19 Purchase Street

by Gerald A. Browne

  Gainer opened a couple of the morgue boxes, glanced in, saw they weren’t individual enclosed spaces but one large space sectioned off by slatted platforms on rollers. The crematorium was adjacent. The door to the crematorium furnace was open and a shovel was sticking out of it. Alongside the furnace was a strange-looking metal contraption, a boxlike table three feet high by two feet square with a six inch square hole in its top surface. A turning handle like that of an old-fashioned meatgrinder, only sturdier, was attached to one side; it was locked with rust. Gainer looked down into the hole and found no clue to the function of this piece of equipment, which was a device to pulverize bones. Better not to have known that.

  He and Leslie continued on. They were more acclimated to the deterioration now. They turned right into another passageway, this one of brick with fewer windows, twice as wide as the other and just as straight though not quite as long. This brick passageway was partitioned off on one side so that in effect it was two passageways—parallel, a narrow one and a wide one with ten foot openings between them at regular intervals, an arrangement something like the barriers bullfighters scurry behind. (Actually the narrower corridor was a storage area for stretcher-carts, wheelchairs and other such equipment.)

  There were no wards off this brick corridor, only one huge hall that had obviously been used for entertainments. It had a stage and slots high up through one wall for motion picture projection and spotlighting. An upright piano stood in the center of the hall. Lonely, abused piano, looking as though half the world had plinked or pounded on it. A gilt decal on its face said it was a “James and Halstrom Transposing Keyboard” and that it was the kind that had been awarded a “First Premium, New Orleans Exposition.”

  Gainer tapped several dead keys.

  Leslie hit on a live one right off.

  Elsewhere in other buildings they read faded graffiti on the walls of cubicles where immigrants had been detained. Some they were easily able to translate, such as prendre la lune avec les dents (to seize the moon with the teeth) and la bonne blague! (what a joke!), but they weren’t sure of the meanings of besser ein halb ei als eitel Schale (better half an egg than empty shells) and tutto di novello par bello (everything new seems beautiful). They more or less figured out that il danaro è fratello del danaro meant money is the brother of money, and of course there were many quelle affaire! and Eireann go Brat! printed around in various sizes by different hands. A tiny inscription written vertically up the side of a bedpost said in plain English, “Fuck this place forever.”

  They saw a pair of old black leather hightop shoes hung by their laces from an overhead pipe six feet out of reach. They came across a tipped-over wooden file cabinet, a large one with many drawers. The drawers were packed with five-by-five index cards and each drawer had an elaborate label on its brass-plated pull, designating Italian, Dutch, German, Irish, Polish and so forth. A number of drawers had the word “Denied” on them. Leslie pulled out one entire drawer of “Denied” and carried it back to the commissioner’s house.

  Before going to the attic, Gainer checked on the billion, was relieved to find it untouched.

  “See what a lot of money will give you,” Leslie said.

  “Give me?”

  “The worries.”

  “And first class everything,” Gainer said. “Anyway, I was checking mainly because our millions are in there.”

  Leslie liked the our. “I’ll bet being rich will change you,” she said.

  “I’m counting on it,” he told her.

  Gainer found a rattan porch chair in one of the second floor rooms of the commissioner’s house. Its seat was broken through and it was dusty down into the crevices of its weave. He tied a rope to it and threw it into the harbor, washed it by yanking it around, put a board in its seat, and his pillow. Sat with feet up on the edge of a dormer, looking out.

  Leslie screwed open a bottle of that thousand dollar Brunello di Montalano 1945. She moved the air mattress close to Gainer’s chair. They passed the bottle, swigged from it. Leslie sat with her legs crossed tight to her, the file drawer of “Denied” in front of her. She pulled cards randomly from it. They had last names, first name, age, sex and nationality on them, and various notations. Such as: Ruzkowski, Matthew, twenty-nine, male, Polish, escaped convict.

  “Take a card, any card.” Leslie held several out to Gainer.

  He chose one and read it aloud. “O’Toole, Mary, twenty-three, female, Irish. Infected with moral turpitude.”

  “Wonder who she caught it from.”

  “Her resistance was low.”

  “Probably a pretty lass who didn’t believe she was.” Leslie read another card aloud. This one was a thirty-five-year-old Bulgarian polygamist, said to have eight, perhaps twelve wives. “Poor fellow,” Leslie sympathized.

  Gainer agreed.

  There were designated prostitutes, pederasts, scabs, anarchists, and all manner and variety of criminals in the file, but by far the most common reason for being denied entry was lack of money. Card after card had the word “Pauper” scrawled across it.

  Leslie put the file aside, took two swigs of wine, stretched her back and said, as though she was talking to the atmosphere: “I’m pregnant, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Pregnant, me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That’s another way of putting it.”

  “I know you’re not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Hell, I can count. Only in the movies guys can’t count when it comes to that.”

  “Anyway,” Leslie said, “suppose I was?”

  Gainer allowed his attention to be distracted by the Staten Island Ferry, yellow-orange, headed for Battery Park Terminal at the tip of Manhattan. He hadn’t been on it since the great escape from Mount Loretto. Norma, as she’d been that day, came clearly to him, even the gray cotton dress she’d worn.

  “Don’t be evasive,” Leslie said.

  “I’m not.”

  “So, answer.”

  “If you were pregnant, Rodger would be upset.”

  It wasn’t the answer Leslie wanted. She got up quickly, walked to the opposite side of the attic. Gazed out the dormer there at the roofs of the other buildings and skylights. On the ridge of an eave, a female pigeon was submitting to being hopped on. “This place is thick with spirits,” Leslie said. “Didn’t you feel that today?”

  “Sort of.”

  “What were all those tracks?” she asked.

  “Rats.”

  “Maybe they were rabbits.”

  “Only rats leave tail tracks like that. Probably brown rats, the Rattus norvegicus, or sewer rat.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a rat expert.”

  “One whole week when I worked at the library I made rats my subject for research. New York is full of rats.”

  A knowing scoff from Leslie.

  “What it amounts to is two and a half rats to every person. Fortunately rats only have a three or four year life span. A four-year-old is older than a man at ninety. No animal wiser than a four-year-old rat. He can steal the bait out of any trap and seems to know exactly when to expect an exterminator. Old buildings like these are great places for them.”

  Leslie hugged herself, but she was interested. “How big do they get?”

  “Ten inches, not counting tail. But that size would weigh in at a pound and a half, maybe two pounds. That’s a lot of rat.”

  “I still think the money is safe without our staying here.”

  “You go, I’ll stay.”

  “Rodger’s rifle is in the Riva. Should I get it?”

  Gainer didn’t see any reason to.

  That night Leslie moved the tin of Carr’s water biscuit crackers, the oranges, especially the round of Edam and all the other eatables, to the furthest corner of the attic. She got under the mohair throw and pressed tight against Gainer while they watched the four inch portable Sony television. Cute little mice were one thing, big snarly rats
quite another.

  Several times she sat up and shined her little flashlight around the attic.

  “I love you,” Gainer told her every half hour.

  That helped

  About three o’clock the following afternoon Chapin and Vinny showed up in a motored skiff they had rented from a place in Sheepshead Bay. They brought along an eight pack of cold Heineken, five pounds of barbecued ribs and some french fries. Chapin looked rested, relaxed and Vinny was in high spirits.

  Vinny expressed his appreciation for the view out of the dormer on the harbor side. “Hey, you can see all the way to Wallabout Bay,” he said. (Wallabout is a spot in upper Brooklyn where the East River makes such a sharp bend it forms an elbowlike backwater. The ebb tide deposits all sorts of things in that backwater and anything loose that comes down river also gets carried into it—a lot of driftwood, lobster traps, fuel drums and particularly corpses. The bodies of bridge jumpers, unwanted newborns, out-of-favor wise-guys and what have you. Corpses tend to pop up in the spring when the water warms. Wallabout is the first place Harbor police look for anyone missing and believed to be dead. They pull out twenty-five to thirty bodies a year there.)

  “We thought we’d take over for a couple of days,” Chapin said. “You must be getting tired.”

  “That’s okay, we’re fine,” Gainer told them.

  Leslie disagreed, made a face.

  Chapin and Gainer watched the Dallas-Giant game. The tiny screen miniaturized the players, seemed to lessen the importance of their feats. Gainer and Chapin bet on completions and first downs at a hundred dollars a whack and on total yards gained, ten a yard. The field was hot and Dallas didn’t strain, just kept ahead. The Giants believed they were good because they tried all out and were beaten by only eight points. Gainer came out eighteen hundred ahead. Chapin paid from a wad.

  “New York should have a winning football team,” Chapin commented. “Could if they’d let the Mob own it.”

  “At least then it would lose only when it was told,” Gainer said.

  Vinny laughed. “We’ve been watching the obituaries,” he said.

  “Too early for that,” Gainer said.

  “How about putting a call into Hine,” Chapin said.

  Gainer wasn’t for it.

  “Pretend you’re calling from Zurich, just checking in or something.”

  Gainer did wish he knew what was going on at Number 19, what Darrow’s reaction had been when he saw that much of The Balance gone. Like Orpheus, looking at his own death.

  “Anyway, when do you think we’ll be able to unload the money and take our cut?” Chapin asked.

  “No more than a week, Hine said.”

  “You plan to stay over here for the entire week?”

  “Long as I have to,” Gainer said.

  “Doesn’t seem fair. This is a rat hole.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “It’s not exactly Caneel Bay,” Leslie put in.

  Gainer told her: “No reason for both of us to be here. Why don’t you go get a good night’s rest?”

  “Maybe I will,” she said.

  Gainer didn’t think he should leave the money, didn’t think he could. He’d been with it all the way and something kept telling him to stick with it. However, he thought, possibly he just wasn’t listening to another side of him that complained he was being too cautious, stubbornly tough on himself.

  Chapin took him aside, told him: “Listen handicapper, really, Vinny and I don’t mind hanging out here, keeping watch over the stash for a couple of days or so.”

  “Thanks but—”

  “What is it … you don’t trust me, or what?”

  “It’s not that, it’s—”

  “Do you good to take a break. I know Leslie could sure use one.”

  Gainer glanced past Chapin to Leslie. She really wouldn’t leave without him, he thought. He ought to consider her, what she was having to go through because of her caring about him. The least he could do was make it a little easier. Loud enough for her to hear he asked Chapin: “Can you take it here for a couple of days?”

  “No problem.”

  “Okay, say until Tuesday morning.”

  Leslie had already gathered up their ASPs and was headed for the stairs.

  An hour later she was at her place on East Seventy-fifth taking the longest bath of her life. As the suds of a huge bar of Penhaligon soap fluffed like worked-up cream on her, she thought that her allotment of two and a half rats definitely weren’t here. Did that mean someone had five?

  Gainer showered. He had noticed the glow of a tiny red light on the wall next to the dimmer in the foyer, had never noticed it before. When he was drying off he asked Leslie about it.

  “That’s Rodger,” she said casually.

  “How is it him?”

  “When the light’s on it means he’s home next door in case I want to see him for some reason. You know, if I feel like talking or have a problem or whatever.”

  Gainer thought of Rodger only a wall away, a man he’d never met but had come to think of as someone he knew well.

  “Don’t let it bother you, lover,” Leslie said.

  “It doesn’t,” Gainer lied.

  When Leslie was out of the tub and dried, she put on a white floor-length cotton robe, so fine a cotton it was nearly transparent. She had Gainer sit before her dressing table and be shaved. He let her but didn’t completely relax, pressed her breasts with the round of his shoulder, kneed her mound as though not knowing he was doing it while she stroked away his three-day bristles. She was astraddle his thigh when she finished beneath his chin.

  He was hard.

  As though she hadn’t noticed until that moment, she did a little “Oh!” A mixture of surprise, delight and mock fright. She kneeled, kissed his cock as she would his mouth.

  He noticed she still had the open straight razor in her hand.

  “It’s been days,” she said.

  “Has it?”

  “Only in the movies women don’t keep count when it comes to that.”

  They laughed.

  “But before anything,” she told him, “I need to have my aura cleansed. Will you do it for me, lover?”

  “Sure thing.”

  She removed her robe and lay front down on the bed. Gainer started at her feet and performed his version of her air-scouring motions with his hands. He felt foolish at first but then he got into it, scoured vigorously and as close as possible to her skin without touching her.

  “Don’t forget to discard the negativity,” she said.

  Gainer imitated what he’d seen her do, snapped his hands as though flinging a filthy substance from them. He cleansed the length of her the required three times back, three times front.

  “That’s better,” she murmured.

  He was still hard.

  MONDAY brought rain.

  Not on and off sprinkles but a steady drizzle with umbrella destroying gusts.

  Gainer had to put out of mind going up to the Bronx for an afternoon of soccer. That prospect was an additional reason persuading him to leave the money and Ellis. Damn rain. He didn’t mope about it but mentioned it to Leslie a couple of times while they stayed in, read and nibbled and napped feet to feet and sometimes toes to crotch at opposite ends of a down-filled lit de repos.

  They were like that when he jumped up and started to dress.

  “Where are you going, lover?” Leslie asked.

  “Just thought I’d take a run out to Ellis to make sure everything’s all right.” A twinge of distrust had gotten to him, shot through him like an all-over gas pain. That money out there was his life.

  “Stop worrying.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Chapin and Vinny won’t let anything happen to the money.”

  Gainer got as far as the door, slowly turned and came back to her. Still feeling uneasy.

  They went out early for some honest pasta at II Monello and then used the intermission at the Winter Garden to sneak into
the second part of the Twyla Tharp Dancers.

  Got to bed and to sleep before midnight.

  Again, around four, the security of the money out on Ellis was so heavy on Gainer that he had to get up and decide whether or not to go check on it. He got as far as one shoe on.

  He slept badly until seven.

  It was an ideal morning, the rain having washed the air. Not a cloud, the sun had the sky all to itself. Today’s weather should have been yesterday’s, Gainer thought.

  He and Leslie returned to Ellis. The money was exactly as they’d left it.

  But not the attic.

  There were soft drink and beer cans, pizza crusts and a couple of battered pie tins full of stubbed out cigarettes. Half-finished sandwiches, Hostess Twinkie wrappers, at least a dozen porno magazines. Evidently Chapin had made himself right at home.

  Chapin and Vinny were glad to leave the place. Stayed only long enough to ask if Gainer had heard anything from Hine and to say that a Harbor Police Patrol launch had cruised close by along the east seawall that dawn but hadn’t appeared to be suspicious. Probably a once-a-week routine patrol.

  As soon as Chapin and Vinny were gone, Leslie set about cleaning the attic. Inspired by the possibility of having to endure every rat in the place. Gainer helped, hauled the trash and leftovers down and out to the incinerator building that was located on the extreme opposite corner of the island, as far away as possible.

  When he returned from doing that he tried to just sit and watch the comings and goings in the harbor, but he was fidgety.

  Leslie was relaxed, content reading The Seth Material by Jane Roberts.

  Every time Gainer shifted his position the rattan chair complained with creaks.

  Without taking her eyes from the page, Leslie told him: “Tell you what. You go play soccer and I’ll keep watch over the loot.”

  “No.”

  “You’d really like to play, wouldn’t you?”

  “It’s not that important.”