The Bonfire of the Vanities (28 page)

Fallow didn’t want to shake his head again. “Is that the story you wanted to tell me about?”

Vogel paused a moment, as if weighing the remark for sarcastic content.

“No,” he said, “but it’s not a bad idea. About one-fiftieth of everything that oughta be said about Nicaragua gets printed in this country. No, what I was talking about is something that happened in the Bronx four days ago. It might as well be Nicaragua, if you happen to live there. Anyway, you know who Reverend Bacon is, don’t you?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“He’s a—well, he’s a—you’ve read about him or seen him on TV, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

Vogel laughed. “You wanna know where I first met him? In this gigantic duplex apartment on Park Avenue, Peggy Fryskamp’s apartment, back when she was interested in the Geronimo Brotherhood. She gave a fund-raising party there. This must’ve been the late sixties, early seventies. There was this guy Flying Deer. He gave the soul talk, we used to call it. There was always the soul talk and the money talk. Anyway, he gave the soul talk, the spiritual talk. She didn’t know the sonofabitch was loaded. She just thought it was Indian talk, the crazy way he sounded. Fifteen minutes later he threw up all over this eighty-thousand-dollar Duncan Phyfe piano Peggy had, all over the keys and the strings and the hammers and everything. You know those little felt hammers? Oh, it was outrageous. She never got over it. That jerk blew a good deal that night. And you wanna know who really gave him hell? Reverend Bacon. Yeah. He was getting ready to ask Peggy to support some of the things he had going, and when this Flying Deer threw his cookies all over the Duncan Phyfe, he knew he could say good-bye to Peggy Fryskamp. He started calling him Flying Beer. ‘Flying
Deer
? Flying
Beer
, if I know anything about it!’ Jesus, it was funny. But he wasn’t trying to be funny. Bacon never tries to be funny. Anyway, he has this woman who works for him sometimes, Annie Lamb, from the Bronx. Annie Lamb lives in the Edgar Allan Poe project with this one son she has, Henry.”

“She’s black?” asked Fallow.

“Yeah, she’s black. Practically everybody in the Poe projects is black or Puerto Rican. By law, incidentally, all these projects are supposed to be integrated.” Vogel shrugged his eyebrows. “Anyway, this Annie Lamb is an unusual woman.” Vogel recounted the history of Annie Lamb and her family, culminating in the hit-and-run Mercedes-Benz that had left her promising son, Henry, at death’s door.

Unfortunate, thought Fallow, but where’s the story?

As if anticipating that objection, Vogel said: “Now, there’s two sides to this thing, and both of them have to do with what happens to a good kid like this if he has the misfortune of being black and growing up in the Bronx. I mean, here’s a kid who did everything right. You talk about Henry Lamb, you’re talking about the one percent who do exactly what the system tells them they’re supposed to do. Okay? So what happens? First, the hospital treats the kid for
…a broken wrist!
If this had been a middle-class white kid, they’d’ve gone over him with the X-ray, the CAT scan, the nuclear magnetic resonance, everything there is. Second, the police and the D.A. won’t move on the case. This is what really infuriates the kid’s mother. Here’s a hit-and-run, they’ve got part of the license number and the make of the car, and they’re doing zip about it.”

“Why?”

“Well, basically, it’s just some kid in the South Bronx who gets hit by a car, as far as they’re concerned. They can’t be bothered. But what they’re saying is, there were no witnesses, except for the victim himself, and he’s in a terminal coma, and so they wouldn’t have a case even if they found the car and the driver. Now, suppose this were your son. He’s provided the information, but they’re not going to use it because technically it’s hearsay.”

The whole thing made Fallow’s head hurt. He couldn’t imagine having a son, and certainly not in some council flats in the Bronx section of New York City in America.

“It’s an unfortunate situation,” said Fallow, “but I’m not altogether sure there’s a story in it.”

“Well, there’s gonna be a story in it very shortly for somebody, Pete,” said Vogel. “The community is up in arms. They’re about to explode. Reverend Bacon is organizing a protest demonstration.”

“What exactly are they exploding over?”

“They’re tired of being treated as if human life in the South Bronx means nothing! And I’m telling you, when Bacon gets hold of something, things happen. He’s not Martin Luther King or Bishop Tutu. Okay? He’s not gonna win any Nobel Prize. He’s got his own way of doing things, and sometimes it might not stand close scrutiny. But that’s one reason he’s effective. He’s what Hobsbawm called a primitive revolutionary. Hobsbawm was a Brit, right?”

“He still is.”

“I thought he was. He had this theory about primitive revolutionaries. There are certain natural leaders of the underclasses, and the power structure interprets what they do as crime—they may even sincerely interpret it that way—but what that person is, is a revolutionary. And that’s what Bacon is. I admire him. And I feel sorry for these people. Anyway, I think there’s a hell of a story here, quite aside from the philosophical considerations.”

Fallow closed his eyes. He saw the snout of the beast, lit up by soft bistro lights. Then the icy chill. He opened his eyes. Vogel was staring at him with his cheery old pink nanny’s grin. This ridiculous country.

“Look, Pete, the worst you’ll get out of this is a good human-interest story. And if things break right, you’ll be on to something big. I can get you an interview with Annie Lamb. I can get you an interview with Reverend Bacon. I can take you right into the intensive-care unit, where the kid is. I mean, he’s in a coma, but you can see him.”

Fallow tried to conceive of transferring the mercury egg and his bilious innards to the Bronx. He could scarcely imagine surviving the trip. From his viewpoint the Bronx was like the Arctic. It was somewhere to the north, and people didn’t go there.

“I don’t know, Al. My specialty is supposed to be the high life.” He attempted a smile.

“Supposed to be, Peter, supposed to be. They won’t fire you if you come in with a hell of a good story from the low life.”

The word
fire
was what did it. He closed his eyes. The snout was not there. Instead, he saw the Dead Mouse’s face. He could see the Mouse looking toward his cubicle in the city room at this moment and finding it empty. Fear suffused his every cell, and he put his napkin to his forehead.

“Do you mind if I ask you something, Al?”

“Go ahead.”

“What’s your interest in all this?”

“None, if you’re talking about material interest. Reverend Bacon called me and asked my advice, and I told him I’d try to help him out, that’s all. I like him. I like what he’s trying to do. I like the way he shakes up this fucking city. I’m on his side. I told him he should try to get this thing into the newspapers before he has the protest demonstration. That way he’s gonna get more television coverage and everything else. I’m telling you the plain truth now. I thought of you because I figured maybe you could use an opportunity like this. This could be to your advantage and to the advantage of a lot of decent people who never get a fucking break in this city.”

Fallow shuddered. Just what had Vogel heard about his situation? He didn’t really want to know. He knew he was being used. At the same time, here was a piece of meat to throw to the Mouse.

“Well, maybe you’re right.”

“I know I’m right, Pete. This is gonna be a big story one way or the other. You might as well be the one to break it.”

“You can take me to see these people?”

“Oh, sure. Don’t worry about that. The only thing is, you can’t sit on the story. Bacon is ready to go.”

“Ummmm. Let me take down some of these names.” Fallow reached into the side pocket of his jacket. Christ, he hadn’t even picked up a notebook or a piece of paper before he left. From out of the pocket he brought a notice from Con Edison warning him that his gas and electricity were about to be cut off. He couldn’t even write on it. It had print on both sides. Vogel watched all this and, without comment, produced a memorandum pad and handed it to him. Then he handed him a silver ballpoint pen. He repeated the names and details.

“I tell you what,” said Fallow. “I’m going to call the city desk straightaway.”

He got up and caromed off a chair at the next table, where an old woman in a Chanel-style suit was trying to lift a spoonful of sorrel soup to her mouth. She glared at him.

“Whaddaya want to eat?” said Vogel. “I’ll order for you.”

“Nothing. A bowl of tomato soup. Some chicken paillard.”

“Some wine?”

“No. Well. Just a glass.”

The coin telephone was in a vestibule across from the hatcheck room, where a pretty girl sat on a high stool reading a book. Her eyes peeked out from a sinister black ellipse carefully drawn around her eyelids. Fallow rang up Frank de Pietro, the city editor of
The City Light
. De Pietro was one of the few Americans in an important editorial position on the newspaper. They needed someone from New York as city editor. The other Englishmen who worked there, like Fallow himself, were acquainted with a single stretch of Manhattan from the trendy restaurants in TriBeCa on the south to the trendy restaurants in Yorkville, near Eighty-sixth Street, on the north. The rest of New York might as well have been Damascus.

“Yeah?” The voice of Frank de Pietro. His enthusiasm over having a call from Peter Fallow at a busy time of the day was imperceptible.

“Frank,” said Fallow, “are you familiar with a place called the Edgar Allan Poe projects?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

Fallow didn’t know which was more unpleasant, this Yank habit of saying
yeah
for
yes
, or the incredulity in the man’s voice. Nevertheless, he plowed on, telling Albert Vogel’s story with embellishments, where needed, and with no mention of Albert Vogel. He left the impression that he had already been in touch with Reverend Bacon and the victim’s mother, and that his imminent appearance in the Bronx was awaited by one and all. De Pietro told him to go ahead and check it out. This he did with no particular enthusiasm, either. And yet Fallow felt his heart fill with a quite unexpected joy.

When he returned to the table, Vogel said, “Hey, how’d it go? Your soup’s getting cold.” The words barely made it out of his mouth, which was crammed full of food.

A large bowl of tomato soup and a glass of white wine were at Fallow’s place. Vogel was busy working on a hideous-looking joint of veal.

“They like it, hunh?”

“Ummmmmm.” Well, they don’t despise it, thought Fallow. His nausea began withdrawing. The yolk grew smaller. A crisp exhilaration, not unlike that of an athlete entering the fray, stole into his nervous system. He felt…almost clean. It was the emotion, never commented upon by the poets, enjoyed by those who feel that, for once, they are earning their pay.

It was Kramer’s turn to wear the beeper on his waistband for twelve hours. In the Homicide Bureau of the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, somebody, some assistant district attorney, was on call at all times. The purpose was to have someone to go to crime scenes immediately, to interview witnesses before they vanished or lost the urge to talk about the mayhem. For those twelve hours an assistant D.A. was likely to get stuck with every piece a shit in the Bronx that involved a homicide, and it was a classic Bronx piece a shit that had brought Kramer here to this precinct house. A black detective sergeant named Gordon was standing near the booking desk giving him the details.

“They call the guy Pimp,” said Gordon, “but he’s not a pimp. He’s a gambler, mainly, and he probably does some dealing in drugs, but he dresses like a pimp. You’ll see him in a minute. He’s back there in the locker room wearing some kind of trick suit with a double-breasted vest.” Gordon shook his head. “He’s sitting on the edge of a chair eating ribs, holding them like this”—he leaned forward and raised his hand in a dainty gesture—“so the sauce won’t get on the suit. He had about forty suits, and when he tells you about those fucking suits, you’ll think it was his fucking child that’s missing.”

The whole thing had happened because someone had stolen the forty suits. Oh, this was a real piece a shit. Waves and waves of childishness and pointless violence, and Kramer hadn’t even heard the whole story yet.

The main room of the precinct was saturated with the dank and oddly sweet smell of rotting wood, caused by decades of steam radiators leaking onto the floors. Most of the floor had been replaced with concrete. The walls were painted Government Work Green except for an old battered tongue-and-groove wainscoting, three feet high, around the bottom. The building had thick walls and high ceilings, now overgrown with trays of fluorescent lights. Across the way Kramer could see the backs of the two patrolmen. Their hips were enormous with weaponry and paraphernalia, including flashlights, summons books, walkie-talkies, and handcuffs. One of them kept lifting his hands in explanatory gestures to two women and a man, local residents, whose faces said they didn’t believe a word of it.

Gordon was telling Kramer: “So he’s in this apartment, and there’s four guys in there, and one of them is this André Potts, who he figures knows who took the suits, only André says he don’t know nothing from nothing, and they’re going back and forth, and finally André’s had enough of this, and he gets up and walks out of the room. And so what would
you
do if some disrespectful sucker got up and turned his back on you while you’re inquiring about your fucking forty suits? You’d shoot him in the back, right? So that’s what Pimp did. He shot Mr. André Potts in the back three times with a .38.”

“You got witnesses?” asked Kramer.

“Oh, we got ‘em stacked up.”

At that moment the beeper went off on Kramer’s waistband.

“Can I use your phone?”

Gordon motioned toward an open door that led into the Detective Bureau, which was an office off the main room. Inside were three dismal Government Work Gray metal desks. At each desk sat a black man in his thirties or forties. Each had on Bronx street garb a bit too funky to be true. Kramer thought of how unusual it was to come across an entire bureau made up of black detectives. The one at the desk nearest the door wore a black thermal vest and a sleeveless black T-shirt that showed off his powerful arms.