Manhattan Nocturne (28 page)
Read Manhattan Nocturne Online
Authors: Colin Harrison
“What else?”
“Body found on the Whitestone Expressway.”
“On or next to?”
“On.”
“Drug hit, in the car.”
“Right.”
Caroline came back in with two bottles of red wine and two glasses.
“What else?” I said to Bobby.
“You made page one for tomorrow.”
“The Lancaster diary thing.”
“Yes. How'd you get that?”
“A guy took it off Lancaster.” I picked up one of the wine bottles. The price tag was still on it. Fifty-nine ninety-five.
“Nice piece,” Bobby said.
“That it?”
“No, you got a call from Fitzgerald.”
“He's at home?”
“Yes.”
I called Hal.
“We're cool on your conditions,” he said.
“I have your word on that?”
“Yes.”
“No testifying, no identification of source, no giving the story away in the first twenty-four hours.”
“Yes.”
“I'll drop off the tape at your office tomorrow morning.”
“Fine,” Hal said. “Now what's the story?”
I told him. He was excited. “This is major, you realize.”
“Yes, Hal.”
“You're
sure
it's Fellows?”
sure
it's Fellows?”
“Tompkins Square Park. Rioters fighting the cops. Officer Fellows standing near curb. Tall black guy, about thirty years old. Firecrackers go off somewhere across the park. Fellows gets it from behind, perp runs away, crowd surges past body, cops see it, push crowd back. You know the rest.”
“I'll send a car over to get the tape now.”
“No.”
“It's no problem.”
“I'm not home.”
“Where are you?”
“Not anywhere in particular.”
“We can send a car there, too.”
There was a pause while he realized I wasn't going to tell him.
“Tomorrow morning, I promise.”
“Has to be the first thing.”
“You got it.”
“Thanks, Porter.”
Sewn in. I hung up as Caroline returned with a tray of hot soup and bread. A naked woman carrying a silver tray. “Developments in the story?” she asked.
“Big.”
She put the tray down. “Big is good.”
“Sometimes.”
“Oh, usually, I think.”
“A small problem is better than a big problem.”
“Well, I suppose.” She gave me a bowl. “Were you calling somebody?”
“Yes, the police.”
“Why?”
“Chitchat.”
“About me?”
“No.”
“Honestly?”
“No.”
“You won't turn me in for anything?”
“Nah.”
“For crimes, I mean.”
“Like what?”
“Making pornographic statements, maybe.”
“I didn't hear any.”
“You weren't listening.”
“I listen to everything you say to me. I remember every word.”
“Sure.”
I took a sip of soup. “Try me.”
“What were the very first words I said to you tonight?”
“You said, âI'm making you a little drink.'”
“How about the last words I said yesterday on the phone?”
“âGet your column done.'”
She shook her head. “That's kind of scary.”
“Not really.”
“Can you remember what my very first words to you were?”
That was a little harder. I recalled Hobbs's party, and how Caroline came across the room toward me, how she sat down. “âYour picture, Mr. Wren, is lousy.' That's what you said.”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
We ate the meal silently then put the dishes on the floor.
“This is the longest time we've been together,” she said.
“Yes.”
“It's nice.”
“When I was that young reporter looking at the baby in the trailer,” I said, “where were you?”
“I was probably about nine,” Caroline answered, finishing her glass of wine. “We lived in South Dakota. I guess that's where I'm from. My mother got pregnant when she was seventeen. With me. She was from Florida, and one winter she had sex with a boy from a rich family in Connecticut who was vacationing down there. He didn't want to get married, so she lived with her parents, and then a couple of years later
she met this guy Ron Gelbspan, who drove long-distance trucks. They moved to South Dakota and then they had my brother. I was born with my mother's maiden name, but then she changed it to my father's, which is Kelly, but she changed it again after she got married to Gelbspan, which I hated. I always thought of myself as Kelly. I never minded changing my name to Crowley. Sometimes I think if I get married to Charlie and take his name, then that will be five names, which is kind of fucking ridiculous. I guess after a while the last name doesn't really matter. Anyway, my mother worked for Visa. She was on the phone all day, talking to people about their charge accounts. We lived in a little house maybe ten miles outside of town. I got two letters from my real dad, the last one when I was about tenâthat was it. Ron was totally crazy, he wanted to own a long-distance trucking company. He was trying to build up a business, you know. He was really crazy. He had a shrine to Jackie Onassis in the house, this little corner where he had a lot of books and pictures of her. He had a lot of guns, too, especially shotguns. He used to hit us; one time we were riding in a motorboat and he threw my brother right out of the boat.” She refilled her glass and then mine. “Anyway, by the time I was maybe eight, I wanted a horse, badly. Some of the other girls were riding by then and I wanted a horse. That was a big thing with RonâI used to bug him for a horse, andâ” She paused. Her blue eyes blinked. “It didn't work out. In high school I had boyfriends and everything, but I started to ask my mother about my real fatherâwho he was, where he was, and all thatâand at first she wouldn't tell me, but I kept asking and she told me she thought he was living in Santa Monica, California. That sounded so beautiful to me. Santa Monica, California. I had let my hair grow really long, maybe halfway down my back, and Mom and my brother and sister and Ron all had brown hair, so I asked Mom what my daddy looked like, and she said that he had blond hair and blue eyes like me and had missed Vietnam because he had scoliosis of the spine, just enough, but maybe the doctor was paid to say that. His daddy was an Atlantic Richfield Oil Company executive here in New
Yorkâyou know, the name before ARCO. When I was eighteen, that would have made him about thirty-seven. Mom hadn't seen him in almost fifteen years. I asked her if she missed him, and she said she wondered what happened to him, and she told me how his mother was very, very beautiful, with the same forehead I had. My mother was so beaten down. She listened to credit problems all day long. I told her I wanted to go see my dad and did she have his phone number in Santa Monica. She said no, but his sister in New York might. So the summer after twelfth grade, I took the bus to Los Angeles.”
she met this guy Ron Gelbspan, who drove long-distance trucks. They moved to South Dakota and then they had my brother. I was born with my mother's maiden name, but then she changed it to my father's, which is Kelly, but she changed it again after she got married to Gelbspan, which I hated. I always thought of myself as Kelly. I never minded changing my name to Crowley. Sometimes I think if I get married to Charlie and take his name, then that will be five names, which is kind of fucking ridiculous. I guess after a while the last name doesn't really matter. Anyway, my mother worked for Visa. She was on the phone all day, talking to people about their charge accounts. We lived in a little house maybe ten miles outside of town. I got two letters from my real dad, the last one when I was about tenâthat was it. Ron was totally crazy, he wanted to own a long-distance trucking company. He was trying to build up a business, you know. He was really crazy. He had a shrine to Jackie Onassis in the house, this little corner where he had a lot of books and pictures of her. He had a lot of guns, too, especially shotguns. He used to hit us; one time we were riding in a motorboat and he threw my brother right out of the boat.” She refilled her glass and then mine. “Anyway, by the time I was maybe eight, I wanted a horse, badly. Some of the other girls were riding by then and I wanted a horse. That was a big thing with RonâI used to bug him for a horse, andâ” She paused. Her blue eyes blinked. “It didn't work out. In high school I had boyfriends and everything, but I started to ask my mother about my real fatherâwho he was, where he was, and all thatâand at first she wouldn't tell me, but I kept asking and she told me she thought he was living in Santa Monica, California. That sounded so beautiful to me. Santa Monica, California. I had let my hair grow really long, maybe halfway down my back, and Mom and my brother and sister and Ron all had brown hair, so I asked Mom what my daddy looked like, and she said that he had blond hair and blue eyes like me and had missed Vietnam because he had scoliosis of the spine, just enough, but maybe the doctor was paid to say that. His daddy was an Atlantic Richfield Oil Company executive here in New
Yorkâyou know, the name before ARCO. When I was eighteen, that would have made him about thirty-seven. Mom hadn't seen him in almost fifteen years. I asked her if she missed him, and she said she wondered what happened to him, and she told me how his mother was very, very beautiful, with the same forehead I had. My mother was so beaten down. She listened to credit problems all day long. I told her I wanted to go see my dad and did she have his phone number in Santa Monica. She said no, but his sister in New York might. So the summer after twelfth grade, I took the bus to Los Angeles.”
Two days later, Caroline said, after seeing and smelling the ocean for the first time, she was standing in a large parking lot in Venice Beach looking at a skinny man with long graying blond hair washing an ancient rust-eaten VW camper that appeared to be parked permanently. He did not recognize her as he saw her walk up and stand in front of the camper. Clearly he was watching her breasts move inside her shirt, her long legs. “Hey, what can I do for you?” He squared up his shoulders to present a more compelling version of himself, which was unlikely, given that his body was both soft and malnourished-looking, his legs and arms and chest skinny. She stopped fifteen feet away from him and asked what his name was. “All depends on who's asking,” he said.
“Suppose it's your daughter?” she said.
The man stiffened. “The fuck you talking about?”
She saw how the sun had damaged his face, burning and reburning the skin across his thinning hairline, his nose, and shoulders.
“I said, suppose it's your daughter?”
He winced. “I'd ask her what she wanted.”
“Maybe she wants to know you.”
“Then I'd say forget it.”
“Why?”
“'Cause I don't want to know her.”
They stood there under a brilliant, perfect sky. Nearby a stray dog nosed through garbage around a trash can. She looked back at her father. “You're my daddy. My name is
Caroline Kelly Gelbspan and your name is John J. Kelly III, and you grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and your father worked for the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company, and you met my mom when you were in college on vacation and she got pregnant with meâfrom you. She remembers everything about you. She told me the whole story fifty times.”
Caroline Kelly Gelbspan and your name is John J. Kelly III, and you grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and your father worked for the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company, and you met my mom when you were in college on vacation and she got pregnant with meâfrom you. She remembers everything about you. She told me the whole story fifty times.”
He stood there, wiped his hands on his shorts.
“Get out of here.”
“You were supposed to be my daddy.”
“I mean it.” He waved his hand, pushed air. “I don't know you or what kinda thing you're telling me here.”
The dog had found something in the garbage and looked up, chewing.
“I came here from South Dakota. I wanted to see you.”
“I don't care if you came from fucking Mars, I don't know who you are or any of that shit you just told me. You just get on along outa here. I don't have any business with this whole line of bullshit.”
“I don't have very much money.”
“That's not my problem and neither do I.”
She stared at him. “You once told Mom how you were going toâ”
“Hey, I told
lot
a chicks
lot
a things back then, and most of it was so I could fuck them.”
lot
a chicks
lot
a things back then, and most of it was so I could fuck them.”
This was the closest he came to acknowledging her.
“But I'm gonna say it again, I don't know who the fuck you think you are coming up here and telling me you got some kinda claim on me that I'm your father because that don't mean shit to me. I got all kinds of other things I gotta worry about besides some girl coming up to me with this kinda shit.”
She didn't move.
“Go on, get the fuck out my sight.”
She lingered a moment.
“Unless you want to give me a blowjob.”
For the next week, Caroline said, she slept in the sand with the other kids who hung out along Venice Beach around the T-shirt shops and bike-rental places, trying to keep her long
hair clean and washing in the public bathrooms. The novelty of the ocean wore off quickly. They kept telling her she could be a model, she had beautiful hair. There was another girl who looked like Caroline did and she had gotten a modeling job and had never been heard from again. All the talk was about either music, tattoos, the police, what the best drugs were, opening a business on the beach, or being an artist. It was high-school talk, not so different from what she had left in South Dakota. She called home, but her mother was out. Ron said, You got to take care of yourself, Mom got put on shorter hours. Perched over the beach was an immense new hotel, a multilevel pink confection, the Loews Santa Monica, and she found herself watching the people who sauntered down from it; usually they rented bicycles or spent money in the shops. She told herself that she would be like that. She went into the hotel's restaurant and asked if there was work. An officious woman in a suit told her they only hired through a union. On her way out she noticed that there were a lot of young white men in excellent physical condition sitting around the Jacuzzi. The Montreal Canadiens, whispered a towel-boy; they always stay here when they're in town. One of the players beckoned to Caroline, but she kept moving.
hair clean and washing in the public bathrooms. The novelty of the ocean wore off quickly. They kept telling her she could be a model, she had beautiful hair. There was another girl who looked like Caroline did and she had gotten a modeling job and had never been heard from again. All the talk was about either music, tattoos, the police, what the best drugs were, opening a business on the beach, or being an artist. It was high-school talk, not so different from what she had left in South Dakota. She called home, but her mother was out. Ron said, You got to take care of yourself, Mom got put on shorter hours. Perched over the beach was an immense new hotel, a multilevel pink confection, the Loews Santa Monica, and she found herself watching the people who sauntered down from it; usually they rented bicycles or spent money in the shops. She told herself that she would be like that. She went into the hotel's restaurant and asked if there was work. An officious woman in a suit told her they only hired through a union. On her way out she noticed that there were a lot of young white men in excellent physical condition sitting around the Jacuzzi. The Montreal Canadiens, whispered a towel-boy; they always stay here when they're in town. One of the players beckoned to Caroline, but she kept moving.
An hour later she had put her hair in a very tight braid and was in a coffee shop two miles down the boulevard asking an old woman for a job. I worked in a truck stop back in South Dakota, lied Caroline. Girl pretty as you never worked, the woman answered. Hair like that. Let me wait tables for a week, and if I'm no good, then you don't have to pay me. Just give me some food. She could keep herself clean for a week, she figured, and she was right.
In this way she successfully rented a room for a hundred dollars a week and could just get by, but it was never going to get her anywhere. One of the patrons of the restaurant, a trim man in his thirties, already going a bit gray, gave her his number at the hotel; he would be there a week, he said, please come see me if you wish. She did, lying around the room while he conducted business on the phone. He bought her some clothes and was kind to her. She watched him do push-ups
and sit-ups in the mornings. There was something about him that was safe. He was clean. He had an American Express Platinum card. At the end of the week, he said that he knew he would never see her again but that he wanted to give her a little unsolicited advice. You need a plan, he said. You're beautiful, but there are a lot of beautiful girls out here and most go in the wrong direction. I know, she said. You don't, he said, not really. If you don't have a plan, you start to go hard. Little by little, and it takes you places you don't want to go. How do you know all this? she asked. I know, believe me, I'm old enough to know. You're going hard already. How do you know? Tell me how many men you've slept with. She paused to think. Including him, maybe about ten. That's a lot already, he said. You need to go to school, get on that track, you're plenty smart enough. Where did you go to school? she asked. I went to a place called Yale, he said. And the law school there. Am I smart enough to go to Yale? she asked. Yes, he said, but you don't have the preparation. I could get the preparation. He looked at her sadly, and all of a sudden she despised him. I hate rich people, she declared. They think they are better. They are better, in some respects, said the man. And you want to be rich, right? Yes, of course, she said. All right, one last piece of advice, he said. What? She found the conversation exasperating. Men will always want to take from you, he said, remember that. I already know that, she told him. Maybe you do, he shrugged. Did
you
want to take from me? she asked. Of course, he said. And did you? Yes, absolutely. Yeah? Yes, and I'm trying to give a little back, too.
and sit-ups in the mornings. There was something about him that was safe. He was clean. He had an American Express Platinum card. At the end of the week, he said that he knew he would never see her again but that he wanted to give her a little unsolicited advice. You need a plan, he said. You're beautiful, but there are a lot of beautiful girls out here and most go in the wrong direction. I know, she said. You don't, he said, not really. If you don't have a plan, you start to go hard. Little by little, and it takes you places you don't want to go. How do you know all this? she asked. I know, believe me, I'm old enough to know. You're going hard already. How do you know? Tell me how many men you've slept with. She paused to think. Including him, maybe about ten. That's a lot already, he said. You need to go to school, get on that track, you're plenty smart enough. Where did you go to school? she asked. I went to a place called Yale, he said. And the law school there. Am I smart enough to go to Yale? she asked. Yes, he said, but you don't have the preparation. I could get the preparation. He looked at her sadly, and all of a sudden she despised him. I hate rich people, she declared. They think they are better. They are better, in some respects, said the man. And you want to be rich, right? Yes, of course, she said. All right, one last piece of advice, he said. What? She found the conversation exasperating. Men will always want to take from you, he said, remember that. I already know that, she told him. Maybe you do, he shrugged. Did
you
want to take from me? she asked. Of course, he said. And did you? Yes, absolutely. Yeah? Yes, and I'm trying to give a little back, too.
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