My cigarette, that flaming nib. Burned my fingers. Ditched down the grille.
“Myers, are you sure?”
“I’ve been waiting for her to turn on her fucking phone. I just knew if I waited long enough, it would happen! It looks like you were right about her. She’s on a fucking train, heading north!”
“Myers! Listen to me.” He was talking too fast, he was way worked up. “Why would she turn on her phone?”
“Just get your ass up to the helipad in Hunts Point! We’ve got our ripper trace and we’re on our way over there with the bread truck! We’ll meet you there.”
I tried to tell him I thought it was a trick, that she was too smart to turn on her phone when she’s making a run for it, but I was speaking to myself. Myers was too keyed up to listen. He was talking some gibberish about how the two of them went way back, about how he just knew that eventually those feelings she had denied would get the best of her. So of course, he was saying, of course she turned it on, on purpose. She knew he had been waiting. It was a language. There was no point in telling him I thought she had done it for a different reason, but what the hell? We all had a part to play, and I was playing mine. I had hoped to lead him away from her. I felt, once again, like I was the one being led.
I was in my car, driving. I had the sirens going. I had the pedal down all the way. This glinty silvery sun, off windshields off car chrome, off the flowy East River. The helipad was right by the water, far past Hunts Point. Myers was already there with his two boys, both carrying equipment. The four of us crowded into a police chopper. I had ridden in choppers before but this time the lift-off made my stomach revolt. There was a dizzy spin of sky and turf, the uncertain sway and lean forward as the pilot eased the stick down and we began moving over buildings all blur. Myers was yelling at one of his people who had a small box with a GPS screen and some blinking lights. I didn’t want to be looking at that blinking light, that fine track that a train takes on its journey—unchanging and sure—there would be no sudden dips and shifts, no swerve to the left like some runaway car in a pursuit video. The train was a steady long snake. I was thinking how beautiful the South Bronx looked from so far up. The chunky thick tenements had a French toast color, the streets between all grays and blacks like the piping on a fine suit. It sure looked greener from up there, especially along the edges. Highways crisscrossed like arteries pumping fat corpuscles. There, on the tiny GPS screen, overlaid with a dispatcher’s map, was Ava Reynolds, her red blip sitting on that long silver snake that moved under trees, under highways, and sometimes under streets. The Tremont Avenue stop was clearly visible from above. We circled, Myers expecting to catch sight of her stepping off, but her blip did not move, and was not moving. The train, so smoothly long, stopped at Fordham. At the Botanical Garden, it was lost under beautiful green shrubbery. Her blip did not step off.
“You were right,” Myers said to me, looking almost grateful. “She’s going home all right.”
“She supposed to take you with her?”
“You get to know things about people after a while. I can’t explain it to you. I can’t talk logic. I can only say that I felt she would do this. It’s the same way I feel that once I see her, find her, I will also find the money.”
“I don’t know, man.” I was shaking my head. “This doesn’t look right.” At the same time I was wondering, well, what if it is right? Spook dead, David dead, the two of them reunited at some train station, and me standing there looking like the real sucker. I can’t prosecute anybody, I can’t arrest anybody. I can only stand there watching the two of them walk off into the sunset. And all I’d get for it would be the privilege of returning to my life, to the same tired turf.
The pilot’s name was Jensen. He had a slow Brooklyn drawl and a good knowledge of the Bronx. With our train leaving the Williamsbridge station and Myers talking about landing, Jensen calmly informed us the closest helipad was Pelham. This put us at least three stations ahead.
I remember my legs feeling all springy rubber when I got off the chopper, that it seemed somehow I was still in motion. The lieutenant who met us there was named Mitchell. By the time we piled into a pair of squad cars with him and three other officers, the red blip was only a station away. I was amazed at how good Myers was at mobilizing the forces around him, and like a precision clockwork machine we were at the station just minutes before the train rolled in, already accompanied by a station manager and train dispatcher.
When the train rolled in, the Metro-North police had already sealed off all the exits. Once the train stopped, it wasn’t going anywhere. The conductor kept the doors shut for us, until Myers and his boys effectively narrowed down that red blip to a specific train car. By that time, I wanted a cigarette so bad I almost ate one.
“It’s this one!” Myers yelled, peering in through the windows. Not easy to see with all that reflection. Did I mention that he had been calling her cell phone? Over and over he had phoned, but she had not picked up. She had not said a word, had not bothered to acknowledge him. I had quit trying to tell him—I had quit. I hung back when the conductor finally opened the doors of the car, only that one. Myers stormed in with his boys, plus about six cops. I stayed by the doors, watching them all fan out across the narrow aisle, this way, that. There were only six passengers in a car that seats 112. Myers rang the number again. The guy holding the small GPS unit said, “It should be that seat there
because the blip is still there.” The seat was empty, except for that cell phone jammed deep into the tight space between cushion and armrest
the ringer disabled, though the phone vibrated with his call.
23.
He had the newspaper folded in one hand, the cell phone in the other. Walking first to the corner, then back to the newsstand. Stood right by the subway entrance, swaying like he might just get blown down the stairs by the rush of people, the crowded to-and-fro.
He read the article twice through. Why shouldn’t he believe she was running for her life? It went far to explain her erratic behavior, her having whacked him—her inability to say. It seemed she was avoiding words. There was no Monk now to help him do the math. The fucker had clicked off and Alex couldn’t get him, getting instead the voice mail, as if Monk had already taken what he needed and was now pounding words out of his typewriter. Alex would have to make it up as he went along. There was no way he was walking back to the shoe store. Something had changed. He was not trying to blur events or speed through them, blot out or slide past them. It involved him. He was part of the story. Monk was right: It’s not about how meaningless things are; it’s what you do to give things meaning.
He thought now about that ID card with the dead guy’s picture on it, that authorization letter she had on her. It was addressed to a bank just a few blocks away. He had no problem remembering that, no problem walking up that gentle slope leading to 149th Street. The masses of people: She could be any one of those shimmery blurs in the distance.
He crossed Melrose, checking both sides of the street to see if maybe he had gotten it wrong. Once he crossed Van Cortlandt, he saw the bank.
The yellow rose will turn to cinder
and new York City will fall in
before we are done so hold me,
my young dear, hold me.
—Anne Sexton, “Rapunzel”
No despair like the present. No despair like the now to make her walk fast, look behind, check traffic lights. The mass of masses bubbling all around her. It could be written on any face that looked at her, every casual glance that might do a double-take: “I know you.” That cashier at the Hudson News when she was in Grand Central, black lady with shimmery Cleopatra hair, looking down on all comers with the same haughty arrogance royalty learned to project from birth, giving everyone short shrift as they stood in lines before her. A magazine, a newspaper, a stick of gum. She entered her prices fast, returned that change fast, hardly a glance, like she thought very little of people who wasted their money on such things. S
he liked to keep things moving, but the ones who came to her with a stack got a lingering stare as she typed in those prices. She got that raised eyebrow as the woman went through her papers, giving Ava the eye, the eye, three times the eye.
“You an actress?”
“Excuse me?”
“I said, are you an actress? A dancer? A model? You have six different newspapers. You waiting for a review?”
The question had too much bite. It was a school feeling, as if the teacher was glaring down on her.
“No,” she said, “I’m waiting for my change.”
Was every eye on her? The baseball cap could not hide her. Being in the subway scared her. Tunnel walls flowing by in the windows. A screech, a wail, a sharp curve—the lights blinked. At that early hour on the northbound 5 train hardly anyone so in her car she was totally alone and she didn’t like it. Call it red light green light or maybe it was yellow, the train hit a slow curve and struggled to chug. In one of those blinking-light moments when the third rail is not in contact with the car, the lights went out and stayed out. A total black, a creak to stop. A steady hum, then the snap of those smoky emergency lights. Reminded her of some solitary late-night jazz club where the pretty girl has that last drink at the empty bar before going home. Going home? Where was she going that was home?
The newspapers did not help. Flipping through them fast, she saw. Most were just words, two of them had pictures. The waves came. Like retching, like shock. Folded into a corner seat. Seeing David’s name in the papers made it official. Their two names together sealed the deal. The train jumped forward, slow like the nudge of a friend. Hey. You okay? The lights blinked on bright. Black tunnel walls moving past windows. A relief to climb out to sunlight, but people, so many people rushing. So many eyes looking, staring, turning. Glances rebounding back to her. Maybe today she would not stand out, but how, when she felt everyone staring at her? In a bad dream, her steps went slow motion as she hurried her walk up 149th Street. She was reading building numbers. Went the wrong way first, and crossed Third Avenue. Right near that big department store, that long window of shoes. She felt an Alex pulse, paused, got stuck there as if waiting. The South Bronx is truly a small town. But the numbers were wrong, the focus was off. She doubled back, she doubled away.
The place was just off Van Cortlandt. It was a sharp memory blast, the same way we know things in dreams, with David walking alongside her looking as grim and as humorless as she had ever seen him.
“You have to be fast,” he said.
“I know,” she said back, hating the interruption.
“Faster.”
(Was it David or was it Alan, expecting results?)
The place was not large. To the left, a bank of tellers behind glass. To the right, a few desks, a stairway leading down. There was still that thick cushiony carpet, that smell of cheap colognes clashing. She went down the thickly padded staircase and walked right up to the lady behind the bars in the cage.
the soiled uniform of the nazi
has been unravelled and reknit and resold.
—Anne Sexton, “Walking in Paris”
He was in the kitchen washing dishes when he heard the sound. Instinctively he knew someone was in the house. He picked up the serrated steak knife and crept into the living room. He had just passed the painting with the blonde lying on the island when the man crashed into him. Mink plunged the serrated knife into the man’s gushy soft middle. It gave like a pillow.
The man fell back against the wall with an airless groan, teeth clenched, eyes rolling. “Ah shit,” he said. “What have you done?”
The man was a cop, blood spreading across the light blue shirt. His head tossed, his hat fell off.
“What did you do?” he muttered, eyes glassing up like he was slipping into a trance. He grabbed Mink’s hand, still on the warm, quivering knife.
Mink kept pushing and twisting the knife into his gut even though he could see it was a cop. The policeman sagged, sad gray eyes open and unfocused. He pushed Mink off, who was too stunned to do anything. He just watched, mystified, as the cop went over to the couch and sat down. The knife in his gut was moving.
“What did you do?” he mumbled, blank eyes staring empty.
There were other cops in the kitchen, their walkietalkies chattering. It sounded like they were sitting at the table, playing cards. Mink was sitting on the floor, staring at the dead cop on the couch. Mink was thinking, Come on, man. Get up. You’re faking. He kept waiting for the cop’s face to break out from rigid stone, for the eyes to snap to focus and the joke to be over. But the cop was dead.
The door buzzer woke him up.
Mink hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He had painted all night and into the morning, cranked so high that when he took a stop, sleep fell on him like a blanket. The first big painting, colorful, naked, was no blocks and cubes, nothing hidden under shapes or edges. It was real skin, real waves crashing to shore, a real blonde on a real island. He had only slumped against the couch while waiting for Monk, fell into wicked dream and realized he had killed it. Stumbling to the door to find Monk standing there.
“I killed him,” Mink said. “I fucking murdered him in my sleep.”
Monk blinked. “Who’s that?”
“The fucking cop,” Mink said, as Monk came in.
Mink added it up as he went, about how from time to time every artist has a cop inside, the keeper of authority and control. The one that says, hey, you can’t go there. You can’t do that. Don’t go in that room.
“I stuck him right in the gut. The cop that kept me from painting. Some heavy metaphorical trip.”
Monk wore a quizzical, tilted grin. “So I take it you’ve been painting,” he said.
It could have been seeing Mink in that paint-spattered Ice Cube T-shirt, an old one from PREDATOR days that he had said was always his lucky work tee. Monk had never seen him in it.
“I take it you’ve been writing,” Mink said.
It could have been seeing Monk in that tattered PJ Harvey T-shirt, an old one from her 50 FT QUEENIE days when she wore a leopard coat. It was sleeveless and seemed to have been nibbled by rats around the collar. It was his lucky work tee. Mink had never seen him in it.
The glow was on both of them. They seemed startled, maybe a little clumsy. They were not used to being around each other when working. It was a new thing, and it left them feeling a little uncertain about how to proceed. There was all of a sudden no need to kill time, to fight clocks, to have a reason to talk. They were suddenly both busy.
“I brought the book,” Monk said.
Mink leafed through the pages, scores of pictures of Eva Braun. Once he saw her face again, bells of recognition rang. He knew now this was the face that had stuck in his memory since he first noticed it while watching TV with Monk. It had slept in him until he caught sight of the blonde in Alex’s bed.
“This is the face,” he said.
Words were not coming so easily. Something had changed. Mink realized there was no way he could talk about it. There was only a need to show him, to share this thing that had happened to him. He had fear about it, but he also had a great desire to show Monk what he had done, what had changed. He shut the book.
“Come see,” he said.
Mink led him into the studio. The blond girl was lying on the island. The island was obviously Puerto Rico. The shape of it was clear. There was even a small bit of El Morro off the coast. She was stretched out, as if to soak up every last bit of sun and take up every last inch of island. She was, so far, naked, except for that red armband with a white circle in the middle which Mink chose to leave blank for now. Her skin tone, that sunny sheen, had the feel of the all-American girl Vargas was always putting on the bellies of B-17s. Mink’s color attack had taken a new form, a chrome realism almost like sprayed-on Sorayama, a pastel glow like Rolf Armstrong, and yet the body had the sharp bite of a pinup by Peter Driben or Walt Otto, less the soft watercolor feel of these famous dream women. Monk’s face
changed when he saw her.
It’s not finished,” Mink said.
Monk was chewing on a thumb, eyes glued to the painting.
“I was going to tell you,” he said, “that the night we fought, I saw this blond woman climbing up the fire escape, all the way up to Alex’s apartment. I thought I imagined it. It was a kind of waking dream, the spark plug I needed to get started on my book. Then Alex came to me this morning and told me about this blond woman he woke up with.” Monk came closer to the painting, as if he wanted to breathe in the oils.
“She climbed up the fire escape?”
“That’s right,” Monk said. “Her name is Ava Reynolds.”
“Ava who? You mean you know her?”
“She climbed into Alex’s bed.”
“I saw her in Alex’s bed.”
“Did you see her in this morning’s EL DIARIO?“
Monk pulled the newspaper from his backpack.
“Holy fuck, it’s her, isn’t it?”
Monk was staring at the painting.
“It’s just the best thing you’ve ever done,” he said.
24.
“Get the fuck off me,” she said.
The two guys who grabbed her couldn’t be feds. They were both big-shirted baggy-panted street clichés, regulation baseball caps set at the proper angles. One of them had a jacket on, could have been leather—and inside that pocket, a gun. He made sure she saw it.
“You just come and shut up,” Leather Jacket said, again flashing the pistol. She jerked her arm away and tried to pull herself free of the other one, but he had a strong grip.
She had just left the bank. She had walked down the block and had just reached the corner when the two approached, one from either side.
“I said get off!”
The shove and pull got worse. People walking by now started to pull away, to stare. The two guys were trying to move her along fast, across Van Cortlandt. People started to gather.
South by South Bronx Page 20