The little man lurched slightly, dragging a huge elevated shoe beneath him. “How much?” he repeated.
Corman couldn’t hear what the answer was, only saw the woman’s lips twitch crisply behind the glass, then the little man shake his head disappointedly as he walked away.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
LUCY WAS SLEEPING very soundly on Mrs. Donaldson’s sofa, her hands tucked under the pillow. Corman could see her small white feet, and just above them, the rolled cuffs of her dark blue jeans. “I’ll take her home now,” he said.
“She could stay the night,” Mrs. Donaldson told him, as if it would be safer that way, as if no little girl could ever be more secure within a man’s rough care. “You wouldn’t have to wake her.”
“No, I’ll take her home,” Corman said determinedly as he walked past her, through the small square foyer and into the living room to where Lucy lay motionless on the sofa.
There were little shrines all over the place, plaster saints, nativity scenes. Christ hung from almost every wall, wracked with pain and disillusionment. The Virgin was all around, too, poised on the edge of a table or standing on either side of the mantel, her face more serene than any parent had the right to be, unfeelingly composed, too accepting of her child’s dark fate.
“She didn’t give you any trouble, I hope,” Corman said as he knelt down to pick Lucy up. Her body was warm, terribly soft. She moaned gently as he lifted her, ran her tongue across her lips, then nestled her head into his shoulder.
“She’s a sweetheart,” Mrs. Donaldson said.
“Yes, she is.”
At the door, Corman turned back toward Mrs. Donaldson. “I’ll pay you tomorrow, if that’s okay.”
“Whenever.”
“Anyway. Thanks.”
“Good night, then,” Mrs. Donaldson said as she closed the door.
Corman walked the few yards down the hall, fiddled awkwardly with his keys until he finally got the door open, then took Lucy directly to her bed. It was never made, and so there was nothing to turn back or tuck in. He simply laid her body across the mattress, tugged loose one of the covers that formed a tangled bundle at the foot of her bed, and drew it over her.
He watched her a moment, then walked back into the living room and stood by the window as the rain ran down the glass in silvery streams.
After a while, he glanced back at the sofa, thought of taking out the bed but decided not to. Instead, he pulled a chair up near the window, unstrapped his police radio and let it rest in his lap. It was a simple UNIDEN handset, and, next to a camera, it was the one indispensable tool of the city’s free-lance shooters. Corman kept it tuned to the frequency of the SOD.
Special Operations Division was a central clearinghouse for all the city’s hour-by-hour distress. When a car slammed into the Brooklyn Bridge or a train caught fire in the Bronx or a man anywhere walked into a fast food restaurant and started shooting, it came first over SOD. It worked twenty-four hours a day, and there was hardly a second of that silence which the stringers called “dead air.”
Now, as Corman turned it on, something was happening at Broadway and 174th Street.
Click: In his hand? What?
Click: Uh, we don’t know at this time. We just got an EDP in the hallway.
Click: Eighth floor, right?
Click: That’s right.
Click: Okay, Ten-17.
A soft whoosh came over the radio for an instant. Then another click and the voices continued, but different voices, another call, this one for a medical unit, a fire in a restaurant.
Corman lit a cigarette, edged himself onto the wide windowsill, and listened. Outside, the soft beat of the rain continued through the night.
Click: We got a problem with the EDP.
Click: Advise.
Click: A Ten-27.
Things had suddenly gotten more complicated at 174th and Broadway. The EDP had a gun.
Click: You got a positive on that?
Click: Affirmative.
He had been spotted with it.
Click: Identification?
Click: Negative.
They didn’t know who he was.
Click: Request location.
Click: Ten-11.
Or exactly where he was.
Click: Do you think he’s still in the building?
Click: Affirmative. Request backup.
It was getting dangerous. The radio responding unit wanted help.
Click: Ten-17.
It was coming.
For an instant, the frequency went silent, then another click, another call, a bus had overturned on the Major Deegan Expressway and several people were wandering half-dazed among the stalled cars and onlookers. Another EDP was running half-naked along the FDR Drive.
Corman walked into the small kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. He could tell it was going to be a long night. It was almost two in the morning already, and he had not even begun to feel the first fleeting drowsiness.
He brought his cup back into the living room and sat down once again on the windowsill. The voices had returned, and the first had grown a bit more tense.
Click: We have a definite negative at the exits.
The EDP had not left the building.
Click: How are you proceeding?
Click: Floor search. Up and down.
Click: Any response on the Ten-17?
Click: Negative.
The backup had not arrived. The Jake was alone.
In his mind, it was easy for Corman to get a good clear picture of what was happening on 174th Street and Broadway. A foot patrolman had responded to an EDP call. The EDP, Emotionally Disturbed Person, was now wandering the halls of a large apartment building with a gun in his hand. The Jake was following him, moving cautiously up the dim stairwells or along the empty corridors, his hands already on his pistol. He was sweating under his arms, and he could feel a tightening in his muscles. He jumped a little, each time his radio clicked on.
Click: Any response on the Ten-17?
Click: Negative.
Click: I can hear him. He’s right above me. I can hear him yelling. It’s really loud. It sounds like … like … he’s stomping up and down, too.
Click: Did you say stomping?
Click: Yes.
Click: And yelling?
Click: Affirmative.
Click: Is he yelling at other people?
Click: I don’t know.
Click: Can you make out what he’s saying?
Click: Negative.
Click: Are civilians involved?
Click: I can just hear the guy. I don’t hear anybody else.
Click: I read you.
Click: Please advise.
For a moment, there was silence. The SOD central dispatcher was young, inexperienced. He wasn’t sure what to tell the Jake. For an instant, he hesitated. Then he made his decision.
Click: Proceed with caution.
Corman leaned forward in his chair. The dispatcher had made a serious mistake. The Jake was alone. A Ten-17 was in place, on the way. He should wait. There were no civilians in danger. He should wait. The dispatcher had screwed up. If everything went well, he’d be chewed out in the morning. If anything happened to the Jake, he’d never pin on a badge again.
Click: Proceed with caution.
The Jake didn’t respond. He was afraid. Corman could hear his fear, smell it. The Jake thought he was going to die in this little shitcan apartment house high above Broadway; he was going to open a grimy metal door, peek out and take a bullet in the face.
Click: Repeat.
Click: Proceed with caution.
Click: Ten-4.
He was going to do what he’d been told, follow the dispatcher’s orders. He wasn’t going to wait. He was going ahead, slowly, cautiously, the sweat now beading on his forehead, gathering in a little pool in his navel. But he was going ahead, and he was wrong.
In the meantime, restaurants were burning, cars colliding, and at the southern tip
of Manhattan, yet another EDP was dancing around a smoldering ashcan while he hurled small stones at passing cars.
Corman took a sip of coffee and continued to listen as radio cars and emergency vehicles were sent hurtling along the empty, early morning streets, their sirens echoing through the towering glass corridors.
Click: EDP in sight.
It was the Jake on 174th Street. He’d spotted the EDP.
Click: Request location.
Click: Ninth floor. Southeast, no, south … southwest corner.
Click: Describe him.
Click: White male. About thirty years old. He’s wearing jeans, I think, some kind of blue pants. He went around the corner, that’s all I could see.
Click: Did you see a weapon?
Click: Negative. Any word on the backup?
Click: Ten-17. Proceed.
Again, the radio went silent very briefly, before the usual round of calls began. Through the city, the usual night’s work went on, but Corman found his attention now entirely focused on the ninth floor of a building that was over a hundred and thirty blocks away.
Click: Okay, he’s at the end of the corridor.
Click: Where are you?
Click: Southwest corner.
Click: Are there exits?
Click: Negative.
The EDP had gotten himself into a corner. He was facing three blank walls and a corridor with a single patrolman at the end of it.
Click: He still screaming.
Click: He’s alone?
Click: Affirmative. He’s stomping, too. He keeps stomping.
Click: Ten-17 is in place.
Click: But where?
Click: We have confirmation on the Ten-17.
Click: Just a minute …
There was a sudden silence, then the SOD dispatcher called again.
Click: Unit 4. Ten-2.
The dispatcher was trying to raise him.
Click: Unit 4. Just a …
Corman leaned forward. He could hear the screams of the EDP, the stomping.
The SOD dispatcher was getting worried.
Click: Unit 4. Please respond. Ten-2. Ten-2.
Silence.
Click: Unit 4. Ten-2. Ten-2.
There was no response. Corman could feel the air electrify around him, hear the frantic care in the dispatcher’s voice when he finally acted.
Click: All units. We have a possible Ten-30 at 2942 Broadway. Repeat, we have a Ten-30. Officer in danger. Respond immediately. Ninth floor. Southwest corner. 2942 Broadway. Request all available units to respond immediately.
The silence continued for a few more seconds, then, suddenly, the patrolman’s breathless voice broke through the steadily vibrating air.
Click: Uh, we had a problem here. The EDP charged me. But it okay now. It was a water pistol. Repeat. Water pistol. Subject is under control. Request medical unit and backup. Repeat. The subject is under control.
Corman felt a small rush of air whistle through his teeth. Something had turned out well. A threat had been met, mastered, and the feeling which followed was unexpectedly sweet and exhilarating. He felt a barely controllable urge to wake Lucy up, tell her that somewhere nine floors above the sleeping city, the beast had been driven back. Joanna needed to know that such things were possible, despite the downward pull. Everyone needed to know it, Groton, the little man at the ticket window, everybody. He even thought of the Hell’s Kitchen jumper, saw her long dark hair still wet with rain, wondered if such knowledge might have urged her from the ledge in time to amaze Julian’s phantom audience with a happy ending.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
ON SATURDAY MORNING Corman spent several hours arguing intermittently with Lucy over what movie they’d see that afternoon. Lucy sat cross-legged on the floor, carefully going over the entertainment section of the Times. She preferred movies that edged cautiously into the forbidden zone of sex and violence, but Corman suspected that this had less to do with the actual film than with her need to feel grown-up. It was the sort of attitude that could become a way of living, so that in the end you grew to adolescence hating childhood, then to adulthood hating adolescence, went all the way to death, hating life.
“How about this one?” Lucy asked suddenly. She pointed to a full page advertisement that showed a grim-looking cop nuzzling a forty-five automatic against his cheek.
“Not my thing,” Corman said.
“How about a play then?” Lucy said. “You promised you’d take me to a play.”
“When did I promise that?”
“About a year ago,” Lucy told him. “You said you’d take me to the one about the fairy tales.”
Corman thought about the money, the promise, the collision course between the two. “Okay,” he said finally.
Lucy’s face brightened. “Really?”
Corman pulled himself to his feet. “A promise is a promise.”
The theater was on Broadway, and as Corman stood in line to buy the tickets, he stared at its wildly teeming lights. Despite the gaudiness, it struck him as beautiful. He admired the energy that swept out from it, the self-assertion, the refusal to lie down and take it. It had always been like that, first as an Indian warpath, then as a street of burning effigies, secret conclaves, plots, riots, scandals. As part of his scheme to bilk the city, Aaron Burr had sunk his only water-well alongside it. Not a drop of water had ever come from the well, itself, but later someone had used it to hide the body of a murdered girl.
Lucy knew nothing of all this, and as the line inched toward the ticket booth, Corman wondered if there were any real way to teach it to her. He could take her on a tour, of course, point out this and that, but he wasn’t sure that anything could find its way into a mind that wasn’t ready for it. That was the reason he’d finally given up teaching, because he could teach only skills, nothing beyond them; how to read and write, but not how to feel about what was written in a way that was immediate and searing, the way he’d dreamed a photograph might teach.
“This is supposed to be good,” Lucy said enthusiastically as her eyes swept over the billboard at the front of the theater.
Corman nodded. “You’re staying with your mother next Saturday night,” he told her.
“I know.”
“And all day Sunday.”
She looked at him. “I always stay all day Sunday.” Her eyes remained on him. “She’s taking me to a play Sunday afternoon. Jeffrey’s coming with us.”
“He’s a nice man,” Corman said, forcing himself.
He bought the tickets a few minutes later, then escorted Lucy to their seats.
The lights dimmed slowly. The play began, an amalgam of fairy tales which started with the happy endings then went on to what happened after that, untimely deaths and unfaithful princes. Corman thought it interesting, but glum. After a time he found himself drifting back to Julian’s suggestion, money, finally the stacks of photographs he’d gathered in boxes, stuffed in drawers, every picture he’d taken since the first time he’d gone out with Lazar.
That had been over five years before, but he could remember it very clearly. A woman had called a local precinct, claimed that she’d swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, that she was dying, that they had to hurry, hurry, before it was too late. Even so, Corman and the old man had made it to the hotel before the police, then followed them as they kicked down the door to the woman’s room and plunged inside.
Corman could still recall the precise details of what he’d seen that first time. The woman was stretched out facedown across the plain wooden floor. The phone was still in her hand, but her fingers had released it, so that it simply lay in the palm of her open fist like a dead bird. A few feet away, a two-year-old boy jumped up and down in a rickety playpen, gurgling happily while the cops stripped his mother to the waist and began pumping her back to life.
She’d finally come to, dazed, but still able to walk shakily to the ambulance downstairs. A big cop had taken the child, cradling it gently in his arms,
as if posing for a publicity photograph for the police department. “This is what it’s all about,” the cop had said to Lazar on the way out, and Corman remembered thinking that for one of the few times in his life, he’d actually heard someone say something that struck him as absolutely true.
“This is what it’s all about,” he repeated now in his mind as he watched the action on the stage. A world-weary man was singing to a little boy, trying his best to teach him how to live. “Careful,” he kept saying. “Careful.”
Once home, Corman prepared dinner for the two of them, read to Lucy awhile, then washed the dishes, his mind thinking of Lazar again, a story the old man had told him several years before. It was a kind of fairy tale, like the ones in the play, he realized now, with its own oddly happy ending. In his mind he could see Lazar as he’d appeared that night, puffing at his cigar while his voice sounded over the featureless hum of the barroom crowd.
“I was in the coalfields, you know,” Lazar had said. “When I was a boy. There was a strike, and I hired on, you might say, as a courier. At night, I’d run from one striking mine to another, telling the miners the latest news, keeping everybody up to date on what was happening.” Here he’d paused, taken a draw on his cigar. “Well, I got caught one night, and some of the gun-thugs gave me a bad beating.” Here he’d waved his hand, dismissing it. “But I survived, and before long I was here in the city, working for the Tribune.” A quick, ironic smile. “Well, a few years after that, there was another strike down in the coalfields and the Tribune sent me down to take some pictures. I took a lot of pictures, and during the course of the whole thing, I found out that one of the couriers for the miners was really an informer.” Here he drew the cigar downward, like the muzzle of a gun. “I didn’t know what to do about it, so I finally decided to take it into my own hands.” A pause, mostly for effect. “So, I tracked down that courier one night, and I gave him a good beating.” The voice deepened slightly. “I learned something from all that, Corman. I learned a little part of what it’s like to live a balanced life.” The face grew very calm, the voice exquisitely soft. “Once to receive the blow, once to deliver it.”
Corman put the last of the dishes away and walked determinedly to his darkroom, as if it were a research laboratory on the rules of life. He sniffed the clean, sweet smell of the chemicals, peered at the soft red light, felt the way the room’s continually building heat gave him the sense of moving toward the core of something. Outside, the world seemed hopelessly diffused, but in the darkroom, it became concentrated, intensified, and the vast blur gave way to small rectangles of highly focused light. Sometimes, in brief visionary glimpses, the mosaic struggled toward a decipherable design. Coils and spirals disentangled, and when that happened, he felt as if he were edging not so much toward some great revelation, as just a small, faint suggestion of what life ought to be.
The City When It Rains Page 5