch of times, inside, in that square stone room. He used to go just to stand in the odd cool stillness, just to look at those peculiar statues with all their arms and their fierce eyes. Long time ago, of course, before The Guys came, but the place hadn’t changed and he already knew all he had to know about it. Alarm, yes; dog, no. Most important, people in residence: no.

He kept climbing, closing in on the end of the block. Paul liked it here. Lighthouse Hill was easy pickings.

It always had been, back from when he was a kid. The first B&E he pulled, he boosted a laptop from the pink house on Edinboro. Years ago, but he remembered. The planning, the job, his slamming heart. The swag. Everything.

It was good he did, because The Guys liked to hear about it. While he was planning a job they liked to help, and then when it was done they liked to hear the story over and over. Even though they’d been there. They wanted him to compare each job to other jobs so they could point out dumb things he did, and stuff that went right. That used to piss Paul off, how they made him go over everything a million times. Turned out, though, it was pretty worthwhile to listen to them, even though in the beginning he’d wondered what a bunch of stupid aliens knew about running a B&E. He was right about Roman too. Roman really was stupid. He never knew anything about anything. Paul had to be careful when and where he said that, even just thought it, because if Roman was listening he could do that kick thing and give Paul one of those sonuvabitch headaches. There was a way he’d found where he could sometimes think about stuff, sort of sideways and not using words, and The Guys didn’t notice. But the thing was, even if Roman did catch Paul thinking about how stupid he was, it didn’t matter; it was still true.

Larry and Stoom, though, they were pretty sharp. “You mean, for aliens?” Stoom asked once, with that sneer he always had. Paul thought for sure he was curling his lip, like in a cartoon. That was how he knew they must have lips, because of Stoom’s sneer. Stoom was the only one who still used his alien name, and he was the nastiest (but not as pig-eyed mean as Roman). He was always ragging on Paul, telling him what a loser he was.

“Then why’d you pick me?” Paul yelled back once, a long time ago. “I didn’t invite you. Why don’t you just go the fuck back where you came from?”

Stoom said it was none of his business and then whammo, the headache.

But as far as the sharp-for-aliens thing, Stoom and Larry were actually pretty sharp for anybody. It was Larry who suggested Paul do his preliminary reconnaissance (“Casing the joint!” Roman bawled. “Call it casing the joint!”) in sweats, jogging past a place a couple of times, at different hours. That was good for a whole bunch of reasons. For one thing, Larry was right: no one noticed a jogger, except other joggers, who were only interested in sizing you up, figuring if they were better or you were better. If they could take you. Of course, if it came to it, any of them could take Paul and he knew it. Real runners were all muscle and sinew. Paul looked like them, lanky, with short hair and sunken cheeks, but his skinniness was blasted out of what he used to be, drained by junk. As though the needles in his arm had been day by day drawing something out instead of pumping it in.

But he still laced up his running shoes and made himself circle whatever neighborhood it was, every time he was ready to plan a job. Which was pretty much every time the rent was due or the skag ran out. Even if he had the whole job ready to go in his head and didn’t need to, like now, he still ran the streets around it. For one thing, The Guys liked that he did it this way, and as awful as the wheezing and the fire in his legs were, the headaches when they got mad were always worse.

Another thing: suiting up and going by a couple times over a couple days stretched out the planning part. That was Paul’s favorite. He liked to learn stuff about his marks: who they were, how they lived, what they liked to do.

“Oh, please,” said Stoom, about that. He sounded like he was rolling his eyes, though Paul didn’t know if they had eyes, either. He’d asked once, what they looked like, but that turned out to be another thing that was none of his business. “You’re a crook,” Stoom went on. “You’re a junkie. You’re a loser with aliens in your head. All you need to know about people is what they have and when they won’t be home.”

“Maybe he wants to write a book about them,” Larry suggested, in a bored and mocking voice. “Maybe he’s going to be a big best-selling author.”

That had burned Paul up, because that was exactly what he’d wanted before The Guys showed up. He always had an imagination; he was going to grow up and be a writer.

He never talked about The Guys anymore. He had, at first. It took him awhile to figure out no one else could hear them and everyone thought he was nuts. “There are no aliens, Paul. It’s all in your head. You need to get help.” Stuff like that.

Well, that first point, that was completely wrong. Paul used to argue, say obvious things like, “You can’t see time either, but no one says it isn’t there.” All people did was stare and back away, so he stopped saying anything.

The second point, though, was completely right. That’s where The Guys lived: in Paul’s head. Where they’d beamed when they came to earth on some kind of scouting mission, Paul didn’t know what for. Or from where. They never did tell him why, but Stoom had told him from where. It’s just, it was some planet he’d never heard of circling some star he’d never heard of in some galaxy really, really far away. Magribke was the closest Paul could come to pronouncing it. The Guys laughed at him when he said it that way, but they didn’t tell him how to really say it. They didn’t talk about their home planet much. Mostly, they just told Paul the Loser what to do.

They first showed up when he was fourteen. He supposed he’d been a peculiar kid—God knows his mom always thought so—but he wasn’t a loser then. (“Oh, of course you were,” Stoom said, but Paul knew he was wrong.) It was them, making him do weird shit, distracting him so he started flunking out, giving him those kick headaches—they were the ones who screwed him all up.

And the third point, get help? He’d tried. What did people think, he liked it like this, these bastards giving him orders, making him hurt really bad when he didn’t do what they said? When he was sixteen and he knew for sure The Guys weren’t leaving, he went looking for someone who could tell him what to do. Somebody at NASA or something. But NASA didn’t answer his e-mails and his mom dragged him to a shrink. The shrink said she believed Paul about The Guys, but she didn’t. She gave him drugs to take but the drugs made the world all suffocating and gray, and they didn’t make The Guys go away, it just made it so Paul couldn’t hear them. They were still there, though, and he knew they were getting madder and madder, and when the drugs stopped working he’d be in bad trouble. So he stopped taking the drugs, and The Guys were so pleased he’d done it on his own that they only gave him a little kick headache, not even a whole day long.

What The Guys liked best was Paul breaking into places and boosting stuff, so that’s what he started to do.

He didn’t live at home anymore, not since he stopped seeing the shrink and taking her drugs. He knew his mom was relieved when he moved out, even though she pretended like she wanted him to stay. He still went home to see her sometimes. She acted all nervous when he was there, which she tried to hide, but he knew. She especially got nervous when he talked to The Guys. He’d asked them to just please shut up while he was with his mom, but of course they didn’t. So he still went, but not so often.

He had a basement apartment in St. George. It had bugs and it smelled moldy but it was cheap and no one bothered him and it was easy to get to whatever neighborhood The Guys wanted him to hit next. It was also easy to get to his dealer, and it was a quiet, dark place to shoot up.

The first year after he moved out was the worst of his life. The Guys wouldn’t shut up, and they were really into the headaches that whole year. It was part of some experiment they were doing for their planet. Even sometimes when Paul did exactly what they told him, they’d just start kicking. Sometimes he thought they wanted to kick his brains out from the inside.

Sometimes he wished they would.

That year it especially sucked to be him—until he discovered heroin.

Damn, damn, damn, what a find! The only bad thing: he hadn’t thought of it years ago. Shooting up wasn’t like taking the shrink’s drugs. The Guys liked it. A needle of black tar, and everyone just relaxed, got all laid back. Made him laugh the first time, the idea of a bunch of wasted aliens nodding out inside his head. He was a little afraid right after he laughed, but while they were high The Guys didn’t care, didn’t get mad, were so quiet they might as well not have been there at all.

It was the only time anymore that things were that way, the only time Paul could even pretend it was like it used to be before The Guys came, when he could do what he wanted and not what he was being told to do.

He reached the top of the hill and turned around. His long, loping strides down were such a relief after the pain of fighting his way up that he almost cried. He guessed that was another thing Larry was right about, though. If The Guys didn’t make him do it this way, he’d be just another junkie passed out on a stinking mattress with a needle in his arm. He wouldn’t be pulling B&E’s, he’d be mugging old ladies when he got desperate for a few bucks to buy the next fix. The running kept him in some kind of shape, kept his muscles working, and cleared his head for planning his jobs.

“Well, sure. Glad to help. Because I don’t think you really want to go to prison, do you?” Larry asked as Paul passed the bright line of flags again. Paul didn’t answer. Larry’s questions were never supposed to get answers. “There’s no heroin in jail, you know.”

Paul knew, and that was enough to make the idea terrifying. No skag, and for sure The Guys would come with him. How shitty would that be? If he thought they wouldn’t, he’d let his ass get picked up in a New York minute, but no such luck and he knew it.

Though on his bad days—and what day wasn’t bad, really?—he wondered how long he’d be able to stay out anyway. He had an arrest record, had been fingered twice for B&E’s, but he was good (“We’re good,” Stoom said. “Whose idea was the surgical gloves?”) and the cops were way overworked and no one had gotten hurt either time, so they cut him loose. But lately there was a new problem.

Lately, The Guys had started liking for people to get hurt.

The first time he’d hurt someone it was by accident. Well, all three times it was. But that first time, it was a year ago and fucked if Paul wasn’t as scared as she was. He’d just slipped into the garage window of a square brick house in Huguenot, and like he knew it would be, the car was gone; and like he expected, the door to the kitchen had this cheesy old lock. (“Even you can pick that,” Stoom said. Roman whined, “Oh, come on, kick it in,” but Paul hadn’t. He didn’t have to do what Roman said if one of the others said something different.) The lady who lived there never came home before noon on Tuesdays. Paul wondered where she went, to the gym, to a class or something, and if it was a class, what did she like to learn about? The Guys jeered at that but no one kicked him, and he jiggled the credit card down the doorjamb and got in.

The girl at the kitchen counter dropped the coffee pot and screamed.

Paul almost pissed himself. He’d never seen her before. She didn’t live there. Curly brown hair, brown eyes, she looked like the lady, maybe a sister or something, maybe visiting, shit, what did it matter? Good thing he was wearing the ski mask. He backed toward the door, was trying to run but she threw a plate, brained him, and he went down, slipping in all that spilled coffee. He thrashed around trying to get up and she whacked at him with the broom, so he had to grab it and pull at it and she wouldn’t let go. He yanked really hard and she slipped too, went down with a thud, and then gave a loud moan and a lot of, “Ow-ow-ow!” Rolling around on the floor clutching her arm. Paul sped back through the window and ran down the street, ripping the mask and gloves off as he went, shoving them into a dumpster behind the bagel place, where he stopped and threw up.

As he was wiping his mouth he realized with a chill that The Guys were laughing.

Not at him; they did that all the time and he was used to it. But with each other, like he and his buddies used to (when he was a kid and had buddies) when they’d ring old lady Miller’s doorbell and run away, or when they’d boost a couple of chocolate bars from Rifkin’s. It wasn’t the thing, the event itself: it was the rush. That’s why they’d done it, and laughed like hell afterward, from the relief of not getting caught, and the rush. That’s the kind of laughing The Guys were doing now.

“Glad you thought that was funny,” he said, straightening up. “You like it that she clobbered me, huh?”

“Seriously? Who gives a shit?” Roman cracked up again. “Did you hear her screaming? Ow-ow-OW! I bet you broke her arm!”

“I enjoyed that face she made,” Larry said. “When she screamed. I didn’t know people’s mouths could open that wide. That was very interesting.”

Even Stoom was chortling, though he didn’t have anything to say. Paul couldn’t wait to get home, get his works, shoot up.

It was more than six months after that before the next person got hurt because Paul was in their house. Another accident, same kind of thing, a man coming home early, Paul barely getting out, The Guys close to hysterics. The one after that, just last month: the same but not the same. Paul had a bad feeling that time. He liked the house, full of small, fenceable stuff, he liked the layout—lots of trees and shrubs, once you got to the back door you were seriously hidden—but the lady who lived there had this funny schedule, you couldn’t trust her not to come home. He was thinking maybe he should look for somewhere else but then Larry chimed in. The Guys never had an opinion before on where he should hit—at least, they’d never expressed one—but this time Larry said Paul should just go ahead and do it. Paul wanted to explain why not, but Roman started chanting, “Do it! Do it! Do it!” and when Stoom said, “I think it’s a good idea too,” Paul knew he was sunk. He did everything he could to be sure the lady would be away, and she was when he broke in and she was while he emptied her jewelry box into his backpack and shoved a laptop in with it and a nice little picture from the wall that might bring a few bucks, but before he could go back down the hall toward the stairs he heard her car crunch gravel in the driveway. He flashed on different ideas—hide in the closet, go out the window—but they were all stupid and he slammed down the hallway and flew down the stairs hoping he could get out while she was still wide-eyed staring and thinking, What the fuck? He didn’t, though. She was like the girl the first time, this lady, she came right at him, screaming and cursing, smashing at him with her handbag, her fists, she was like a crazy lady. “Just move!” he yelled at her. “Just let me out of here!” But she wouldn’t, so he pushed her. She stumbled backward and fell, banged her head on the floor. She made a long, low, sad/angry sound, tried to get up, couldn’t get up. She pushed at the floor and flopped back, just glaring at Paul with eyes full of hate. When she tried to get up and he thought she’d be able to, he grabbed for something from the coat rack, it was just an umbrella but it was a big heavy one, and he raised it over his head.

Two things happened.

One: the lady’s eyes got wide, her face went white, and she froze like a lying-down statue.

And two: Larry said mildly, “Hit her.”

Paul froze too. Two frozen statues staring at each other. He dropped the umbrella and backed away, stumbled past the lady, yanked open the door, and ran. The Guys started kicking him even before he got the ski mask off. By the time he arrived back at his place his whole head was pounding, even his nose and his cheeks, like they were trying to kick his face off. It was one of the worst headaches ever and it took a long time to go away, partly because it was so bad he could hardly see to light the match and melt his tar.

When the smack wore off The Guys kicked him some more—they were really mad Paul didn’t do what Larry said—so he had to have another fix. After that one, though, they calmed down for a while. By nighttime Paul was able to move his shaky self out of the apartment, get a cup of coffee and a slice.

The next day he felt okay enough to do some business. The lady’s jewelry pawned pretty well, and he sold the laptop for some nice bucks. The picture, it turned out, wasn’t worth shit, but his fence gave him a little for the frame, and for a couple of weeks Paul could spend the days running, eating pizza and Chinese, and shooting up. The Guys stayed pretty mellow, not like they weren’t there, but it was just a lot of bullshit ragging on him, no headaches, no stupid ideas like the time they told him to jump off the ferry and he had to squeeze the rail so hard he thought he’d break his fingers. That time, they finally told him okay, he didn’t have to, and then they laughed and laughed. Nothing like that now, and he relaxed a little and got into a rhythm. He saw his mom, and things were as close to good as they ever were, since The Guys had come.

Eventually, though, it got to be time to plan another job.

Paul had this idea, thinking about it only in that no-words way so The Guys wouldn’t catch on. The little museum on Lighthouse Avenue, the Tibetan Museum, it had a lot of art in it, small statues, some made of gold or silver, some even with jewels on them. He told The Guys about them, how easy they’d be to fence and how much he could get for them, as long as he took them into Manhattan. He knew The Guys would like that, they liked that trip, which sometimes Paul made for skag if his dealer was in jail or something. He told them about the skylight into the square room and the alarm that even if it went off—and he didn’t think the skylight was wired up, but even if it was—no one lived there and the precinct was at least five minutes away. Paul could stuff half a dozen, maybe even more, of those strange statues into his backpack and be out the door and sliding down the overgrown hill out back before the cop car ever pulled up in front. The police would walk around for a while with their flashlights, anyway. They’d try the doors in the wall, and by the time someone came to let them in, Paul would be home stashing the statues under the bed and breaking out his works.

The best part of the plan was the part he wasn’t thinking in words. No one lived at the museum. No one would stop him. There’d be no one for him to hurt.

Long ago some people used to live there. Long, long ago the lady who built the museum lived next door, and the gardens were connected and she’d have come running. But there was a wall there now and the people who lived in her house didn’t even like the museum all that much. He wasn’t worried about them. And in the hillside below there were two little caves, for monks and nuns to meditate in. When Paul was a kid and used to come here, sometimes there’d be one of them in a cave for a few days, just sitting and thinking with their eyes closed. They used to leave their doors open and Paul would tiptoe over and hide behind the bushes and peek at them. Once, one of the nuns opened her eyes and saw him and he thought she’d be mad but she just smiled at him, nodded like she was saying hi, like she knew him already, and closed her eyes again. The nuns didn’t look like the ones he was used to. He’d never seen real monks, only in Robin Hood comics, but they didn’t look like this either. These monks and nuns had shaved heads—all of them, the nuns too—and gray robes and big brown beads, like rosary beads but not. He liked the way they seemed so calm and peaceful, though. That’s why he liked to watch them. Even when he was a kid, even before The Guys came, he’d never been calm and peaceful like that.

But that was a long time ago. No one had used those caves for ten years, maybe more. The museum stopped having monks and nuns come and no one was ever there when the place was closed, and thinking without words Paul knew this was a good idea.

Even though he also knew he didn’t have a good idea for next time.

He wasn’t worrying about that now, as he finished his run and swung onto a bus for St. George. He couldn’t. He needed to go get himself together. He’d have loved to get high but there was no way he could shoot up now and still be able to do this job when it got dark. So he went back to his basement apartment, pushed some pizza boxes and takeout cartons out of the way to find his black shirt and pants. He took a shower, even though the clothes were filthy, and then lay down, rolled himself in his blanket, and slept. He hoped The Guys would give him a break; sometimes they liked to scream and yell and wake him just as he was falling asleep. He was braced for it but they didn’t and he slipped away.

When he woke up it was just after sunset. Excellent. He took his black backpack and stuffed his ski mask and his gloves into it, plus a rope, and a hammer and a pry bar for the skylight. He stuck in a light-blue sweatshirt too, for afterward when they’d be looking for a guy all in black. If anyone saw him to describe him to the cops. But no one would see him; that was the beauty of this plan.

At the bodega he bought two coffees, lots of cream and sugar, and threw them both back before he got to the bus stop. Now he was buzzed; good. He took the bus up to the corner past the museum and walked down. It was dark, with yellow squares of light glowing in people’s windows, the kind of people who had normal lives and no aliens in their heads. Except for one dogwalker, no one was out. The dogwalker had gone around the corner by the time Paul got to the fence. He climbed it easily, trying to avoid the flags. He didn’t know much about them but they were called prayer flags so he thought it was probably bad to step on them. He slid a little on the wet leaves on the north side of the building but he was completely hidden there from both the street and the next house. Because the building was buried in the hillside he was only maybe ten feet below the roof, and the rope tossed around a vent pipe took care of that. (“Lucky you’re a broken-down skinny-ass runt or that pipe would’ve busted,” Stoom pointed out. Paul didn’t answer.) The skylight, like he figured, was some kind of plastic, and the panels were even easier to pry loose than he’d hoped. He lifted a panel out, laid it aside, and waited. Right about that too: no alarm. He grabbed onto the edge, slipped over, and he was in.

He dropped lightly into the center of the square stone room, almost the same spot on the floor he used to sit on when he was a kid and came in just to stare. The lady who sold the tickets thought it was neat that a little kid kept coming around, and didn’t make him pay anything. Sometimes if he’d boosted some candy bars he’d bring her one, and she always took it with a big smile and a thank you.

He slipped the headlamp on and turned slowly, watching the beam play over the room. The place hadn’t changed much, maybe not at all. On the side built into the hill a couple of stone ledges stepped back. Most of the statues sat on them, lined up in rows. A bunch more were in cases against the other three walls. Two of the cases stood one on either side of the door out to the balcony. The space smelled cool and damp, like it was one of those caves where the nuns and monks used to stay. It was still and silent, but not the heavy silence of the shrink’s drugs or the skag. Those made him feel like everything was still there, he was just shutting it out. This, it was a quiet like everything had stopped to rest.

“What a lovely little trip down Memory Lane,” Larry said acidly. “Can we get to work now?”

Paul swung the backpack off, opened it, and stepped up to the shelves, leaning over each statue. He wanted them all, wanted to take them and put them in his basement room just to stare around at them, but that wasn’t why he was here and no matter how many he took that wasn’t what would happen to them. He reached out. This one, it was gold. He held it, let the headlamp glint off it. Then into the pack. That one was beautiful but it was iron. Leave it. The two there, with jewels and coral, into the pack. The silver one. That little candlestick, it too. That was all the best from the ledges. Now for the cases on the walls. Paul turned his head, sweeping the light around.

There she was.

Just like the first time, the girl in the kitchen, Paul almost pissed himself. A nun, in gray robes, big brown beads around her neck. She smiled softly and Paul’s mouth fell open. It was the same nun, the one from the cave, smiling the same smile.

“You—you—you’re still here?” he managed to stammer.

“I’ve always been here,” she replied. Her eyes twinkled, and she stood with her hands folded in front of her. When she smiled she looked like the lady he used to give candy bars to. He’d never noticed that before, that they looked alike. “Paul,” she said, “you know you can’t take those.”

His voice had rung oddly off the stone walls. Hers didn’t disturb the sense that everything was resting.

“How do you know my name?” This time he whispered so he wouldn’t get the same echo.

“You came here when you were a little boy.”

He nodded. “I used to watch you sitting there. Meditating.”

“I know. I thought perhaps you’d join me sometime.”

“I—”

Larry interrupted him, barking, “Paul! Get back to work.”

He said, “Just give me—”

“No!”

That was Roman. The kick was from him too. Paul’s head almost cracked. The pain was blinding, and he barely heard the nun calmly say, “Roman, stop that.”

The kicking stopped instantly. Paul stared at the nun. “You can hear them?”

She smiled. “You don’t have to do what they say, you know.”

Paul swallowed. “Yes, I do.”

“Yes, he does,” Larry said.

“Yes! He does!” Roman yelled.

“No,” said the nun.

“I can’t get them to leave.” Paul was suddenly ashamed of how forlorn he sounded. Like a real loser. He heard Larry snicker.

“Even so,” she said.

He wasn’t sure how to answer her, but he didn’t get the chance. “Paul?” That was Stoom, sounding dark. When Stoom got mad it was really, really bad. “Do what you came for, and do it now. Remember, Paul: no swag, no skag.” It was one of those times Paul could hear Stoom’s sneer.

Paul looked at the nun, and then slowly around the room. The headlamp picked out fierce faces, jeweled eyes. “There’s lots of places I could hit,” he said to The Guys. “Doesn’t have to be here. This was a dumb idea. You know, like my ideas always are. How about I just—”

“No,” said Stoom.

“No,” said Larry.

And Roman started kicking him, chanting, “No swag, no skag! No swag, no skag!” Then they were all three chanting and kicking, chanting and kicking.

Paul staggered forward, toward a statue of a person sitting cross-legged like the nun did. Pearls and coral studded its flowing gold robes. He reached for it but the nun moved smoothly in front of it. She said nothing, just smiled.

“No,” Paul heard himself croak. “Please. You have to let me.”

She shook her head.

“Paul!” Stoom snapped. “You moron loser. Push her out of the way.”

“No. I’ll get a different one.”

“I want THAT one!” Roman whined.

Paul swung his head around. The headlamp picked out a glittering statue with lots of arms, over in a case by the door. He turned his back on the nun and lurched toward it. By the time he got there she was standing in front of it, hands folded, smiling. He hadn’t seen her move.

“Paul,” she said, “this life has been hard for you. I don’t know why; I think, though, that the next turn of the wheel will be far better.”

He didn’t know what she was talking about. Wheel, what wheel? All three of The Guys were kicking him now, Roman the hardest, trying to pop his right eye out. “Please,” he said. “Get out of the way.”

She said nothing, just smiled the ticket lady’s smile and stood there.

Paul took two steps over to the next cabinet.

There she was.

“Please!” he shouted at her. “Stop it!” His head pounded, the pain so searing he thought he might throw up. He could barely see but he knew she was still standing between him and the statues. “Please!”

“Hit her.” That was Larry. Paul barely heard him through the pain. He tried to pretend he didn’t hear him at all but Larry laughed. “Hit her. With a statue.”

Paul’s hands trembled as he reached into the backpack, took out the gold statue. “Please,” he whispered to the nun–ticket lady. “Please move.”

She just stood and smiled.

Paul lifted the statue way high. As he brought it down on her shaved head he realized he was screaming.

He felt the impact on her skull, felt it all the way up to his shoulders, his back. The nun crumpled to the floor without a sound. Blood flowed from the smashed-in place, started to pool under her face. Paul dropped the statue; it fell with a splash into the puddle of blood. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”

“Oh my God is right!” Larry roared a grand, triumphant laugh. “You killed her!”

“Killed her! Killed her!” shrieked Roman.

“You know what happens now, don’t you?” Larry said. “You go to jail. Prison, you loser, you go to prison where there’s no smack and we go too! Oh, will that be fun!”

“No.” Paul could barely get the word out. “I didn’t. She’s not dead.”

“Really?” said Stoom. “Can you wake her up?”

Paul kneeled slowly, put out his hand, shook the nun gently. She still had that little smile, the ticket lady’s smile, but she didn’t respond at all.

“Look at all that blood,” Stoom said. “You’re stupid if you think anyone could be still alive with all their blood on the floor like that. You’re stupid anyway, but she’s dead and you killed her.”

“Prison!” Roman bellowed. “Killed her! Prison!”

“No.” Paul stood slowly, shaking his head. “No.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” Larry said. “Oh, yes.”

Paul took one more look at the nun, then staggered toward the exit door. An alarm shrieked as he pushed it open. He ran across the terrace, slipping on the autumn leaves. When he got to the railing he stared down; the headlamp shone on branches and bushes growing out of the wall beneath him but couldn’t reach all the way to the street below.

He grabbed the rail, ready to vault over.

“No,” said Stoom in that very hard voice. “No, you’re staying.”

Paul felt his grip tighten on the rail, like The Guys were controlling his fingers. He heard a siren wail. That would be the cops, because of the door alarm. If he was still here when they came, he’d go to prison for sure.

“That’s right,” Larry said with satisfaction. “Prison for sure.”

Paul took a slow, deep breath. “No,” he whispered. “She told me I don’t have to do what you say.”

The Guys yelled, they bellowed and kicked, but Paul loosened his fingers one by one. He climbed over the railing, stood for a minute on the edge of the wall. Then he dove. His last thought was the hope that The Guys wouldn’t have time to clear out of his head before he smashed it to bits on the pavement.

The impact, the thud of a body landing forty feet below, didn’t penetrate very far into the square stone room. It barely disturbed the resting stillness, didn’t echo at all past the golden Buddha in the middle of the floor. The statue lay on its side on a smooth dry stone tile, beside a backpack full of other statues. Except for the statue and the backpack, and the single panel removed from the skylight, nothing was out of place. The calm silence in the room continued, and would continue once the statues had been replaced in their proper spots by the museum’s new director.

She would be pleased that something had scared off the thief, though greatly saddened that he’d fallen to his death over the railing at the terrace. As advised by the police, she’d add an alarm to the skylight. She had much to do, as she was all the staff the museum had. She guided visitors, and also sold the tickets, the ticket lady having retired years ago. She didn’t mind the work. She was hoping, even, to soon reopen the meditation caves, to perhaps make the museum not just a serene spot, but a useful one, as it once had been: a beacon for poor souls with troubled minds.

About the Contributors

(The authors' biographies are as they appeared in the original volumes)

___________________

Jillian Abbott's short stories have won awards in the United States and Australia. She is a reporter at the Queens Chronicle and her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Writer Magazine, and many other publications. She's currently at work on a new mystery series as well as her second Morgan Blake thriller. She lives in Queens.

Megan Abbott is the Edgar Award–nominated author of Queenpin, The Song Is You, and Die a Little, as well as the nonfiction study, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. She lives in Forest Hills, Queens.

Pearl Abraham is the author of the novels The Romance Reader and Giving Up America. Recent essays have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly, the Forward, and Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines. Abraham teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College. The Seventh Beggar, her third novel, will be published in September 2004.

Thomas Adcock, an Edgar Award–winning novelist, was born in Detroit, raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, and schooled just across the Harlem River in Fordham, the Bronx. A staff writer for the New York Law Journal, he has also worked on television drama projects in Los Angeles for Aaron Spelling Productions and NBC. He is coeditor with Tim McLoughlin of Brooklyn Noir 3.

Shailly Agnihotri was born in India, grew up in Baton Rouge, and now lives in New York City. She is a filmmaker and recently completed a documentary entitled Three Soldiers. Her other projects include a feature film, Sangrita (in preproduction), and a novel, East River. She likes to consult Vedic astrologers, buy silver jewelry, and eat spicy chat in Jackson Heights.

Ted Anthony, a longtime journalist, has reported from more than twenty countries and forty-seven US states. He has been a foreign correspondent in China and covered the aftermath of 9/11 in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the early months of the war in Iraq. He is the author of the cultural history Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song.

Charles Ardai, a lifelong New Yorker, spent his first thirty years living either at 51st and Second or 52nd and First, before packing the Conestoga and lighting out for the wilds of 10021. His first novel, Little Girl Lost (written under the pen name Richard Aleas), was nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus awards. Ardai is also the cofounder and editor of the award-winning pulp-revival imprint Hard Case Crime.

Kevin Baker is a novelist and historian.  His latest book, Strivers Row, is set in Harlem in 1943.  His father was born on Fordham Road, and many of his father's people lived (and died) in the Bronx.

Carol Lea Benjamin, once an undercover agent for the William J. Burns Detective Agency, a teacher, and a dog trainer, is the author of the Shamus Award–winning Rachel Alexander mystery series, as well as eight acclaimed books on dog training and behavior. Recently elected to the International Association of Canine Professionals Hall of Fame, she lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and three swell dogs.

Thomas Bentil works as a case manager on Rikers Island for Fresh Start, a vocational training and reentry program. He was first bitten by the writing bug while "doin' time" in that very place and as a participant in that very program. While incarcerated, he wrote and was the managing editor for a jail-based literary magazine known as the Rikers Review. In a previous life, Thomas was a mildly successful scam artist as well as a full-time methamphetamine addict.

Nicole Blackman lives in an undisclosed Brooklyn neighborhood where she prefers eavesdropping on unsuspecting people. She is the creator of the innovative "The Courtesan Tales" performance, and author of the poetry collection Blood Sugar (Akashic, 2002). She is currently wanted for questioning in the disappearance of three men in Brooklyn.

Lawrence Block is an MWA Grand Master and a recipient of the Diamond Dagger life achievement award of the UK Crime Writers Association. He lives and writes in Manhattan.

Ken Bruen, author of The Guards and The Killing of the Tinkers, is published around the world. He has been an English teacher in Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South America. He lives in Galway, Ireland.

Mary Byrne was born in Ireland and now divides her time between teaching, translating, and writing. She collaborated with Lawrence Durrell on his final book of essays, and her short fiction has been published in Ireland, England, France, Canada, and the United States. Byrne won the 1986 Hennessy Literary Award and currently lives in France.

Tori Carrington (a.k.a., Lori and Tony Karayianni) has published nearly forty titles, including those in the Sofie Metropolis, P.I. series, which are set in Astoria, Queens.

Jerome Charyn's most recent novel, The Green Lantern, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York and Paris, where he is Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris. He was born and raised in the Bronx.

Suzanne Chazin is the author of the Georgia Skeehan mystery series, including the novels The Fourth Angel, Flashover, and Fireplay. In 2003, she received the Washington Irving Book Award for both The Fourth Angel and Flashover. A New York native, Ms. Chazin has taught fiction writing at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. She is married to Thomas Dunne, a senior chief in the FDNY who oversees fires in the Bronx.

Terrence Cheng is the author of two novels, Sons of Heaven and Deep in the Mountains. He earned his MFA at the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener Fellow, and in 2005 he received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York.

Thomas H. Cook is the author of twenty novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award five times in four separate categories. His novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1996. He splits his time between Manhattan and Cape Cod.

Todd Craig is a product of Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York. He is a writer, educator, and deejay. Straddling fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Craig's texts paint vivid depictions of the urban lifestyle he experienced in his community. He currently teaches English at the College of Staten Island while completing his doctorate in English at St. John's University.

Ashley Dawson is a professor of English at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and at the College of Staten Island. He is the author of Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain and The Routledge Concise History of Twentieth-Century British Literature, and coeditor of three essay collections, including Democracy, States, and the Struggle for Global Justice and Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus.

Jeffery Deaver, the author of The Bone Collector and a number of other international best sellers, was born outside of Chicago but lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly twenty years. He was an attorney on Wall Street before turning to writing thrillers full-time. One of his first novels was titled Manhattan Is My Beat, an Edgar Award–nominee about a crime involving a (fictional) film noir.

Ed Dee was born and raised in Yonkers on the northern border of the Bronx. He spent ten years of his NYPD career as a street cop in the South Bronx. Today these same streets can make him laugh and cry, but mostly wish he could do it all again. He loved this opportunity to write about the old neighborhood, the old songs, the gang, the redhead . . . da Bronx. Ed's latest novel is The Con Man's Daughter.

Bruce DeSilva is the author of the hard-boiled Mulligan crime novels Cliff Walk and Rogue Island, with a third, Providence Rag, on the way. His fiction has won Edgar and Macavity awards and has been a finalist for the Anthony and Shamus awards. He worked as a journalist for forty years, most recently as a senior editor for the Associated Press. He reviews books for the Associated Press and is a master's thesis advisor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Joanne Dobson, author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mysteries, spent her formative years on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx—as far away culturally as one could possibly get from New England's elite Enfield College where Pelletier solves crimes, and occasionally teaches a class. She has spent the large part of her teaching career as an English professor at the Bronx's Fordham University.

Jill Eisenstadt is the author of two novels set in Queens, From Rockaway and Kiss Out. She is an occasional contributor to the New York Times, among other publications, and is a part-time writing professor at the New School's Eugene Lang College. Her Queens Noir story, "Golden Venture," is based on a real event in the borough's history.

Victoria Eng was born and raised in Chinatown and Queens. She is a graduate of Hunter College and holds an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. Her work has been published in The NuyorAsian Anthology: Asian American Writings about New York City. She lived in New Mexico and Costa Rica for seven years, and is currently back in New York working on a historical novel set in Chinatown.

Louisa Ermelino is the reviews director at Publishers Weekly. She has worked at People, Time, and Instyle, and written three novels: Joey Dee Gets Wise, The Black Madonna, and The Sisters Mallone. Her family summered in Staten Island and it is the home of her husband's family and "the site of a large part of our courtship."

Maggie Estep has published six books and is working on her seventh, Alice Fantastic, which came to be when Robert Knightly asked her to write something for Queens Noir. Her favorite parts of Queens are the Kissena Velodrome, Aqueduct Racetrack, and Fort Tilden in Rockaway.

Belinda Farley resides in Harlem, not Queens, and is currently at work on a novel.

Jim Fusilli is the author of the award-winning Terry Orr series, which includes Hard, Hard City, winner of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel of 2004, as well as Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, and Tribeca Blues. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a contributor to National Public Radio's All Things Considered.

Nelson George is a noted author and filmmaker who has resided in Brooklyn all his forty-six years. His most recent nonfiction work is Post-Soul Nation (Viking), and he is the executive producer of two recent TV projects: The "N" Word and Everyday People, a fictional film made for HBO.

Alan Gordon is the author of the Fools' Guild Mysteries, including the forthcoming novel The Moneylender of Toulouse and, most recently, The Lark's Lament. He has been a resident of Queens' second oldest co-op since 1987, and is a defender of the borough's alleged miscreants as a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. Gordon is the father of one genuine Queensian, and has been a Little League coach for six years, which has taught him all he needs to know about hard-boiled types.

Luciano Guerriero is the author of one novel, a noir thriller entitled The Spin, and has been a resident of Brooklyn or Manhattan for twenty-three years. While writing plays, screenplays, short stories, and poetry during that time, he has also acted in or directed sixty-five plays and acted in twenty Hollywood and independent films.

Joseph Guglielmelli grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. He cultivated his love of mysteries by reading golden age classics found while browsing in tiny bookstores in the shadow of the elevated tracks of the 7 train. For the past thirteen years, Joe has been co-owner of The Black Orchid Bookshop, which was the 2006 recipient of the Raven Award given by Mystery Writers of America.

Denis Hamill writes a column about Queens for the New York Daily News and has written ten novels, including, Fork in the Road, recently purchased by Alexander Payne's company for a feature film from Fox Searchlight. He lives in Queens.

Pete Hamill is for many the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New Yorker, and Newsday, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many best-selling books, including novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He lives in New York City.

Robert J. Hughes's novel Late and Soon was published in late 2005, and his next, Seven Sisters, will be out soon. He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he writes on the arts, philanthropy, and publishing. He lives in Manhattan now, but spent many merry hours as a youth raising a perfectly law-abiding ruckus with friends in the parish of St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1970. He graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature. His debut novel, John Crow's Devil, a New York Times Editors' Choice, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. James teaches creative writing and literature at Macalester College, in St. Paul, MN.

Kenji Jasper was born and raised in the nation's capital and currently lives in Brooklyn. He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's Morning Edition and has written articles for Savoy, Essence, VIBE, the Village Voice, the Charlotte Observer, and Africana.com. He is the author of three novels, Dark, Dakota Grand, and the forthcoming Seeking Salamanca Mitchell.

Eddie Joyce was born and raised on Staten Island. He is working on his first novel. Before he started writing, he was a criminal defense attorney in Manhattan for ten years. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three daughters.

Norman Kelley is the author of the "noir soul" Nina Halligan mystery series, which includes Black Heat, The Big Mango, and A Phat Death. He is also the author of Head Negro in Charge Syndrome, forthcoming (Nation Books,) and he edited and contributed to R&B (Rhythm and Business): The Political Economy of Black Music (Akashic, 2002). He currently resides in Brooklyn.

Patricia King is the author of four books on business subjects, including Never Work for a Jerk. Her forthcoming book—The Monster in the Corner Office—will be published in 2008.

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of two story collections, Married Life and History on a Personal Note, and six novels: On Mermaid Avenue, A Disturbance in One Place, Pure Poetry, Hester Among the Ruins, An Almost Perfect Moment, and The Scenic Route. She is a professor and currently serving as chair at Columbia University's MFA program. She taught at Staten Island's Wagner College twenty years ago.

Sandra Kitt's novel The Color of Love, released in 1995, was optioned by HBO and Lifetime. She has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award in Fiction. A native of New York, her artwork is displayed in the African American Museum of Art in Los Angeles. She lives in Riverdale, the Bronx.

Robert Knightly moved to Jackson Heights in 1995 and works as a Legal Aid criminal defense lawyer in the Queens courts. As a teenager, he dug graves one summer in First Calvary Cemetery in Blissville, where he set his story for this volume. His short story "Take the Man's Pay," from Akashic's Manhattan Noir, was selected for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories 2007. As an NYPD officer and sergeant he patrolled Brooklyn and Manhattan for twenty years.

Rita Lakin grew up in the East Bronx on Elder Avenue. She attended Hunter College on the Bronx campus and then worked in Los Angeles as a writer/producer in television for twenty-five years. Now she is happily writing mysteries about a group of geriatric lady P.I.'s, including Getting Old Is Murder, Getting Old Is the Best Revenge, and Getting Old Is Criminal.

Michael Largo has published three novels and four books of nonfiction. He won the Bram Stoker Award for Final Exits: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of How We Die. He was born on Staten Island and grew up a few blocks away from where Willie Sutton once lived. He attended the College of Staten Island and, among other things, once owned the St. Marks Bar & Grill in Manhattan.

Miles Marshall Lewis moved northeast to Co-op City from Highbridge at the age of four. In the 1990s he worked as an editor at Vibe and XXL magazines, interviewing Afrika Bambaataa, Nas, Rakim, and many others. Author of Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don't Have Bruises and There's a Riot Goin' On, Lewis is also founder of Bronx Biannual literary journal. He lives in Paris, France.

Bill Loehfelm is the author of three novels, most recently The Devil She Knows, as well as Fresh Kills, winner of the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and Bloodroot. All three novels are set in Loehfelm's home borough of Staten Island. He grew up in Eltingville, and is a graduate of Monsignor Farrell High School. He currently lives in New Orleans' Garden District with his wife, A.C. Lambeth, a writer and yoga instructor, and their two dogs.

Glenville Lovell has published four novels: Fire in the Canes, Song of Night, Too Beautiful to Die, and Love and Death in Brooklyn. His stories have appeared in Conjunctions, Shades of Black, Wanderlust: Erotic Travel Tales, and Hardboiled Brooklyn. For more information, visit www.glenvillelovell.com

John Lutz has long enjoyed setting suspense novels in his favorite city, New York, one of which was made into the film Single White Female. His latest book is Fear the Night, set in . . . New York.

Lou Manfredo was born and raised in Brooklyn. He is a former New York City public school teacher and legal investigator. The father of one daughter, Nicole, he currently lives in New Jersey with his wife, Joanne, and their long-haired dachshund. Mr. Manfredo recently completed his first novel.

Adam Mansbach, a resident of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, currently on sabbatical in Berkeley, California, is the author of two novels, Shackling Water and the forthcoming Angry Black White Boy, and the poetry collection genius b-boy cynics getting weeded in the garden of delights. The former editor of the hip hop journal Elementary, he serves as an Artistic Consultant to Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies and is a teacher for Youth Speaks.

Liz Martínez has lived in Woodside, Queens, for the past fifteen years. She is currently collaborating on a mystery anthology with fellow award-winning Mexican-American writer Sarah Cortez. "Lights Out for Frankie" was inspired by an organized retail crime case solved by legendary police detectives Eric Hernando and Sergeant Louie Torres of the Holmdel, New Jersey police department

Tim McLoughlin was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he still resides. His debut novel, Heart of the Old Country (Akashic, 2001), was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program and has been optioned for a film. It was also published last year in Great Britain and in Italy, where it won the 2003 Premio Penne award. He is completing his second novel.

Maan Meyers (Annette and Martin Meyers) have written six books and multiple short stories in the Dutchman series of historical mysteries set in New York in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

Martin Meyers grew up on Madison Street, a couple of blocks from the East River where the Manhattan Bridge hovers—the Lower East Side then, Chinatown now. He currently lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, author Annette Meyers. In 1975, when he was still an actor, he wrote the first book in his Patrick Hardy P.I. series, Kiss and Kill.

Ellen Miller is the author of the critically acclaimed best-seller Like Being Killed. Her fiction and essays have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, most recently Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge. She has taught creative writing at New York University, the New School, and the women's unit of a federal prison. She lives in New York City and is at work on her second novel.

Thomas Morrissey is an army brat who grew up in exotic locations like Okinawa, Heidelberg, and Staten Island. He began writing when, as a child, he found great pleasure playing with his mother's Sears portable typewriter. His first novel, Faustus Resurrectus, is on the way.

Arthur Nersesian is the author of six novels, including Suicide Casanova, Chinese Takeout, Unlubricated, and the cult classic best seller The Fuck-Up. The former managing editor of the Portable Lower East Side, he currently lives in New York City.

Linda Nieves-Powell was selected as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics by Hispanic Business magazine. She is the author of the novel Free Style, and the writer and director of the award-winning plays Yo Soy Latina! and Jose Can Speak, and is the creator, cowriter, director, and producer of the comedic web series Happy Cancer Chick. She moved to Staten Island when she was thirteen, and still lives there today.

Chris Niles was born in New Zealand. In the last fifteen years she has lived in Australia, England, and Hungary. She now lives in Brooklyn and does not intend to move for a very long time. She is also the author of Hell's Kitchen (Akashic, 2001), as well as a series of crime mysteries featuring radio reporter Sam Ridley: Spike It, Run Time, and Crossing Live.

Sidney Offit is a novelist, author of books for young readers, teacher, member of the board of the PEN American Center, president of the Authors Guild Foundation, and curator of the George Polk Journalism Awards that originate from Long Island University's Brooklyn center. During the mid-fifties he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and that other team from New York for Baseball Magazine. His most recent book is Memoir of the Bookie's Son.

Michael Penncavage won a 2008 Derringer Award for his story "The Cost of Doing Business." He has been an associate editor for Space and Time magazine, as well as editor of the horror/suspense anthology Tales from a Darker State. He has been published in approximately eighty magazines and anthologies, and is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers of America, and the Garden State Horror Writers.

Patrick W. Picciarelli, a former lieutenant with the NYPD, is the author of Mala Femina: A Woman's Life as the Daughter of a Don, among other crime-related books. His affection for the Bronx goes way back, and he fondly recalls his uncles telling him that there is no Mafia as they sipped red wine in Dominic's on Arthur Avenue, smoked Italian stinkers, and lamented the passing of Fat Tony Boombatz, who accidentally suffocated in the trunk of a Cadillac.

Neal Pollack is the author of three books: the cult classic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Beneath the Axis of Evil, and the rock 'n' roll novel Never Mind the Pollacks. A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, GQ, and many other magazines, Pollack lives in Austin, Texas.

Abraham Rodriguez Jr. was born and raised in the South Bronx. His first book, The Boy without a Flag, was a 1993 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His novel Spidertown won a 1995 American Book Award and was optioned by Columbia Pictures. His latest novel, The Buddha Book, was published by Picador in 2001. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany, where he is immersed in the local music scene.

S.J. Rozan is the author of thirteen novels and three dozen short stories. She has won Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards, and was a recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award. She has served on the boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and as president of Private Eye Writers of America. Her latest book is Ghost Hero. Rozan set a large portion of her book Absent Friends on Staten Island.

Justin Scott was born on West 76th Street between Riverside and West End, grew up in a small town, and came back to Manhattan to write mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional short story in Midtown, the Upper West Side, the Village, and Chelsea. Twice nominated for Edgar Awards, his New York stories include Many Happy Returns, Treasure for Treasure, Normandie Triangle, and Rampage.

Stephen Solomita is the author of sixteen novels. He was born and raised in Bayside, Queens, not far from College Point, the setting for "Crazy Jill Saves the Slinky."

Patricia Smith is the author of six acclaimed poetry volumes, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah; Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. She is a professor at the College of Staten Island and serves on the faculties of the Stonecoast and Sierra Nevada College low-residency MFA programs.

C.J. Sullivan grew up in the Bronx and is currently a reporter for the New York Post. Along with writing, the loves of his life are his two children, Luisa Marie and Olivia Kathleen Sullivan.

Kim Sykes is an actress and writer who lives in New York City. She frequently works at Silvercup Studios.

Steven Torres was born and raised in the Bronx. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Hunter College, and the City University of New York Graduate Center, he is also the author of the Precinct Puerto Rico series of novels for St. Martin's Press. The Concrete Maze is his fifth novel and the first he has set in New York City. For more information, visit www.steventorres.com.

Joseph Wallace was born in Brooklyn, but his favorite place in New York City was the Bronx Zoo, especially on cold winter days when the grounds were deserted, the animals were alert and hungry, and something unexpected always seemed about to happen. He is the author of many nonfiction books and magazine articles (including several about the zoo), and is a contributor to the crime anthologies Hard-Boiled Brooklyn and Baltimore Noir.

K.j.a. Wishnia's first novel featuring Ecuadorian-American P.I. Filomena Buscarsela, 23 Shades of Black, was a finalist for both Edgar and Anthony awards, and was followed by four other novels, including Soft Money and Red House. He lived in Ecuador for several years, and taught English at Queens College, CUNY. Wishnia gives special thanks to his students at Suffolk Community College, especially Victor Nieves, for providing him with the authentic ghetto phraseology.

Xu Xi is the author of six books, including the novel The Unwalled City and Overleaf Hong Kong (stories and essays), and has edited two anthologies of Hong Kong literature. She teaches at Vermont College's MFA program, and lives and writes primarily between Manhattan, upstate New York, Hong Kong, and the South Island of New Zealand.

Shay Youngblood is the author of the novels Black Girl in Paris and Soul Kiss and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Pushcart Prize, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Sustained Achievement Award, and a 2011/2012 Japan-US Friendship Commission Fellowship. Shay lived in Staten Island from 1995 to 2002.

About the Akashic Noir Series

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The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distinct location in the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Each book is available on our website, as e-books from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, and information on how to purchase the paperback editions of all titles in the series at a group discount (currently 56 titles) please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.

ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES

BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN

BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA

BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE

BOSTON NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON

BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN

BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN

BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN

BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK

CAPE COD NOIR, edited by DAVID L. ULIN

CHICAGO NOIR, edited by NEAL POLLACK

COPENHAGEN NOIR (DENMARK), edited by BO TAO MICHAËLIS

D.C. NOIR, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS

D.C. NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS

DELHI NOIR (INDIA), edited by HIRSH SAWHNEY

DETROIT NOIR, edited by E.J. OLSEN & JOHN C. HOCKING

DUBLIN NOIR (IRELAND), edited by KEN BRUEN

HAITI NOIR, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT

HAVANA NOIR (CUBA), edited by ACHY OBEJAS

INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR, edited by SARAH CORTEZ & LIZ MARTÍNEZ

ISTANBUL NOIR (TURKEY), edited by MUSTAFA ZIYALAN & AMY SPANGLER

KANSAS CITY NOIR, edited by STEVE PAUL

KINGSTON NOIR (JAMAICA), edited by COLIN CHANNER

LAS VEGAS NOIR, edited by JARRET KEENE & TODD JAMES PIERCE

LONDON NOIR (ENGLAND), edited by CATHI UNSWORTH

LONE STAR NOIR, edited by BOBY BYRD & JOHNNY BYRD

LONG ISLAND NOIR, edited by KAYLIE JONES

LOS ANGELES NOIR, edited by DENISE HAMILTON

LOS ANGELES NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENISE HAMILTON

MANHATTAN NOIR, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK

MANHATTAN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK

MEXICO CITY NOIR (MEXICO), edited by PACO I. TAIBO II

MIAMI NOIR, edited by LES STANDIFORD

MOSCOW NOIR (RUSSIA), edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN

MUMBAI NOIR (INDIA), edited by ALTAF TYREWALA

NEW JERSEY NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES

NEW ORLEANS NOIR, edited by JULIE SMITH

ORANGE COUNTY NOIR, edited by GARY PHILLIPS

PARIS NOIR (FRANCE), edited by AURéLIEN MASSON

PHILADELPHIA NOIR, edited by CARLIN ROMANO

PHOENIX NOIR, edited by PATRICK MILLIKIN

PITTSBURGH NOIR, edited by KATHLEEN GEORGE

PORTLAND NOIR, edited by KEVIN SAMPSELL

QUEENS NOIR, edited by ROBERT KNIGHTLY

RICHMOND NOIR, edited by ANDREW BLOSSOM, BRIAN CASTLEBERRY & TOM DE HAVEN

ROME NOIR (ITALY), edited by CHIARA STANGALINO & MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI

SAN DIEGO NOIR, edited by MARYELIZABETH HART

SAN FRANCISCO NOIR, edited by PETER MARAVELIS

SAN FRANCISCO NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by PETER MARAVELIS

SEATTLE NOIR, edited by CURT COLBERT

ST. PETERSBURG NOIR, edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN

TORONTO NOIR (CANADA), edited by JANINE ARMIN & NATHANIEL G. MORE

TRINIDAD NOIR (TRINIDAD & TOBAGO), edited by LISA ALEN-AGOSTINI & JEANNE MASON

TWIN CITIES NOIR, edited by JULIE SCHAPER & STEVEN HORWITZ

VENICE NOIR (ITALY), edited by MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI

WALL STREET NOIR, edited by PETER SPIEGELMAN

FORTHCOMING

BEIRUT NOIR (LEBANON), edited by IMAN HUMAYDAN

BOGOTÁ NOIR (COLOMBIA), edited by ANDREA MONTEJO

BUFFALO NOIR, edited by BRIGID HUGHES & ED PARK

DALLAS NOIR, edited by DAVID HALE SMITH

HELSINKI NOIR, (FINLAND) edited by JAMES THOMPSON

JERUSALEM NOIR, edited by DROR MISHANI

LAGOS NOIR (NIGERIA), edited by CHRIS ABANI

MANILA NOIR (PHILIPPINES), edited by JESSICA HAGEDORN

PRISON NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES

SEOUL NOIR (KOREA), edited by BS PUBLISHING CO.

SINGAPORE NOIR, edited by CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN

TEL AVIV NOIR (ISRAEL), edited by ETGAR KERET & ASSAF GAVRON

About Akashic Books

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Akashic Books is an award-winning independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction by authors who are either ignored by the mainstream, or who have no interest in working within the ever-consolidating ranks of the major corporate publishers. Akashic Books hosts additional imprints, including the Akashic Noir Series, the Akashic Drug Chronicles Series, the Akashic Urban Surreal Series, Punk Planet Books, Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series, Open Lens, Chris Abani's Black Goat Poetry Series, and AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.

Our books are available from our website and at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere.

"As many in publishing struggle to find ways to improve on an increasingly outdated business model, independents such as Akashic—which are more nimble and less risk-averse than major publishing houses—are innovators to watch."

—Los Angeles Times

"It's heartening that even as the dinosaurs of publishing are lurching toward extinction, nimble independent publishers like Akashic are producing high-quality, innovative content."

—Portland Mercury

"Akashic fits in that very slight category of publishers, growing slimmer every day, whose colophon is a recommendation on its own."

—Toronto Star

"Akashic is one of the most impressive of the newer small presses, in part because of editing and production values that rival and perhaps surpass the big houses. We're grateful to them . . ."

—Denver Post

"Akashic serves as a prime example of the diversity that marks the small press movement."

—Mystery Scene

"What's great about Akashic is its sense of adventure and its smart eclecticism . . . Anything carrying the logo comes with the guarantee that it's worth checking out." —Hartford Courant

"An excellent small press."

—In These Times

"[Akashic] fully conveys the charms and possibilities of small press publishing . . . placing a priority on the quality of the books, rather than the possible marketing opportunities they offer."

—Poets & Writers

"Akashic is the brainchild of the charismatic Johnny Temple, the bassist of the rock group Girls Against Boys. Temple set up Akashic to give attention to literary works that are ignored, as well as to prove that publishers don't have to exploit their writers."

—IUniverse.com