With a barely perceptible shrug, Steven started to turn away, then heard the elevator clank to a stop and the door wheeze open. The old man who stepped out did such a double take upon sighting him, that Steven nearly laughed, but Steven, even while his mind worked furiously to analyze the potential for opportunity, managed to control himself. Instead of laughing, he flashed his brightest golden smile.
“Hi,” he said, drifting back to a conversation with Darryl Porter in which Darryl had explained the philosophy and the technique of the push-in, a form of robbery that could be done without weapons if the victim was old enough to guarantee control. Control. Steven could hear Darryl’s high, sharp voice even as he measured Mike Birnbaum.
Can you control the vic? That’s the first rule. You gon be with the vic a long time, so you best be able to control him.
“And what could I do for you?” Mike Birnbaum asked. Mike had never liked golden smiles.
“Looks like we’re gonna be neighbors,” Steven said. “My name’s Steven Horowitz.”
Can you get the vic in his apartment ’thout bein’ seen? Don’ forget, if some nigger see you go inside, he prolly gon’ do his nine one one bit and you still be fuckin with the vic when the man come to bust yo ass.
“What kind of name is that for a Jew? Steven?” Despite the sarcastic tone of his reply, Mike Birnbaum was more than happy to discover that his new neighbor would be a clean-cut Jewish boy instead of the black drug dealer he expected.
“My parents wanted me to be a good American,” he countered with a shrug. “You should pardon the expression.” Steven Horowitz, born Saul Merstein and legally Scott Forrest, was amazed; he’d thought the old Jews had died out long ago. The little mousey ones who gave their kid names like Izzy and the sharp-tongued whiners who soaked up that slimy fish like it was caviar? They were supposed to be long gone.
Suddenly, he was pissed-off again. The night had been shitting all over him, but now he had an opportunity to get even. And to make a few dollars.
Who know how much the poppy love got in his mattress? One time ah catch this ol’ nigger come pushin’ her shoppin’ cart with the house keys in her hand. Man, she look like she sleep in the subway. Smell like piss. Ah figure ah’m lucky if she got ten bucks. Turns out she got her “sick money” in a stocking in the back of her closet. Twelve hundred fifty-five dollars. Ah was jus’ comin’ out the institution and that “sick money” set me up in bidness.
“So when do you move in?” Mike turned the key in the lock and pushed his door open. He was a thrifty man and had remembered to put out the lights before he left. The rooms within, Steven Horowitz noted, were dark.
Is there anybody in there waitin? Sometime you be pushin’ grandma through the door and grandson be there with a damn baseball bat. Put “Louisville Slugger” all over yo ass.
“I think I’ll move in now,” Steven said quietly.
“Without no furniture?”
“You got furniture. You got enough for both of us.”
Mike Birnbaum, despite his bravado, was an old man; when Steven Horowitz, by way of fulfilling the name given to this crime, pushed Mike into his apartment, he seemed to fly down the darkened corridor, thus covering requirements number one, two, and three. The prey was under control. Nobody had seen. The apartment was unguarded.
Do the vic know y’all mean bidness? Don’t let there be no doubt. You fiend that vic till he understand the onliest way you gittin’ outta there is if he come across wit’ the goods.
Steven read the fear in Mike Birnbaum’s face even before he turned the old man over and pulled him to his feet. Steven had seen it many times in the Brooklyn House of Detention, seen a kid so shitass panicked he’d open his mouth before the wolf had his cock out. Steven could smell that fear in the old Jew, but he drove his fist into the Jew’s face anyway. Three times. And the frail hand that floated up protectively was no more than a fly to be brushed away.
Do you know what you lookin for? Can’t be spendin’ all day hangin’ on to the vic. Make yo move and get out. Make the poppy love tell you where he got the shit hid, ’cause he know if he don’t, you gon kill him.
“How do you want this, old man? Because we could do this the easy way or the hard way. You know what I’m sayin’? Like I don’t give a shit how we do it. Like I hope you make me hurt you. Like you’re just an old fuckin’ kike who shoulda dropped dead ten years ago. Like they shoulda burned your ass in the mother-fuckin’ ovens.”
ELEVEN
IT WAS JUST AFTER five o’clock on a weekday afternoon and it was snowing hard in New York. Not a blizzard, by any means; just a brief, intense, snow shower as the temperature began a sudden drop from the mid-thirties to the mid-teens. The warm streets and sidewalks were turning the snowflakes to water as soon as they touched down and, far from a winter wonderland, the black pavement seemed even blacker as the moisture lifted road oils from the tarry surface as deftly as a Crime Scene detective lifts fingerprints from glass.
For most of New York, committed to subway and feet, the snow was a pleasant diversion that would disappear by morning. A minor incident to enliven the coffee break, but not enough to slow the city’s nightlife for a second. On the other hand, for the drivers of the eighty thousand cars, trucks, and buses that invade Manhattan every day, the first swirl of snowflakes was sufficient cause for out-and-out panic. The commuters from New Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut, and Long Island resolved their business as early as possible and rushed for their cars (or their limos) at almost exactly the same time. Similarly, the truckers who feed the monster skyscrapers rushed through their deliveries, then dashed toward the bridges and tunnels just as the suburbanites wheeled their BMWs out of four-hundred-dollar-a-month parking spaces.
The result, as usual, was chaos and Marty Blanks, along with Steven and Mikey Powell, his two bodyguards, was trapped in the worst of it. Blanks was headed south on what was left of the old West Side Highway; he was on his way to Brooklyn Heights and a business meeting with his partner, Marek Najowski, but he was getting absolutely nowhere. Mikey Powell was driving, his brother alongside, while Blanks, lost in thought, had the backseat to himself. The brothers were furious, the long line of gray cars stretching out through the snowstorm forcing them to deal with frustration when they’d lived their lives by smashing anything that annoyed them. Marty Blanks, on the other hand, having spent nearly twenty of his thirty-one years in institutions, felt no anxiety whatsoever. He’d long ago adopted the prison cliché that “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” as a driving force in his life. While the Powell brothers fumed silently (they knew better than to vocalize their annoyance in front of their boss), Marty Blanks leaned against the leather seat and relaxed.
“Hey, Marty,” Mikey Powell thrust himself into his boss’s thoughts, “Whatta ya say we take 23rd Street over to the East Side? Try ta get on the bridge from the Drive. We ain’t goin’ nowhere this way.”
“It ain’t gonna be no different on the East Side,” Blanks protested. “It’s snowin’.”
“That what I say,” Steve Powell, who’d been fighting with his older brother since he could walk, chimed in. “When it snows, everything gets fucked up in New York. We just gotta live with it.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know what’s on the East Side,” Mikey insisted, his logic irrefutable. “It might be the same or it might be better. It can’t be no worse.” He gestured toward the wall of metal surrounding them. “We ain’t moved a hundred yards in the last ten minutes. I don’t want ya ta be late, Boss.”
“Forget about ‘late,’ ” Blanks replied evenly. “This meeting’s gonna be two hours of bullshit and ten minutes of business. I don’t even know why I put up with this guy.” He settled back against the seat.
“So whatta ya want I should do? Yiz want me ta stay on the West Side or what?”
“Take 23rd across to Ninth Avenue, then cut down to 14th Street. 23rd gets fucked up past Fifth Avenue. Take 14th over to the Drive, but don’t hurry. I couldn’t gi
ve a shit what time I get there.”
While Mikey Powell turned the Buick into the 23rd Street Marina, swinging in a circle to face east on 23rd, Blanks settled back to consider the nonsense that awaited him in Brooklyn Heights. Najowski, who couldn’t seem to decide whether he was a country squire or one of the boys in a neighborhood bar, would be dressed in some kind of asshole tweed jacket. His shirt would be Irish linen and his flannel trousers slightly wrinkled. He’d be wearing ancient, immaculately shined loafers and checkered argyle socks.
And there’d be a lecture about the “heap,” too. About the ones who escape and the ones doomed to remain. About the ones “born to rise” and the ones who give up, who settle for drugs and welfare handouts and baby after baby after baby. Then they’d sit down to a steak and fries dinner served on Wedgwood china. It amused Blanks no end to take a sterling silver fork and use it like a dagger to spear peas. Najowski always pretended not to notice, making allowances for Marty’s crude behavior, his foul gutter language. Too arrogant to consider the possibility that his partner hated his guts.
Blanks had long ago resolved someday to alter the contours of Najowski’s face. But not until the deal was over; not until their business was concluded. The money and the lure of legitimacy was too big for Blanks to jeopardize the deal. That was the most amazing part—that the money was there to be made with so little personal risk. The attorney he’d finally chosen, Paul O’Brien, a child of Hell’s Kitchen with tie-ins to most of the Irish street gangs that ran the West Side docks, had confirmed each facet of Najowski’s proposal.
“Lemme put it this way,” O’Brien had explained. “Those buildings you’re thinking of buying are in pretty good shape, right?”
“Damn good shape,” Blanks had replied. “Better than anything in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“Well, kiddo, think about this: if you could snap your fingers and make those buildings disappear, the vacant lots would be worth more than the lots with the buildings on them. With empty lots you could build and get top dollar whether you go rental or co-op. No rent control. No bullshit. That’s why the South Bronx is gonna be the next big area for development. You got hundreds of vacant lots from where the city demolished burned-out buildings. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Do me a favor and spell it out,” Blanks had replied. “I need an education, before I get in too deep. Also I hate this scumbag Najowski, and I don’t wanna go within fifty feet of him unless the money’s right.”
O’Brien, who loved to lecture, especially after a few belts, pulled a bottle of Bushmiller’s from a desk drawer, poured a double into Marty Blanks’ glass, then filled his own to the top. “Okay, let’s do it. In the early 70s, for reasons unknown, the city began closing firehouses in poor neighborhoods. They called it ‘consolidating,’ but the result was slower response time and, of course, greater structural damage to tenements that had been substandard from the beginning. Then the fiscal crisis hit and forty-five hundred firemen were laid off. Marty, it was ‘burn, baby, burn’ for the next ten years. The South Bronx lost more than a hundred and ten thousand apartments in that period. That means tenements so destroyed the city had to knock ’em down and cart the rubble off. You go to places in Brownsville or the Bronx, and the skyline looks like an old man’s mouth. All empty spaces, and that’s the kicker. For the last six or seven years, the speculators have been flipping real estate like crazy in the Bronx. Sometimes two or three times in a year. Units worth sixty and seventy thousand a few years ago are trading for three hundred and up. And empty lots are worth more than lots with buildings on them. I tell ya, Marty, the city owns most of those lots and that translates as lost tax revenue. It’s only a matter of time until they start auctioning the parcels off. Then the big boys will come north and the South Bronx will enjoy a ‘Renaissance.’ ”
“I don’t see what this has to do with me,” Blanks had interrupted. “There’s no burned-out buildings in Jackson Heights. No vacant lots. We’re talkin’ about two hundred and forty occupied apartments.”
Paul O’Brien had lifted his glass, saluting Marty Blanks, draining the few inches of Irish whiskey left in the glass. His ears and throat had burned red for a moment as the alcohol rushed into his bloodstream, but his hands were steady as he refilled both glasses. “The only point I’m making, is the difference between full and empty. An empty lot is worth more than a lot with occupied apartments. That’s the usual condition. But the best imaginable situation, if you stop to think about it, Marty, has got to be a lot with a solid, empty building on it, which is what you’re shooting for.”
Blanks had sipped at his drink, letting the information run through his mind.
He was convinced that the money was right, but there were questions remaining. “What will the cops do if we start harassing the tenants? If we have to make some examples? Are the cops gonna stand by and let it happen?”
Paul O’Brien had shrugged his shoulders. “They didn’t do anything about it here. I’ve been representing landlords in Hell’s Kitchen for the last fifteen years and I’ve seen a lot of players clean up by dumping tenants illegally. For instance, everybody laughed at the landlords who owned the welfare hotels. The ones for male adults. How much money could you make off people on welfare? Well, the tenants in those hotels didn’t have any rights under rent control; they were transients and when the building boom got started twenty years ago, the landlords hired every kind of scum to get them out. I’m talking about smashing down doors at five o’clock in the morning and beating some half-delirious alkie into the hospital. I’m talking about fires and robberies and rapes. I’m talking about old men who never left their rooms after dark. Who pushed the bureau up against the door to keep the wolves out.
“The city lost thirty-five thousand rooms before the reporters figured it out and began to put heat on the politicians. That’s when the City Council declared a moratorium on demolition of welfare hotels. You know the new hotel on 44th Street? The Macklowe? You know how it got to be built?”
“No idea,” Blanks replied shortly.
“Four days before the moratorium went into effect, at midnight, a contractor working for Harry Macklowe knocked down four buildings: two tenements and two hotels. He didn’t have any permits; he didn’t even have the gas and electricity turned off. The media screamed, but there was no way to put the buildings back up and no criminal charges were ever filed against Harry Macklowe. The city fined him two million bucks and the mayor made him wait two years before he could start construction, but the Hotel Macklowe, all forty-three stories, is standing on 44th Street right now and I guarantee it’s worth upwards of a hundred million. Understand what I’m saying? The two hotels and two tenements were worth, at best, a million and a half.”
Blanks had been impressed, but he kept his voice neutral. O’Brien was from the neighborhood; he had no reason to lie. The favor of free counsel was a marker that could always be called in and Blanks had been well aware of it.
“I gotta ask you one more question,” Blanks said. “There’s somethin’ that’s botherin’ me. You seem to be advising me to do this deal, but I keep readin’ in the papers that you can’t sell real estate in New York. What I gotta ask myself is why I should put large money into a scene that ain’t happenin’?”
O’Brien, much to Blanks’ surprise, laughed out loud. “What’s going on out there has nothing to do with your project,” he’d said. “New York City has a two percent vacancy on rentals. The only way to get a decent apartment in a neighborhood you’re not scared to live in is to buy it. So what if it takes you a year to sell the apartments instead of six months? We’re talking about twenty million dollars. Also, you have to figure it’ll be two years minimum before the assholes are out of there and the paperwork with the state is completed. Recessions don’t last long in this country. They make voters crazy.”
Blanks finally broke into a smile. “I guess the only question left is if the middle-class tenants in Jackson Heights are gonna run like a bunch of alkie
s on welfare.”
The dinner went almost entirely as expected, the only special touch being the black woman, Marie, who cooked and served the meal. Najowski smiled each time she appeared in the kitchen doorway, then flashed Blanks a conspiratorial glance. Blanks returned the look evenly, but noted the tracks on Marie’s arms and the fact that, instead of an ordinary maid’s uniform, she was dressed in a torn black housecoat and never raised her eyes from the floor. After some consideration, he made her for an expensive hooker specializing in what the trade calls “freak shows.” He wasn’t surprised to discover that his partner was a freak, but he didn’t shy away from his own conviction that doing business with freaks was a dangerous way to make a living.
“Has my servant caught your interest?” Marek asked as the coffee was served. “Stay here a moment, Marie.”
“What you do is your business,” Blanks replied. He could sense what was coming and he didn’t want to watch. He’d always believed the only way to rape a prostitute was to hold back payment. Now he was learning otherwise.
“This,” Marek said dramatically, gesturing to Marie, “is the absolute bottom: the drug-addicted Negro whore. All dignity gone and no thought beyond her next fix. When I fuck her, I use two condoms and rubber gloves. Am I right, or what, Marie?”
“Yessir,” Marie responded softly. “Yessir. You’re right.”
Blanks finally glanced at the prostitute. She was standing quietly, eyes on the floor and her face showed nothing of what she was feeling. Blanks looked at her arms again—the needle scars were old and healed. How much was Najowski paying her? Four hundred? Five hundred? Suddenly, Blanks got a glimpse of the self-indulgence at the bottom of Marek’s use of the woman. It sickened him.
“Now I don’t want you to think I’m prejudiced against Negroes,” Marek grinned. “It is true, of course, that the Negro sits at the absolute bottom of the American heap. But when French Aristocrats and Roman Senators spoke of ‘the mob,’ they were talking about white people. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you could define ‘the mob’ by watching the crowd at a British soccer match. It’s just an accident that the Negroes collect all the welfare and commit all the crimes in America. Isn’t that right, Marie?”
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