The City When It Rains

by Thomas H. Cook

  “I used to see you at this little ring they have in Bensonhurst,” Corman told him. “With my brother.”

  One eyebrow arched upward. “Your brother a fighter?”

  Corman shook his head. “No. A gambler.”

  Bowman’s mouth opened slightly. All his teeth were gone, but from the bluish look of his gums, Corman thought neglect had done more damage than the ring. As for his body, it was marvelously preserved, and Corman realized that in a photograph the shiny ebony skin would contrast nicely with the occasional scar, capture the perfect contradiction of vulnerable invincibility. “My brother always bet on you,” he said.

  Bowman didn’t seem to believe him. “I couldn’t take the punishment,” he said. “You got to be able to take the punishment. Just being in the ring, it ain’t enough.”

  “I guess.”

  Bowman shrugged indifferently. “I got some posters, though,” he said. “I got ’em on my wall. Guys I fought, I got posters of them, too.” He shook his head disdainfully. “They never come to nothing. It’s like I tell people, you fight some guys, you can say you done it. But these palookas I come up against, they was a dime a dozen.” He tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “No mentality, you know. You can’t just fight with your hands.”

  “Some of them didn’t look so bad,” Corman told him.

  Bowman shrugged, unwilling to argue. “You a gambler, too?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Some people say they ruined the game,” Bowman said. “Maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t. ’Cause in a way, betting is doing something. It ain’t just looking. Your brother fix ’em?”

  “I don’t know,” Corman admitted. “He might have.”

  “But you was never in on that?”

  “No.”

  “What do you do then?” Bowman asked quickly, firing questions now like short jabs.

  “I take pictures.”

  “Who for?”

  “Nobody in particular,” Corman told him. “Newspapers sometimes.”

  Bowman stared at him expressionlessly. “Pictures,” he repeated. “How come you doing that around here?”

  “Somebody told me I should look up a guy who used to run this store,” Corman said. “He’s supposed to be Haitian. Got a French name.”

  “Well, you’re looking for old Peletoux,” Bowman said. “But he ain’t here no more.”

  “He moved?”

  “God took him home,” Bowman answered crisply, without mourning. “Me and his wife… we was—you know—sort of close. She asked me to fill in for him, so I been here the last few weeks. You know, till she gets things settled. Then we’re leaving town.”

  “I see.”

  “How come you want pictures of old Peletoux?” Bowman asked with a short laugh. “He ain’t much to look at.”

  “I heard he knew a lot about the neighborhood,” Corman said. “The people in it.”

  “That’s what you want to take pictures of?” Bowman asked unbelievingly. “The people ’round here?”

  “One person,” Corman said. “That woman who jumped out of her window last Thursday night.” He opened his camera bag, pulled out one of the photographs of the woman and handed it to him. “Early in the morning. About a block from here.”

  Bowman’s eyes lingered on the picture. “Yeah, that got things stirring.”

  “Did you know her?” Corman asked.

  “I seen her. She come in a few times, bought some things.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “She didn’t do no talking,” Bowman said. “She come in, pick up what she wants. She put up the money. Sometimes it come up short. I say, no. So she put something back. Sometimes, it works the other way. She come up with too much money. I always give change, but I never seen her count it.”

  “Did you ever see her with anyone?”

  “No. She was always alone ’cept for that doll she carried around with her. She acted like it was real. Always holding it real close, like she was afraid somebody was going to snatch it from her. She even bought food for it.”

  “Similac?” Corman asked. “She bought that here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Corman glanced down the center aisle. At the end of it he could see a few cans of Similac nestled among a smattering of other baby products, diapers, baby food, a small box of rubber pacifiers. For an instant he got the same feeling he’d once had in the bar near Gramercy Park where 0. Henry had written “The Gift of the Magi” during one long snowy afternoon, the fibrous touch of the Great Man’s presence, the soft scratch of his pencil, the sense of what he’d been though. “Would you mind if I took some pictures?” he asked.

  Bowman shrugged. “Don’t matter to me. I ain’t here for long no way.”

  Corman drew out his camera and headed down the aisle, taking pictures as he walked, one picture at each step, until a single can of Similac filled the neat rectangular window of the viewfinder.

  When he’d taken the last shot, he returned to the front of the store. Bowman was watching him steadily as he came up the aisle. “Was she somebody, that woman?” he asked.

  “I don’t know who she was,” Corman said. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” He took a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and wrote down his name and telephone number. “If you hear anything about her or find anybody in the neighborhood who knew anything about her, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call.”

  Bowman took the paper and dropped it into the drawer beneath the counter. “These people around here, they don’t do much talking. They don’t none of them have the right papers, you know? They don’t want to be seen. And ‘cause of that, they got to be blind, too.”

  “Still, if …”

  Bowman grinned widely. “These here pictures, you going to get some money for them?”

  “I hope so,” Corman said, then heard Pike’s voice out of the blue, tossing him another line if Julian’s turned to dust, warning him to grab it before it got away, sink his fangs into Groton’s death. In the end, every shooter wants to come in from the rain.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  CORMAN HAD WALKED through half the bars in his neighborhood before he finally spotted Harry Groton in the Irish Eyes. For a moment he lingered just inside the door, feeling somewhat like a steely-eyed vulture as he watched Groton from behind a pane of frosted glass. Then he headed toward him, his eyes watching Groton closely as he neared the small booth where he sat.

  Groton was alone, his large hands wrapped around a glass of beer. He had a round face with slightly popped eyes. A thin red netting of broken veins lay across his nose, and his lips were raw and cracked, as if he’d just swept in from the desert wastes. His eyes were blue and heavy-lidded so that he often looked drowsy. He wiped his mouth quickly as Corman slid into the seat across from him.

  “How you doing?” Corman asked casually.

  “Okay,” Groton replied. One of his large furry eyebrows trembled slightly, then collapsed. “What’s new?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “You drinking anything?”

  “Maybe a short one,” Corman said. He walked back to the bar, ordered a beer of his own, then returned to the booth. “Here’s to you,” he said, then took a quick sip from the beer and returned the glass to the table. “You hang around this part of town a lot?”

  “Enough,” Groton said. “Used to shoot it some.”

  “You been shooting a long time,” Corman said.

  “Since I was eighteen,” Groton said. He laughed, but edgily, as if at himself.

  “Must have seen a lot,” Corman added.

  “You writing a book?”

  Corman forced a laugh. “Me? No. I’m a shooter. I leave the words to other people.”

  Groton wagged his finger at him. “That’s your mistake, partner.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so,” Groton said. “You know that saying, ‘a picture’s worth a thousand words’?”

 
; Corman nodded.

  “It’s bullshit,” Groton said with a sudden vehemence. “I’ll tell you what a picture’s worth. It’s worth thirty-five bucks a print. A few bucks more for color.” He lifted his glass slightly. “That’s what a picture’s worth.” He took a quick sip from the glass, then returned it loudly to the table. “I never had a picture up from page five. Front page? Forget it. I’m talking page five.”

  Corman could smell the air souring around him. Groton’s self-pity was like a musty odor, and the fact that he probably had a few legitimate reasons for it didn’t do a thing to relieve it.

  “You shoot blood and guts, you’re on the front page five, minimum four times a year,” Groton went on irritably. “But you shoot some rich little twit’s birthday party at the Met, you’re back with the motor pool and the boiler-room jobs.”

  Corman cleared his throat softly. “I had a shoot a few days ago,” he said. “A jumper on Forty-seventh Street.”

  “East or West?”

  “West. Good shots, too, but Pike said no.”

  Groton shrugged. “When a spade jumps out a window, that’s page eight, column one, no shots. That’s the way it’s always been. Nothing changes.”

  “She wasn’t black.”

  “Well, these days, even whites end up on the back pages.”

  “She had a college degree,” Corman said. “At least that’s what I heard.”

  Groton leaned back slowly, rubbed his stomach gently, groaned. “Gas,” he explained. “Lately, I get real bad gas.” He curled one of his large red hands into a fist, pounded it softly against his stomach. “I guess I’ll have to get off the sauce,” he said quietly, more or less to himself.

  “You never worked the news beat, did you, Groton?” Corman asked.

  Groton shook his head. “Not me. I got a different gig altogether. Society.” He belched quietly. “But even that beat, it has its secrets.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, you got to know how to shoot it.”

  Corman cocked his head to the left. If he took over Groton’s job, he’d need to know how to play the inside track.

  “You got to flatter the rich, that’s the secret,” Groton said. He laughed. “That’s the only secret there is.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this,” Groton said. “You don’t concentrate on their fancy clothes and shit.” He shook his head dismissively. “That’s what the young turks do, dumb fucks.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Just enough for atmosphere,” Groton told him. “But I’ll tell you something about the rich. They don’t give a shit about their clothes and their big fancy dining rooms. When it comes to publicity, that’s not what matters to them.”

  “What does?”

  “They want to be flattered all right,” Groton went on. “Who doesn’t? But in a certain way. They want the pictures to make them look like there’s something to them besides money. They want to believe that. It’s important to them. They want everybody to believe that.” He shrugged. “That’s why they like to hang out with writers and actors and people like that, and you always need to take pictures of them with that type of people, not just sipping champagne with some leather-skinned old boozer who married a shipping tycoon when Napoleon was a corporal.”

  It was the sort of tip Corman thought he could use if he ever found himself standing in a fancy ballroom somewhere, staring blankly at a line of giggling debutantes, his camera bag hanging from his shoulder like a ball and chain.

  “You eat good on my beat, too,” Groton added after a moment. “You know, always scarfing something from the hors d’oeuvre tray.”

  Corman allowed himself a quick laugh.

  Groton turned inward suddenly, as if his mind were taking inventory, recalling, year by year, the motion of his days. “All in all, it’s not a bad life,” he said finally, as if in conclusion. Then the conclusion fell apart, and a shadow passed over his face. “But it’s strictly back page.” He belched again, took another sip from the glass. “You live in midtown, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Couple blocks away.”

  “High rent?”

  “High enough.”

  “You’re still lucky to have it,” Groton said. “There aren’t many places left in Manhattan a regular working stiff can afford.”

  “Yeah, well, I may not be able to afford it much longer.”

  Groton scratched his ear. “How long you been living in New York?”

  “Long time.”

  “Well, I been here for almost fifty years,” Groton said. “But originally, I was from the wide open spaces. Way out west. My father could remember when they still called it Indian Country.”

  “Is that right?”

  “God’s truth.”

  Corman said nothing.

  Groton turned inward again, remained silent for a moment, then suddenly smiled, almost impishly. “Where never is heard a discouraging word,” he crooned lightly. “And the skies are not cloudy all day.”

  Night had fallen over the city by the time Corman finally left the bar, nodding quietly to Groton, who seemed hardly to know that he was going.

  Near home, the streets were filled with people who only came out after dark, their eyes still dim and puffy with the long day’s idleness. A black woman in a blond wig motioned to a couple of strolling West Point cadets. They eased away from her, laughing nervously. For a time, Corman followed them, taking pictures from behind, concentrating on the proud lift of their shoulders as they made their way down the avenue, carefully glancing away from the windows of porno shops, the mocking eyes of the whores who lined their path. He could feel the tension of their besieged rectitude, but as he continued to photograph them, he felt his sympathy slip away, and with it, his interest, found himself concentrating on other faces, bodies, styles of being, the street’s engulfing randomness, until he turned onto 45th Street and made his way home.

  Once in his apartment, he made dinner, sat with Lucy at the small table, and chatted about her day, the usual round of fourth-grade gossip. He listened quietly but found he could hardly remember what she was saying. It was as if she were already disappearing from his life, dissolving into those tiny dots Seurat had used to portray the parks and beaches of his own dissolving age.

  “Maybe we should go to a museum again sometime,” he said after a moment.

  “Okay,” Lucy said.

  “An art museum.”

  “I thought you liked pictures better.”

  “I like paintings too,” Corman said.

  “Okay, we could do that,” Lucy said. She took a large bite from the hot dog Corman had made for her and munched it energetically. “I like paintings.”

  Corman wondered if perhaps Lexie would have been more inclined to leave Lucy with him had he been a painter. At least he would have had a little studio somewhere, and she could have gotten the idea that Lucy was being introduced to art, something Lexie would value in a way she could never value the part of life Lucy had come to know by being with him, the streets, the sharp edge of the city, its fierce irony and darkly battered charm.

  He thought of the woman, then of the only witness to her fall, the man Lang had interviewed and the lookout had called Simpson. “I have to go out tonight,” he said. “Something I’m working on.”

  “Okay,” Lucy replied lightly. “I have lots of homework.”

  “I won’t be gone long,” he assured her.

  She didn’t seem to hear him. Instead she got up and headed for her room, her fingers already digging for one of the small pencils he was perpetually finding among the tangle of grotesquely knotted clothes he sorted for the wash.

  “I’ll try to be back before you go to bed,” he called after her, but she’d already disappeared into her room.

  * * *

  The building had once had a buzzer system, but it had fallen into disrepair. The front door was slightly ajar, and just inside, the tenants had written their names and apartment numbers a
cross the faded plaster walls. Simpson’s name was the third one on the list. His apartment number was 1–C. Before going to it, Corman took a few shots of the names. In a book, the picture would suggest their expendability, tell the world how little they mattered. In the right position, it would add a flavorful detail to the woman’s fall, leave no room for doubt as to just how far it was.

  Simpson opened his door unexpectedly wide and nodded crisply. “You’re the photographer?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  “Yes.”

  “Archie said a photographer was working the neighborhood.”

  “I talked to him this afternoon,” Corman said. He kept his eyes on the man in the doorway, noted the sharpness of his features, the predatory glint in his eyes. In a picture he would come off vaguely menacing, a man you wouldn’t want to meet on any terms but your own. “I took some pictures of the store,” he added.

  “Yeah, he told me,” Simpson said. “He said you were doing some kind of book. What about?”

  “The woman who fell,” Corman said.

  “Jumped,” Simpson said.

  “Yeah, jumped.”

  Simpson folded his arms over his chest and rooted his feet in place. “So, tell me about this book.”

  “It’s mostly pictures.”

  “You done something like it before?”

  “No, this would be my first one,” Corman said, “and I was hoping that …”

  Simpson pressed an open hand toward him. “Whoah, now, slow down,” he said. “I got to know a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, you saw some money, didn’t you?”

  “For the book? No.”

  “But you will see some, right?”

  “I may.”

  Simpson smiled cleverly. “Don’t start fucking with me. I’m not some goddamned streetfreak.”

  “I didn’t say …”

  “You want a piece of me, I got a right to have a piece of you,” Simpson said firmly. “The action. Know what I mean?”

  “I don’t think there’s going to be …”

  Simpson laughed. “You’re bullshitting me again.”

  Corman shook his head.

  “Yes, you are,” Simpson told him confidently. “Playing me for a fool.”