Manhattan Nocturne (21 page)
Read Manhattan Nocturne Online
Authors: Colin Harrison
“I've got another idea,” said Mrs. Wood, punching up the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles records. From these she could determine that Norma Segal was sixty-eight years old and her husband was eighty. They drove a seven-year-old Mercury. “Old Jewish couple in Queens with a law practice and a run-down apartment building in Manhattan gets sued by a tricky Korean businessman,” she mused.
I started to understand. “Maybe a slip and fall, car accident, anything.”
“The old couple has no other major assets,” she postulated. “They agree to give the apartment building to the Korean man as settlement. It's a legal sale but way below market. They get some cash, Korean gets maybe a great deal.”
“Except that the building was demolished not long after the date of sale,” I pointed out.
“Well, the price reflects that. It's so low. The Korean wanted the land, not the liability of an old apartment building.” She gave me a coy little smile.
“I'd hate to know what you could find out about
me
,” I said.
me
,” I said.
“You? You're
easy.”
easy.”
“I won't touch that.”
“That's
right
you won't.”
right
you won't.”
I remembered that I needed to get uptown to the Malaysian
bank, and was about to go when I had an idea. “Can you look up one more thing?” I asked.
bank, and was about to go when I had an idea. “Can you look up one more thing?” I asked.
“Haven't you given me enough trouble?”
“How can I sweeten the deal? A sandwich?”
“I want one of those ham and egg things they got downstairs and
two
coffees. And the latest issue of
The Economist.”
two
coffees. And the latest issue of
The Economist.”
“You're a tough lady, Mrs. Wood. Maybe someday you'll tell me your first name.”
“Ain't no reason you need to know that, now go get me my stuff!”
Before doing so I gave her Caroline's name and address on East Sixty-sixth Street, then went down to the lobby to get her food. Constantine, the security guard, saw me there and handed me an envelope.
“A guy left this for you.”
“What is it?”
“I don't know.”
“Sure it's not twelve million dollars?”
Constantine smiled. “All I did was keep buying tickets.”
I read the hand-lettered note going back up in the elevator:
Dear Mr. Wren:
If you would like some more information about Richard Lancaster, the man who killed Iris Pell, please appear at the northwest corner of 86th and Broadway sometime in the next three hours. There you will see a rather large man named Ernesto who will be wearing a Yankees cap. Please identify yourself and tell him you are looking for Ralph.
My information about Lancaster is good.
Sincerely,
Ralph
Ralph
I sincerely didn't want to go uptown and meet a rather large man named Ernesto. Who were they kidding? Besides, Lancaster was dead, old news.
“Caroline Crowley doesn't have a valid New York State driver's license,” announced Mrs. Wood when I returned,
“but she does have a California one, which expires in a few months. She has lived in the apartment for two years. Its purchase price was two point three million, with a mortgage of two million. Taxes on it are nineteen thousand. It's owned by a trust established in the name of one Simon Crowley, who, as I remember, is a deceased personage from the film industry.” Mrs. Wood gave me a wicked little smile. “She is not a registered voter. She owns no real estate in the area. She is not currently suing or being sued. She has one outstanding violation.”
“but she does have a California one, which expires in a few months. She has lived in the apartment for two years. Its purchase price was two point three million, with a mortgage of two million. Taxes on it are nineteen thousand. It's owned by a trust established in the name of one Simon Crowley, who, as I remember, is a deceased personage from the film industry.” Mrs. Wood gave me a wicked little smile. “She is not a registered voter. She owns no real estate in the area. She is not currently suing or being sued. She has one outstanding violation.”
“What's that?”
“She's got an old ticket for smoking in the subway.”
“You've got
that
in there?” I said.
that
in there?” I said.
Mrs. Wood nodded, slyly. “She's one of those rich gals who rides the subway.”
“What's that tell you?”
Mrs. Wood cackled. “She's worried about the money.”
Â
Â
It was time for me to get uptown to the Malaysian bank to look at the rest of the videotapes, but as I lingered in the newspaper's lobby, rereading the strange note from “Ralph,” I began to wonder if perhaps I shouldn't squeeze in a visit to him. I was particularly tantalized by the phrase “my information is good.” It could be a columnâyou never know. And if it was a bust, I'd go straight to the bank. I would not mention this letter from Ralph, nor what followed that afternoon, but both eventually confirmed the truth of the last words I ever heard from an old drunken reporter I knew when I was just breaking in. A tall fellow with a taste for good suits, his name was Kendal Harpe and by 1982 he was no longer good for anything except draining glass upon glass of scotch. But in his ruin I found something attractive, and he saw that before he was carried out of the newsroom for good he would have to acknowledge me. “All right, I got two things to tell you, kid,” he abruptly announced one day when he had returned from lunch, swaying a bit. “One, when you
get stuck, just lay brick. Got that?” He peered into my eyes to see if I was paying attention. “Two, it's not just a lot of little stories. Nope, it's all one big story. Remember that.” Then he lurched out of my life forever.
get stuck, just lay brick. Got that?” He peered into my eyes to see if I was paying attention. “Two, it's not just a lot of little stories. Nope, it's all one big story. Remember that.” Then he lurched out of my life forever.
Thirty minutes later I was standing at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Broadway next to the subway steps and looking for a guy in a Yankees cap. And there he was, a genuinely immense man, perhaps six foot four, at least two hundred and seventy pounds, much of it bulked in his shoulders and chest, standing with his arms at his sides, as if in a trance. I crossed the street warily, watching him, and stepped up on the curb.
“I'm looking for Ralph.”
He considered me. I could not tell what race he wasâhis hair was loosely curled and a dirty blond, his eyes were green, his skin dark.
“I got this note,” I told him, pulling it out of my pocket. “It says to come here and meet a guy named Ernesto with a Yankees cap.”
He nodded and started to walk away. I was to follow, I saw. I caught up with him and we proceeded west, through Riverside Park, toward the West Side Highway, where the traffic, mostly taxis, was racing along at seventy miles an hour. If we walked any farther, we would be killed. Ernesto hopped over a wall. I looked down; there he stood, ten feet below. He beckoned. I felt scared and stupid. He beckoned again. I jumped, and learned just how old my knees were. But then I was on my feet, and there was a certain anthropological richness to the location; here were the leavings of a stressed and mobile population: cans and bottles, umbrellas, mattresses, tires, oil cans, clothing, packaging of every form and era, junked applicances. The vegetation had penetrated and enveloped much of this detritus but as a consequence was stunted, scarred, and contorted, as if nature herself had been genetically damaged in its struggle against human personality and the rudeness of the urban habitat. Ernesto moved nimbly through this microlandscape. He seemed to be a creature without doubt, suited to stalk and scurry through darkness and filth. I followed him through a broken stone wall beneath the
highway, the opening of which was choked with leggy ailanthus saplings reaching toward the sunlight. A few feet inside, the brush gave way to a beaten dirt path that led to another wall, this one not broken. Ernesto looked back to see that I was behind him, and then plunged onward. How foolhardy was I? I followed Ernesto along the wall, hurrying a bit to stay up with him, breathing a bit heavily now but still reading the graffiti.
highway, the opening of which was choked with leggy ailanthus saplings reaching toward the sunlight. A few feet inside, the brush gave way to a beaten dirt path that led to another wall, this one not broken. Ernesto looked back to see that I was behind him, and then plunged onward. How foolhardy was I? I followed Ernesto along the wall, hurrying a bit to stay up with him, breathing a bit heavily now but still reading the graffiti.
PUSSY IS SWEET
BUT SO IS HONEY
SO BEAT YOUR MEAT
AND SAVE SOME MONEY
BUT SO IS HONEY
SO BEAT YOUR MEAT
AND SAVE SOME MONEY
Â
YOU LIKE JAZZ
I LIKE SWING
TAKE IT IN YOUR ASS
& DONT SAY A THING
I LIKE SWING
TAKE IT IN YOUR ASS
& DONT SAY A THING
Â
YOU WANT BRIGHTNESS
I WANT THE CAVE
STAY DOWN HERE
AND BE MY SLAVE
I WANT THE CAVE
STAY DOWN HERE
AND BE MY SLAVE
An emaciated waif of about fourteen passed us in the opposite direction, carrying garbage bags and empty plastic milk cartons. He was gray. Something in his mannerâhis stooped frame and somnambulant shuffleâsuggested repetitive, exhausting labor. The wall continued another forty yards. Then Ernesto darted through a narrow crevice. I followed himâinto darkness. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that we were standing in an immense, vaulted space, about one hundred feet high and stretching dimly into the distance, perhaps even as far as a mile. It was an old railway tunnel, and thirty feet above the dirt floor, where tracks once ran, hung rusted transformer platforms, spaced every hundred feet or so. The iron gridwork was stuffed with lumber and sheeting and what looked to be bundles of clothing, rope, and
plastic bottles of water. Individually these assemblages expressed the uniqueness of their creators, but collectively they seemed the work of an immense and clever species of bird. From there my eye moved down the walls to shanties built against them. I saw shades of movement here and there and far in the distance, and the swinging arc of a flashlight and the flickering brightness of what looked to be a fire. I hurried after Ernesto down the middle of the space; it functioned as a main street, with rubble-marked paths branching off from it. Beneath the nests were circles of rubbish, denoting, I inferred, the ground space belonging to the nest above. It was a society of sorts.
plastic bottles of water. Individually these assemblages expressed the uniqueness of their creators, but collectively they seemed the work of an immense and clever species of bird. From there my eye moved down the walls to shanties built against them. I saw shades of movement here and there and far in the distance, and the swinging arc of a flashlight and the flickering brightness of what looked to be a fire. I hurried after Ernesto down the middle of the space; it functioned as a main street, with rubble-marked paths branching off from it. Beneath the nests were circles of rubbish, denoting, I inferred, the ground space belonging to the nest above. It was a society of sorts.
“Here,” Ernesto announced thickly, and I followed him into the gloom. We passed a number of low shanties, many of them open to view. Bundled humans slept inside, men and women. In others I could see the occupant sweeping or tidying up, tying plastic bags shut, perhaps sitting on a chair and hammering something. Farther along we passed two men and a woman standing next to a fire. The woman, about fifty, tended a pot placed on the fire, lifting it with a long stick. The flames of the fire whipped upward, as if in a gale, and this baffled me until I saw that the fire was set on the iron grating of an air vent.
“Where does the smoke go?” I asked Ernesto.
“Cracks,” he said, pointing to the ceiling.
We continued on until we reached a circle of rubbish that lay directly below another nest-house built atop a transformer platform.
“Ralph!” hollered Ernesto.
An aged, bearded face appeared over the edge, and almost immediately a bundle of rope appeared in the air. As it tumbled downward it resolved itself into a hand-knotted ladder, quite expertly made. Ernesto dragged a long piece of iron from the pile of junk and laid it carefully over the ends of the ladder. Then he clambered up like a monkey, as much pulling with his arms as pushing with his feet. Near the top he looked back.
“Mister, come up!”
I have stood in any number of foreboding places, including a piss-scented holding cell in Rikers Island and a pauper's grave in Potter's Field, but never had I ascended, underground, to such a dwelling. I grasped the ladder, gave it an experimental shake, then started to climb. It was not easy, and I am not particularly fond of heights, so I kept looking up, where I could see Ernesto watching me. When I reached the top, I climbed onto a makeshift platform that fronted a tepee made of lumber and heavy-duty worksite sheeting stolen, most likely, from MTA service crews. Ernesto then climbed down the ladder, leaving me.
“Welcome, Mr. Wren,” came a voice from inside the tepee.
I crawled inside, past stacks of books. There, sitting in a reading chair, was a white-haired man of about fifty, perhaps older.
“My name is Ralph Benson,” he said to me.
I shook his hand, which was surprisingly firm.
“Thank you for coming so far,” he said, “in all senses of the word.”
“Quite a journey.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Everybody who's down here arrived byâhmm, as you sayâquite a journey.”
I did not respond. Better, I thought, to let him speak.
“I sent the note to you because I have read your column for, hmm, several years. I read about the Pell girl. I cannot help but think about her parents ⦠she died a stupid, useless death, Mr. Wren, because her lover was a coward, hmm. I had a daughter once, Mr. Wren, and I loved herâI loved her, hmmâI will not go into what happened ⦠just as senseless ⦠I was once aâbirthday parties, and, hmm ⦠she was only nineteen when they found her ⦠All ruin after that, ruin and more ruin. My darling wife ⦠died of heartbreak, to use Saul Bellow's phrase, and ⦠and it was a spiral, Mr. Wren, I cannot ⦠hmmm, a spiral ⦠ruin. Society is too chaotic for me, Mr. Wren ⦠I was once, no clue of it now, hmm, I was once a professor of the classics, Mr. Wren, at Columbia University, remarkable even to me now, I lived north of the city, Mr. Wren ⦠New Rochelle, Cape Cod house on half an
acre, pear tree in the backyard ⦠so beautiful, hmm, fertilize in the spring and fall. I lived in theâlawnmowers and shopping malls, fruits of capitalism ⦠not safe, nowhere is, as I know from reading the papers, and when I read of that coward,
that craven, shit-sucking, piss-drinking, pigeon-fucking coward whom I could actually cut up into a thousand pieces and eat raw like a fine delicacy, oysters perhaps, his bones cooked to paste that I might spread on crackers
â” He stopped and looked surprised, as if someone nearby had whispered into his ear. “Hmmm. Not that man, not the man who ⦠our ⦠but that man who killed ⦠with the wedding dress, Iris Pell, hmm, funny name, rhymes with âbell,' like wedding
bell,
hmm, or death
knell,
and then he did not have the common decency to complete his suicide efficiently, costing the taxpayers his hospital bill ⦠anyway, I requested your kind presence here today to tell you that young Ernesto wanders about the city more widely than many of the people who live down here. Most of the folk down here are glad to get away from the world above us, which represents, hmmm, failure, sadness, death, violence, drugs ⦠and such. What communication they have outside is for the purposes of sustenance. Gathering food and water and such. Cave people, yes, hmm. History is always repeating itself, that is the great ignored fact of our civilization, yes. China will laugh at us in a hundred years. Anyway, Ernesto lives down here because he has found people who love him. My new wifeâhmm, I call her my wife, we have been together five years now, my wife and Iâshe's out, cooking our meal, I thinkâmy wife and I care for him. I will not recount his family history, but suffice it to say, Mr. Wren, that the only thing my wife and I can give him, love, is the only thing he requires. So long as he has some affection from one or two people,
certain
affection, he is content to live as he does. An absence of affection destroys the soul. As you can see, he has a slow mind. A good heart, but a slow mind. My point is that he is happy to move about the city. He is my eyes and ears above ground, and at the end of the day he brings me all the day's papers, discarded of course. That's how I read your column.
I also read Jimmy Breslin, Russell Baker, that man Safire, now Maureen Dowd, who, I have to say, really knowsâ” He blinked spasmatically for a few seconds and looked at me. “Where was I?” he asked.
acre, pear tree in the backyard ⦠so beautiful, hmm, fertilize in the spring and fall. I lived in theâlawnmowers and shopping malls, fruits of capitalism ⦠not safe, nowhere is, as I know from reading the papers, and when I read of that coward,
that craven, shit-sucking, piss-drinking, pigeon-fucking coward whom I could actually cut up into a thousand pieces and eat raw like a fine delicacy, oysters perhaps, his bones cooked to paste that I might spread on crackers
â” He stopped and looked surprised, as if someone nearby had whispered into his ear. “Hmmm. Not that man, not the man who ⦠our ⦠but that man who killed ⦠with the wedding dress, Iris Pell, hmm, funny name, rhymes with âbell,' like wedding
bell,
hmm, or death
knell,
and then he did not have the common decency to complete his suicide efficiently, costing the taxpayers his hospital bill ⦠anyway, I requested your kind presence here today to tell you that young Ernesto wanders about the city more widely than many of the people who live down here. Most of the folk down here are glad to get away from the world above us, which represents, hmmm, failure, sadness, death, violence, drugs ⦠and such. What communication they have outside is for the purposes of sustenance. Gathering food and water and such. Cave people, yes, hmm. History is always repeating itself, that is the great ignored fact of our civilization, yes. China will laugh at us in a hundred years. Anyway, Ernesto lives down here because he has found people who love him. My new wifeâhmm, I call her my wife, we have been together five years now, my wife and Iâshe's out, cooking our meal, I thinkâmy wife and I care for him. I will not recount his family history, but suffice it to say, Mr. Wren, that the only thing my wife and I can give him, love, is the only thing he requires. So long as he has some affection from one or two people,
certain
affection, he is content to live as he does. An absence of affection destroys the soul. As you can see, he has a slow mind. A good heart, but a slow mind. My point is that he is happy to move about the city. He is my eyes and ears above ground, and at the end of the day he brings me all the day's papers, discarded of course. That's how I read your column.
I also read Jimmy Breslin, Russell Baker, that man Safire, now Maureen Dowd, who, I have to say, really knowsâ” He blinked spasmatically for a few seconds and looked at me. “Where was I?” he asked.
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