by Tim Dorsey
The maître d’ shrugged upside down.
“There’s no address. Only a phone number.”
“You can use the reverse directory,” said the maître d’.
“How do you do that?”
“Just call the phone company.”
The N-R line squealed into the subway station below Houston Street. Eugene Tibbs stood up and grabbed a handrail. Tibbs’s shift back in the Russian Tea Room had started like all the others, but the ending was a bit different. Tibbs had finished counting his tips and went to pack up his supplies for the night. He grabbed his briefcase from under the sink and opened it.
His blues were cured.
Tibbs slammed the lid shut and hurried out of the Tea Room. He’d been a paranoid mess ever since. He knew someone would come after the money, and they wouldn’t ask politely. Even if he gave it back, he was still dead. Only one option: leave the city as fast as possible and retire in millionaire’s style. He couldn’t stop shaking and looking over his shoulder. Why couldn’t he be cool like Ralph Krunkleton? What would the real urinal guy do in a jam like this?
The train doors opened, and Eugene stepped out of the car onto the Houston Street platform. He was quiet and alone. Then movement. Eugene’s head snapped to the left. Way, way down at the opposite end of the platform, someone stepped out of the last car.
Tibbs stared at the man, standing there casually, reading a newspaper like he had nothing to do. The man looked up from the paper at Tibbs and looked back down quickly.
Uh-oh. Don’t panic. Where did you see this once? Adrenaline spun the memory Rolodex in Eugene’s head. Yes, I remember now. The French Connection. Tibbs took a single step backward, through the still-open door of the subway car.
At the other end of the platform, Serge looked up from his paper as Tibbs disappeared back into the train. So that’s it, thought Serge. He wants to play French Connection. Well, two can tango! He took a step backward into his own car.
Tibbs stuck his head out of the train. The platform was empty again. Perspiration increased. He took a step out of the car and stared down the platform.
Serge’s head popped out of the last car. He saw Tibbs. He stepped back on the platform. Tibbs jumped back into the first car. Serge jumped back into the last car. Tibbs jumped out again. Serge jumped out. On, off, on, off.
The subway system put an end to the game. The train’s doors closed, and it pulled away into the tunnel.
Just Tibbs and Serge alone on the platform. They locked eyes. Eugene blinked. He took off running for the stairs up to Houston Street. Serge sprinted after him.
Eugene tripped and went sprawling on the steps. Mints, Bic razors, business cards everywhere. He turned around. Serge was gaining. He got up and started running again, coming out of the subway and reaching the street. Car noises, food smells. He evaluated each direction, then took off west.
Serge ran up the steps, grabbing a business card and reading it on the run.
They galloped all over lower Manhattan, through the Village and SoHo. Serge was faster, but Eugene knew the turf, running through restaurant kitchens and up service lifts. He crossed Bleecker Street and turned south, but Serge was still there, a block back.
A yellow taxi-van drove five women up Hudson Street, a recorded message playing in back: “This is Mary Wilson of the Supremes asking you to Stop! In the name of safety! Please buckle up.”
“Pull over,” said Teresa. She checked the address against her paperback. “This is the place.”
The BBB got out in front of the White Horse Tavern.
Rebecca pointed at the sidewalk. “Dylan Thomas bought it right there. The permanent hangover.”
They stared at the pavement.
“Should we be feeling good about this?” asked Sam.
A tanker truck was parked at the corner, next to a crane dangling an array of metal wands over a vintage Checker cab.
“Look,” said Teresa. “They’re shooting a movie.”
A technician turned on the rain machine, and the wands began to drizzle on the taxi.
“Roll film!”
Two people got out of the cab and kissed passionately.
Five Russians sprinted up the sidewalk. They ran through the rain, vaulted the hood of the cab and knocked over the embracing couple.
“Cut! Cut!”
The book club took a step back off the sidewalk as the Russians stampeded past them and disappeared into the darkness.
“Now we’re seeing the real New York,” Maria said cheerfully.
The Russians finally arrived at the address they had gotten from the reverse directory, using the urinal guy’s business card. They stared up at the grimy brick building, and it reminded them of the factories back in Leningrad. But they had heard Americans liked to spend a lot of money to live in depressing places. They walked quietly up the stairs and came to a landing with two doors.
“Which one?” asked Alexi.
“Take your pick,” said Ivan. “If it’s wrong, we’ll just try the other.”
Alexi stuck a lock pick in the handle. The door opened easily, as if by itself.
“Don’t be shy,” said a smiling woman with a glass of Chardonnay, holding the inside doorknob. The loft was cavernous, full of people in tank tops and black turtlenecks, nibbling fondue and sushi. Three spotlights lit up a large, blank canvas propped in the middle of the room. The stereo was extra loud, playing a synthesized mélange of electronic buzzes, beeps, chirps and sirens, the newest Nihilistic German discotheque music designed to make people think, “Gee, it’s got a great beat to dance to, but what would be the fucking point?”
The Russians mingled. More wine, more raw fish, more knocks at the door. The Eurotrash arrived. Someone rang a tiny brass bell; the crowd quieted and gathered around the canvas. The Russians strained for a better view from the back. A naked man came out of the bathroom spooled in Saran Wrap. He walked to the middle of the loft, produced his penis from the layers of plastic and whizzed on the canvas.
The crowd applauded to show they were hip, but not too much, to show they were hip.
Alexi turned to Ivan. “I think we have the wrong apartment.”
Eugene Tibbs stood panting at the corner of Broadway and Houston, looking back up the street. Finally lost him. He returned to his apartment, sluggishly climbing the stairs. Nihilistic music thumped from the apartment next door. Eugene stuck his key in the knob.
Inside the apartment, the Russians heard Tibbs’s key. “Someone’s coming!” They packed themselves in a closet. Lots of jostling, “Shhhh!” “No, you ‘Shhhh!’” They got settled in and peeked out through the slats in the accordion door.
Tibbs was ready to turn the doorknob when he noticed something. The talcum powder on his knob was smudged. He looked at the landing and saw footprints in the fine layer of white powder. Eugene tiptoed back toward the steps. He stopped when he heard someone at the base of the stairs. He slipped over to the landing’s window and climbed out onto the fire escape.
“What’s taking him so long?” asked Alexi. They slowly opened the closet door and ventured out. The place was a shambles. Drywall kicked in, wiring torn out, down feathers everywhere from slit pillows, jars of stuff dumped on the kitchen floor.
“Do we have to make such a mess every time we look for something?” said Ivan.
Alexi held a flowerpot in each hand and smashed them together. “We’re looking for something?”
Serge made it to the top of the stairs. “Two doors, hmmm. Eenie, meenie, miney moe.” He stuck a bobby pin in the lock.
“Someone’s coming!” The Russians piled back in the closet.
Serge opened the door. “Anybody home?” He turned on the lights and looked around at all the dumped-out drawers and broken stuff. “I could never live like this.”
He walked around the room, pawing through clothes, checking behind paintings.
“What’s he doing?” asked Vladimir.
“Shhhh!” said Ivan, peeking out the slats, strips
of light across his face.
Serge was checking under sofa cushions when he heard the doorknob. “Uh-oh. Someone’s coming.” He jumped into a second closet on the opposite side of the room and peeked through the slats.
The knob turned and the door creaked open. In walked five huge men in tuxedos with waist-length dreadlocks—the crazy Jamaican gang from Queens in a turf war over the urinal guy rackets. They had gone to the mattresses with the Sicilians over control of the West Side, and guess who got caught in the middle?
“Hey mon—anybody home?” The Jamaicans walked through the loft with TEC-9 machine guns at their sides.
Ivan peeked through the slats and whispered out the side of his mouth: “Silencers.”
The Russians screwed suppressors on their pistols.
The last Jamaican stopped and stood still. The others turned around. He held a finger to his lips, then pointed at the closet. They raised machine guns.
“Hey mon! Looks like nobody’s home.” The Jamaicans clicked their safeties off. “We’ll just have to come back another time.”
The front door of the loft crashed open, and in rushed a crew from the Balboa crime family assigned to protect Tibbs. They opened fire on the Jamaicans. The Jamaicans shot back. The Russians let ’er rip through the closet door at the Jamaicans and the Italians, who both fired back at the closet in a confusing burst of triangulated fire. Music pounded through the walls.
The Jamaicans ripped off long, puttering bursts of small-caliber fire, the Russians blazed with nine-millimeter rounds, the Balboa crew rat-a-tat-tatted with fifty-caliber tommy guns. Serge sat down in the bottom of his closet and pulled a coat over his head.
Two of the Rastafarians were hit immediately, and they went down spinning, their machine guns still firing, strafing the walls, the lighting fixtures and the Russians’ closet. Three of the Russians were hit, then two of the Balboas, then another Jamaican, lead flying everywhere. A burst of bullets cut through the kitchen, a line of bottles on the counter blowing up in succession: ketchup, olives, A.1., jerk sauce. The windows blew out; a sink faucet got hit and geysered. The closet door splintered above Serge. He covered his ears and gently rocked back and forth, singing to himself: “…I woke up in a SoHo doorway, a policeman knew my name…”
The shooting finally stopped. The room was still except for thumping German music. Nothing but a thick cloud of smoke, the smell of cordite, a spraying faucet and a swinging lamp that finally snapped and crashed. Almost everyone dead or dying. Ivan was left with just a flesh wound in the thigh, under a pile of dead Russians in the closet. He pushed them off, one by one, like sandbags, and finally pulled himself free. He fell through the closet door into the room.
There was a moan from the middle of the loft. One of the Jamaicans was coming around, pushing the fallen lamp off his head. Ivan limped toward him. The Jamaican saw the Russian coming and tried to get up, but couldn’t. He dragged himself across the floor, begging. Ivan kicked him in the stomach, then the head. He picked up the Jamaican and slammed him into the door that connected the apartment with the adjacent artists’ loft. The door gave way.
The Jamaican came crashing into the unit next door, distracting the crowd from a man in a pope costume defecating on the Sinead O’Connor CD box set.
Ivan entered the room next, kicking the Jamaican across the floor. He snatched a steaming fondue pot off the table.
“Pull your pants down! Now!”
The crowd applauded.
31
Eugene Tibbs knew he was past the fail-safe, his life forever changed. He couldn’t return to his apartment. He had to get out of town right now, no looking back.
But which way? La Guardia, JFK, Newark, Grand Central Station? Every pore in his skin wide open. A clock ticked in his head.
Penn Station was the closest. Eugene made his way into Chelsea and north on Seventh Avenue, people pushing racks of clothes across the street. Eugene spun around. What was that? Everywhere he looked, he saw enemies. Is there something odd about that guy feeding the pigeons? That woman eating a sandwich in the park? The man pushing a shopping cart with a ten-foot ball of aluminum foil? His legs felt like lead; he forced them to carry him to Thirty-fourth Street.
Tibbs entered the train station and began browsing brochures. Where to go? It had to be far, far away. California? Arizona? Oregon? He found an attractive pamphlet with palm trees and went to the Amtrak window.
Serge was on stakeout across the street from Tibbs’s crib.
He kicked himself for losing Eugene’s trail. This was his only chance. All he could do was hope that Tibbs came back, but he knew his chances were slim. He sat on a bench reading an article in the Post about Mariah Carey’s secret source of inner strength. Serge turned the page and looked up at the SoHo loft. He still couldn’t believe the police hadn’t arrived yet. He had expected the place to be crawling, TV trucks, gawkers, the unit sealed off. All that gunfire—hadn’t anyone called the cops? Actually, they had, but it was to report loud German party music that had drowned out the shooting.
The cops weren’t anywhere to be seen, but Serge soon realized he had other company. Watching the apartment from the corner across the intersection were Ivan and a Jamaican, nursing hangovers. The pair were the newest toasts of the avant-garde art community, and the revelry had lasted till dawn. They even scored. Now they were paying for it, huddled in the cold over Starbucks.
The Jamaican’s name was Zigzag, and he and Ivan had just gone into business together. With everyone else dead, there was no point continuing to fight. The deal was sealed when Ivan got the dawn phone call: The Colombians had just assassinated Mr. Grande by placing a bomb in his riding mower.
Serge had never been good at waiting. He was pacing manically now, and Ivan and Zigzag picked him up on their radar. Serge finally came to the end of his rope. He ran across the street, cars honking. He marched right up the stairs, kicked in the door and started going through Eugene’s stuff as if the room wasn’t full of bodies.
Ivan and Zigzag looked at each other.
“Come on!” said Serge. “There’s got to be a clue where he’s going! An address book with relatives! Anything!…”
The phone rang. Serge stared as the answering machine clicked on. “You’ve reached Big Apple Urinal Guys…”
Beeeeep.
“This is Amtrak calling to confirm your reservation on The Silver Stingray, departing for Miami tomorrow at noon…”
Serge casually walked back down the stairs, feigning an expression of futility. He sauntered around the corner until he was out of sight, then took off sprinting.
Ivan and Zigzag looked at each other again and shrugged.
Serge loping across the garment district. Thirty-seventh Street, Thirty-sixth, Thirty-fifth, flying through racks of clothes being wheeled across the street, people yelling and shaking fists. He ran past a pretzel wagon stand, which exploded, throwing a Bruce Willis stunt double through the air and into a parked car.
Serge stopped and helped him up. “Are you okay?”
“Cut! Cut!”
Serge took off again, charging down the steps at Penn Station and running to the Amtrak window.
“Miami, please.”
Serge carefully tucked the ticket in his wallet and went over to the main concourse to check out the giant schedule board with the latest arrival and departure info.
“What do you want to do tonight?” asked Maria.
“It’s Monday,” said Rebecca. “Woody’s playing clarinet at the Carlyle.”
“That’s a great idea!” said Teresa.
“I’m not sure I want to see Woody Allen,” said Sam.
“Why not?”
“Because of what he did to Mia.”
“We don’t know Mia,” said Rebecca. “What’s she ever done for us?”
“He slept with her daughter, for heaven’s sake!”
“It’s not a sex show,” said Teresa. “He’s just going to play the clarinet.”
“Mia went w
ith the Beatles to see that Maharishi guy,” said Rebecca. “And she married Sinatra and played the on-screen mother of Satan.”
“So?” said Sam.
“The whole thing was shaky.”
“There it is,” said Maria. “There’s the schedule board.”
The BBB walked across the Penn Station concourse and stopped in front of the big board.
“That’s our train, The Silver Stingray,” said Teresa. “Leaves in twenty hours. Let’s find the departure platform so we’re not late when it’s time to go.”
“What about Woody Allen?” asked Rebecca. “Are we going or not?”
“Excuse me,” said a man’s voice. “Did I hear you say you’re going to see Woody Allen?”
A limo pulled to the curb on the seven thousand block of Park Avenue.
The Café Carlyle doorman had a smile and white gloves. “Good evening, ladies.” The women checked their coats and the maître d’ led them to a table under muted frescoes. He bowed and left.
“Look how intimate the seating is,” said Rebecca, gesturing at an empty chair beside a piano just feet away. “He’s going to be sitting right there!”
Sam leaned and whispered to Teresa: “I can’t believe we let him come along.”
“Shhh! He’ll hear you.” They looked over and smiled at Serge, who was setting up a miniature digital recorder under a napkin to bootleg Woody.
A round of drinks arrived. Then a few more.
“Let’s check out guys,” said Rebecca. “Oooo, I like that one over there.”
“Which one? The overaged hippie?”
“No, the business type in the turtleneck. I’d sleep with him.”
“You would?”
“Sure, if I knew I wouldn’t catch anything and wouldn’t get pregnant again, and knew that he would still respect me and call, but not call too much and get cloying and possessive. And if he doesn’t have a wife, and doesn’t lie to me if he does, because I wouldn’t want to wreck another woman’s home, and…”
“In other words, in some fantasy astral plane in a parallel universe,” said Teresa.