Agnes Among the Gargoyles (2 page)

   "Stay out of my drawers, love."

It is a bitterly cold afternoon, but Agnes is just barely aware of the weather's effects, the stiffness in her face and ache in her fillings.

   When Ronald Wegeman acquired the air rights to Grand Central Station, Agnes thought she was the only one in the world who cared that he planned to take the railroad terminal, which might be the most glorious structure in Manhattan, and reduce it to a plinth. Would he actually go through with it? Would he desecrate the Beaux-Arts masterpiece?

   Of course he would. One Wegeman Plaza at Grand Central Station is a granite-sheathed column of unvarying width capped by a golden dome. It rises inappropriately from the top of the railroad terminal like a thirty-story middle finger.

  Agnes hurries toward the dedication ceremonies. She reaches the edge of the crowd of spectators and stops dead.

   Another piece of New York is gone.

   The Hotel Anacosta was a gorgeous little welfare hotel. With its balconies, dormers, and piled-up roofs, it looked like a dollhouse-sized version of the Plaza.

   Agnes peers through a knothole in the fence. She is drawn to such places the way a tongue is drawn to the place where a tooth has been pulled. Through the hole she sees a TV truck parked beside a scaffold. Cameras perch on the scaffold like metal vultures. The cameras point at the platform where the dedication ceremonies will take place. The cameras are from WEGE, Wegeman's cable network.

   Agnes rages. Wegeman has torn down the Anacosta for a good camera angle!

   Being small, and a woman, and having the fearsome look of someone on urgent business, Agnes has no difficulty maneuvering to the front of the crowd. She stands directly in front of the platform, which is festooned with flags and bunting. The Wegeman Development Corporation has its own flag. The field is navy blue; the device, in white, is a Hirschfeldian caricature of the Great Man himself.

   Agnes watches, simmering.

   One freezing politico after another struggles from his folding chair and clutches the rostrum. After the borough president and the junior senator and the governor comes Clark Ho, the Hawaiian architect who has designed nearly all of Wegeman's atrocities. Epicene and bullet headed, Clark Ho wears black circular eyeglasses in the style of Le Corbusier.

   Clark Ho begins with a joke. "I understand there are some parts of New York where the reception is clear and cable television isn't needed and the inhabitants are denied the pleasures of watching WEGE. Ron tells me that he won't rest until he has buildings interfering with the microwaves in every part of the city!"

   This is no joke.

   Ho grins. "I say, Weege, go for it!"

   Where is Wegeman, anyway? Agnes doesn't see him anywhere. It would be typical of the arrogant prick to be too busy to attend the opening ceremonies for what would be anyone else's crowning achievement.

   Where, for that matter, is the Telamones Society? At the last meeting Agnes attended, everyone was fired up to stage a big anti-Wegeman demonstration. So many of the members of the society look down their wealthy noses at Agnes, but only she is enough of a good soldier to show up when it counts.

   The Telamones Society is a private watchdog organization devoted to the preservation of New York City's historic architecture. The society sponsors lectures and classes and walking tours. It sends a representative to hearings of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Telamones members picket the construction of new high-rises, and mount petitions against the demolition of structures that have not attained landmark status.

   The society's name derives from classical Greek architecture. Telamones are representations of the human figure used instead of pillars for support. Male figures are called atlantes; female, caryatids. You see quite a few atlantes and caryatids at the society's Halloween bash.

  The Telamones Society is made up of educated, reasonable people. They picket and protest and post marvelously written letters of complaint and Ronald Wegeman continues to run roughshod over the city. Agnes has come to believe that the biggest problem with the Telamones Society is that it lacks a violent wing.

   There is a pistol in Agnes's purse.

   She bought it last year in Kentucky. It was not a spur-of-the-moment purchase, a souvenir of bluegrass country. Agnes chose Kentucky for her vacation because she knew it would be reasonably easy to buy a handgun there. She went alone, telling no one where she was going. When she returned, she said that she had been in Frankfurt, Glasgow and Versailles, which was true. The bus from Lexington stopped in all three places.

   She paid $175 for a 1979 .38 Smith Johnson Police Special—a "Gandalf," the gun of choice in the 1960s for the Weather Underground.

   The dedication ceremonies drag on in the cold. The mayor has just begun his remarks when a limousine parts the crowd and pulls up next to the platform. Wegeman and two of his goons get out. The Great Man ascends the platform stairs. He shakes hands all around, then saunters over to the mayor, who shrinks a bit in Wegeman's presence.

   Wegeman takes over the mayor's microphone. "I think we've heard enough crap," he says, and the crowd hoots in agreement. "Let's get this fucking show on the road. I'm freezing my nuts off."

   The mayor wrinkles his puffy eyes and manages a smile. Of course, heh, heh, he and Weege are always putting each other on this way. He shakes a playful finger at the Great Man. "I'll get you for this, Ron."

   "Fuck you."

   Agnes steels herself. She almost enjoys it when Wegeman makes the mayor eat shit. She reminds herself that boorishness in the public arena can be attractive simply because it seems a genuine human response and not the creation of some press agent. But flatulence is just as genuine, and Agnes wouldn't like it if Wegeman farted into the p.a. system.

   Agnes has one hand in her bag. She fondles Gandalf. Wegeman's goons don't pay any attention to her.

   Wegeman holds up a model of the new building. He puts it to his crotch. "Yes, we did use my dick as the model for this," he says.

   The laughter is deafening.

   He is a truly ugly man, thinks Agnes, uglier even than the buildings he erects. He is pathologically dirty-mouthed; he says
fuck
in a way that wrenches from it every guttural, hocking nuance.

   The image of Wegeman and his breathtaking wife Madelaine arriving at some charity function or another appears on the evening news as inevitably as the weather map. With her French twist and high, noble forehead, Madelaine is one classy woman. Her husband is a man of the streets. He is physically repulsive. He has a moon face and splayed nose and jack o'lantern teeth. He wears his hair in an oily pompadour. A spit curl bobs against his forehead like a worm on a hook.

   "Let's get in out of the cold and do some serious drinking," says Wegeman. Agnes grips the gun in her bag. She waits for her moment. Wegeman turns away. He runs his hand through his greasy hair.

   Shots ring out.

   His bodyguards are down. Wegeman has been shot in the leg. The gun fires again. A shot hits him in the chest, driving him against the rostrum.

   Agnes can't believe it. The gunman is standing not ten feet from her. He is a lithe man of about 50. He wears a peacoat and an earring and severe rimless glasses. His gray hair is cut in a flattop.

   Only in New York, thinks Agnes bitterly. If you're not first in this town you're last.

   The man takes aim at the helpless Wegeman. He gets ready to fire the third shot, the one that will surely kill.

   Wegeman, bleeding from the chest, gives his assailant the finger.

   Taken aback, the gunman lowers his weapon for an instant, and Agnes acts instinctively to stop the carnage. She grabs the man from behind and immobilizes him with a blow to the solar plexus—a vicious version of the Heimlich Maneuver that she picked up in her Tae Kwon Do class. She flips him over her shoulder. He lands hard, but the pistol stays in his hand. The barrel is pointed right at Agnes. She freezes. The man looks at her. He sits up, puts the gun to his temple and fires, covering the approaching cops with blood and fluid and brain tissue.

   Cops and reporters and security people are everywhere. Wegeman points at Agnes and swoons. The cops grab Agnes's arms and hustle her away. She clutches her bag to her chest. The police shove her into the back of a squad car and get in themselves. Wedged between police officers, Agnes is shaking violently. The cop on her left slides his hat to the back of his head and sneers at her.

   "Why'd you do that, lady?" he asks her. 

   "That cocksucker evicted my mother."

Someone has decided that the way to shore up the New York City Police Department is to make the precinct houses look the way they did in the days when there wasn't so much crime. On the day Wegeman is shot, restoration of the 17
^th
Precinct house is nearing completion. The workmen are preparing to mount the twin green globes, each etched with the numeral 17, that will flank the entrance.

   Agnes is questioned in a small room beside a toilet. The cops trip over themselves making sure that she is comfortable. It seems to hurt them that she won't have a second glazed cruller. She is asked the same questions over and over. The assailant has not yet been identified. Did Agnes notice him prior to the shooting? Did he say anything to her before taking himself out of the picture?

   Agnes is relieved to find out that no one cares why she was at the ceremonies in the first place. No one wants to look in her bag. The Parallel Plot Theory hasn't occurred to anyone.

   The mayor and his entourage arrive.

  "I was just at the hospital," the mayor announces. "Weege is out of danger."

   He grips Agnes's hand. The mayor's hands are small and bloodless, like those tiny Latex monster hands kids wear on their key chains.

   "Agnes Travertine, it's a pleasure to meet you," says the mayor. "Crime would certainly cease to be a problem in our great city if more New Yorkers had what you have."

   "What's that?" Agnes asks.

   "Tell her, Chief."

   A look of horror crosses the face of Chief of Detectives Larry Codd. Finally he hazards a guess. "Knowledge of Oriental combat techniques?"

   "No, no!" barks the mayor. "I'm talking about a willingness to get involved."

   "Oh, that," says Chief Codd.

   "And good instincts," adds the mayor. "Chief, could you use her on the force?"

   "Sure, I guess. I mean, I could ease her way."

   "Oh, please consider it, Agnes," says the mayor. "I could guarantee you a badge in three months. We're always waiving requirements and test scores for one reason or another. For you, we'll waive everything."

   "No thanks," says Agnes. "I'll quit while I'm ahead."

   The mayor grows suddenly pensive. "Most people would have waited for the police to take care of things. You jumped right in."

   "And we're glad she did,." says the chief.

   "Yes," says the mayor, gnawing a fingertip. "It's a good thing she didn't wait for the police, isn't it?"

   Chief Codd is stung. "We can't be everywhere, sir."

   "Oh, I don't blame you, chief," says the mayor, clapping the chief on the back. "You're not in the business of deterrence."

   The chief is wounded. "We like to think we are."

   "Oh, of course you are," says the mayor warmly. "It's just that—oh, I go to crime scenes every day. I watch your people collecting evidence. I see them bagging and measuring and taking casts. They're like a bunch of hobbyists gone berserk. It all seems so hopeless."

   Chief Codd doesn't know what to say. "We do our best."

   The mayor punches his palm with his fist. "I want an addition to the penal code. I want a stiff anti-assassination statute. I want New York to have the harshest penalties in the country for offing celebrities."

   The sun sets. The print reporters and wire service people get in and out of their cars. They complain about being forced to wait outside the precinct. Arthur Tollivetti of the News climbs up on one of the scaffolds being used by the men sandblasting the building. He is hoping for a look inside. The cops force him down. A workman packing up to go home accuses Tollivetti of stealing a drill. Words are exchanged. There is some shoving. In the melee, one of the brand-new globes destined for the precinct entrance falls and shatters.

   The mayor, Chief Codd, Agnes, and Wegeman's corporation counsel, Bob Syker, appear outside for a press briefing.

   Chief Codd says that the gunman has not yet been identified.

   Syker says that Ron is doing well. He reads from a statement prepared by the doctors detailing the pathways of the bullets. He reports that the first thing the Great Man asked for upon regaining consciousness was a knish from Leo Fein's on Delancey.

   Agnes slips back into the precinct.

   Syker finishes and follows her in. "Are you all right?"

   "I don't want to talk to them," says Agnes.

   "Why not?" says Syker. "If you don't mind my asking."

   "I don't like the way people in the news look," she tells him. "When your boss reopened that skating rink in Midwood, I watched a bunch of ten-year-olds being interviewed at the hot chocolate stand. I watched those children and I thought, What a bunch of assholes."

   "It's not that bad," says Syker, but Agnes has him worried. "Now I'm sorry I talked to them."

   "Oh, it's all right for you," she says.