Right Hand Magic

Table of Contents

 

 

Fifteen minutes later the taxi reached the Gate of Skulls, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

Actually, “the Gate of Skulls” was something of a misnomer since it wasn’t really made of numerous craniums, but was simply fashioned to resemble an extremely large one. It stood thirty feet high, and twice as wide, carved from a single slab of white marble. Over the decades, the smooth surface had become pitted and stained from exposure to the elements, giving it an increasingly realistic appearance. Each tooth lining the Gate’s upper jaw was the size of a paving stone, and its eye sockets were lit from within by a flickering green light that burned day and night.

That last bit was a relatively new touch, added by the Golgotham Business Owners’ Organization (GoBOO) back in the 1970s, in order to help promote tourism. Sensationalistic flourishes aside, the Gate of Skulls, rising from the intersection of Broadway and Perdition Street like the remains of some fallen giant, was an eerie sight, warning the unwary of the dangers ahead.

I couldn’t wait to walk through its gaping maw. . . .

ROC
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First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, December 2010

Copyright © Nancy A. Collins, 2010

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

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eISBN : 978-1-101-44577-8

The author would like to acknowledge the following source materials as having been instrumental in bringing the neighborhood of Golgotham to life:

 

The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld
by Herbert Asbury (Paragon House);
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
(Vintage Books) and
Evidence
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Luc Sante;
The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality
by Ronald Pearsall (Penguin);
Abandoned Stations
by Joseph Brennan (
www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned
);
Lost City
(
http://lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com
);
Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York
by Jeremiah Moss (
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com
); and
Old Streets of New York: A Guide to Former Street Names in Manhattan
by Gilbert Tauber (
www.oldstreets.com
).

She would also like to acknowledge the amazing work of Andrew Chase (
www.andrewchase.com
) and Jeremy Mayer (
www.jeremymayer.com
) as having provided the inspiration for Tate’s metal sculptures.

The flyer on the bulletin board at Strega Nona’s Pizza Oven read “Room for Rent: $750 per Month.” At the bottom of the page was a line of tear-away slips bearing a handwritten phone number, several of which were already taken.

I happened to be at Strega Nona’s that particular day because I was looking at a loft in Tribeca. Since I was nearby, I decided to grab a slice. Located at Broadway and Perdition, on the border of Golgotham, it’s one of the best pizza joints in the city.

Sounds too good to be true
, I thought to myself as I tore off the next tab in line.

Housing at that price, just for a single room in a larger apartment, was hard to come by. I knew this because I’d been hunting for a new place for several weeks, without any luck. Even though I had a tidy quarterly income, courtesy of robber baron ancestors, I still had to watch my budget. The materials used in my work were far from cheap, and the last thing I wanted was to have to go to my parents, hat in hand, halfway through a project, and beg for an advance on my next trust fund payment.

The reason behind my need to relocate was that the management of my so-called artist’s loft in SoHo, where I both worked and lived, had recently informed me that the amount of noise I generated creating my metal sculptures was in violation of their most recent tenancy rules and that I was to cease immediately or face the termination of my lease. Apparently the investment bankers and junior-level stockbrokers who lived on my floor didn’t appreciate the sound of twenty-gauge steel being hammered into twenty-first-century art.

I decided it was far easier to move in toto than to either argue the point with the condo board or find separate studio space elsewhere in the city. As it was, there were some unpleasant memories associated with my current digs, all of them involving a certain ex-boyfriend, that made relocating attractive to me.

I checked the time on my cell phone as I shoveled a slice of pepperoni-and-andouille-sausage into my mouth. I had a meeting at three with Derrick Templeton, a Chelsea gallery owner interested in showing my sculptures. Since there were no subway stops in Golgotham, I had to walk either to Chambers or Wall Street if I wanted to catch a train uptown.

After all, time and gallery owners wait for no woman.

 

 

Two and a half hours later, I left Templeton Gallery with a smile on my face and a handshake from the owner, who had agreed to feature my metal sculptures at his next show. And my parents said I was wasting my time pursuing a career as an artist. Ha!

I wanted to call them up and tell them the good news. Well, good as far as I was concerned, anyway. That would rub it in nice and hard. Take
that
, Mom and Dad!

As I fished the cell phone out of my purse, my fingers closed about the slip of paper I’d taken from the pizzeria. I stared at the numbers printed in a neat, almost-calligraphic hand for a long moment, and then punched them into the phone.

The phone rang four times before someone picked up. “Hello? Who’s this?” The voice on the other end was definitely male.

“Hi, I’m calling about the room for rent? Is it still available?”

“Yes, it is. Would you like to look at it?”

“Sure!” I replied excitedly. “When’s a good time?”

“How about now?”

As I scribbled down the address on the back of an old takeout menu, I marveled at my good luck. Finally, after weeks of dead ends and near misses, I had not only landed a gallery show, but was now hot on the trail of an apartment.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said. “I’m in Chelsea right now.”

“Just make sure to knock real loud when you get here. Sometimes I can’t hear the door if I’m in the kitchen.”

“Taxi!” I raised my arm as I stepped off the curb. A cab swerved out of the stream of traffic and pulled up alongside me. The driver leaned out of the window, eyeing the tattoos on my arms and the stainless steel piercing adorning my right brow.

“Where to, lady? The Village?”

I shook my head. “Golgotham.”

The taxi took off without another word, leaving me standing in the gutter. I gave the fleeing cabbie the finger, for all the good it did me, and resumed walking in the general direction of downtown.

After three more hacks left me standing at the curb, I finally got a driver who was willing to take me most of the way there. The cabbie was a powerfully built West African, with tribal scarring on his cheekbones that resembled the waves of the ocean.

“I take you as far as Gate. No farther,” he informed me solemnly.

“I’ll pay you double the meter if you take me to the exact address,” I offered as I slid into the backseat. I held up a fistful of bills so the driver could see I wasn’t bullshitting him.

“No. Gate only,” the cabbie responded firmly, shaking his head.

“Very well.” I sighed, dropping my shoulders in surrender. I learned long ago there was no arguing with a New York City cab driver.

Fifteen minutes later the taxi reached the Gate of Skulls, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.

Actually, “the Gate of Skulls” was something of a misnomer since it wasn’t really made of numerous craniums, but was simply fashioned to resemble an extremely large one. It stood thirty feet high, and twice as wide, carved from a single slab of white marble. Over the decades, the smooth surface had become pitted and stained from exposure to the elements, giving it an increasingly realistic appearance. Each tooth lining the Gate’s upper jaw was the size of a paving stone, and its eye sockets were lit from within by a flickering green light that burned day and night.

That last bit was a relatively new touch, added by the Golgotham Business Owners’ Organization (GoBOO) back in the 1970s, in order to help promote tourism. Sensationalistic flourishes aside; the Gate of Skulls, straddling the east corner of Broadway and Perdition Street like the remains of some fallen giant, was an eerie sight, warning the unwary of the dangers ahead.