Grand Central Noir

by R. Narvaez

  RELAX.

  We’ve time to talk now. You look nervous. Don’t be. I’m not a freak or a monster. I’m a person like any other, only with no fixed address.

  This old place? It was a wreck, but it’s got great bones. I made it comfortable, real cozy. It gets damp in the winter, though. How long have you had that cough? I can pop out to the drug store for you. Or maybe another slug of whiskey?

  If you know how to work it, you can go forever without leaving the terminal. You can find anything you need here. You may have to manage your expectations – isn’t that how you finance types put it, “manage expectations”? Yes, you may have to settle, but you’ll get used to it.

  It helps if you have connections – by which I mean you can’t be too particular about who you service.

  You seem shocked. Why should you be? New York: it’s the city of commerce, after all, the crossroads of the world, and Grand Central Terminal is its shrine. All commerce boils down to this essential: the hunger of our flesh for something outside of it. That is the genius of transportation, that we have eliminated the distance between the self and the object we desire.

  Which brings me to you.

  You agreed to meet me because I had a proposition. That proposition involved someone close to you, someone who said she was your daughter.

  I met her here, in the city where the tender dreams of youth go to die.

  It was a typical day at GCT, waking to the cries of trains disgorging commuters, the reveille of train announcements, the click of high heels on marble, the snap of the shoeshine rag: three quarters of a million people churning through every day, enough to populate a city of their own.

  I was in the Graybar Passage, above the lost and found. I’d drummed up a nice bit of business returning items to people who hadn’t lost them. I’d tell you all about it but it’s a trade secret.

  I got my coffee and a muffin from the nice man at Zaro’s and headed back down to the lower level. These days, upstairs is too rich for my blood, with all the fancy shops and the market. The smell of food in that market can drive a person to violence. I’ve seen it happen, seen people nearly lose their minds. All that food: just within reach, but not close enough when you’re short the scratch.

  And the vendors keep a sharp eye on you.

  There are ways to get around it. They have to dispose of dated food and even though they’re not supposed to give it away, everyone has something they’ll trade for. But I don’t have to tell you about trades. You’re master of them.

  And when things get bad, when the day calls for a little pick-me-up, there are the bar carts outside the tracks. I can usually find someone willing to barter for a shot.

  You’re familiar with the bar carts, have your favorite bartender; you tip well and often so he has your drink ready for you when you board the New Haven line. Scotch, neat.

  Sometimes, you businessmen get a little tipsy, drop things or leave them behind. Umbrellas, briefcases, phones, wallets.

  I’m not much of a drinker myself. I get drowsy after a few. And they don’t let you rest here.

  Lay your head down for one minute and “tap tap tap,” the outreach teams and station walkers want to know if you’re okay, awake, alive. No sleeping allowed without a ticket. If you plan to spend the night, you have until two a.m. to find a safe haven, away from the searching eyes of the MTA cops.

  But this cathedral has many corners of refuge for those who know where to look. You have to duck the cameras though: they’re everywhere now, watching, recording.

  That’s why we had to walk so much after you met me at the missing persons board, to throw them off the track: through the main concourse, along the 45th Street Passage, into the Biltmore Room, doubling back by way of the Northwest Passage. What a brilliant stroke, if I don’t say so myself, when I wrote you to meet me outside of the MTA Police Station! It put you off your guard when the sergeant on duty waved to me.

  Of course, they know me there because I have information to trade. I often come across runaways at the terminal. Most are little fish and I throw them back. They’re not ready for the life. I look for bigger game.

  If there’s a reward offered you can tell that the person is missed by a family who can afford to get them back. There’s a flyer with a smiling picture from happier times. It makes you wonder, what is it that they ran away from? Some of us can only dream of having a family to look for us.

  I was a commuter, a civilian, once upon a time. I was an indexer for a publishing company until they outsourced my job to the Philippines. I don’t blame the workers there. It’s hard to stay mad at people in the same sinking boat as you.

  Anyway, one medical emergency later and my bank account was wiped out, along with my credit. Because of the constant pain, I acquired a small pharmaceutical habit. I no longer had health insurance, so I had to improvise.

  I discovered the secret economy of the city, the bottle-and-can collectors, the book recyclers, the dumpster divers and garbage can rummagers, the panhandlers with their hard luck stories, the mail scavengers and identity thieves, the scammers and hustlers. Like any other, this world has its class divisions: crazies, hardcore homeless, criminals, junkies, drunks, those just skimming the surface who still (but not for long) have apartments to return to, carrying their spoils from the compost bin at the grocery store.

  There’s always somewhere farther to fall down to.

  And when it gets to be too much, there’s always a way out.

  For instance, around here, if you let your guard down for just a minute, say by not paying attention on the platform, a train could end it all for you in seconds.

  Death by MTA.

  No, that wasn’t a threat, just an observation.

  Are you uncomfortable? Those flex-cuffs come in handy when I have to step out and want to be sure a person is waiting for me when I come back.

  To business, then, now that we’ve dispensed with the niceties.

  You agreed to meet me because I had some information about your daughter, some – ah – business intelligence – that was of interest to you. Or at least that you’d rather not have become public.

  Roxanne. A pretty name for a pretty little thing, at least in the pictures. Too thin, of course, but that’s the fashion for the private school set, skinny and blonde. Or so the tabloids have it: I stay up to date on the latest trends at Hudson News.

  People have always confided in me, I’m not sure why. Maybe I look like I don’t have anyone to tell their secrets to. Or maybe it’s my face, careworn, well acquainted with life’s blows, not one to judge. Young people, especially the naïve ones, the sheltered ones, are quick to share their stories over soup and a sandwich from my friends in the dining concourse.

  Roxanne was no different. Like many young girls, she once had a crush on Daddy, and she told me all about you. All her life, she said, she’d heard about Daddy’s job in the city: how you were an important man, in charge of other men and their money. This, as you know, is a potent aphrodisiac, catnip for the young skinny blondes to be found in any financial district bar or even the Campbell Apartment, if a man is pressed for time.

  As a girl, your daughter only knew that when you didn’t take the train, you came home late in a black car, or not at all. You’d stay in the city because there was an important Deal Being Done. When she was older, she’d hear her mother sobbing at night, alone in the big bed, the prescription bottles lining her night table standing in for an absent husband. There was another Deal – or Something – or Someone – being done by Daddy. Her mother had been one of those skinny blondes once and kept herself fit, well moisturized and Botoxed, but there’s no substitute for the dewy flesh of youth, of which the city has an inexhaustible supply.

  That was when Roxanne began to associate narcotics with love.

  She became her father’s daughter, doing deals in the hallway of her private school, peddling prescription pills, diversifying from her mother’s sedatives to benzos, stimulants, opiates, building up a tidy
little portfolio.

  She became well known in prep school circles as Oxy Roxy.

  But there was only so far she could go with her shrink’s prescription pad, lifted from his desk drawer while he was distracted by a panicked phone call from a former patient, an associate of Roxy’s. Once that ran out, she had to look for other sources, which required a little business travel outside of your Gold Coast town.

  Which brings us full circle to the terminus of commerce, Grand Central.

  What do I want? I thought I made that perfectly clear in my letter.

  I’m getting older and I need a retirement account.

  Proof, you say? I have her picture right here, isn’t that enough?

  How did I get it? I suppose it can be told, now that the trap is snapped. I – ah – found your wallet at Track 27. With your driver’s license and family pics. Like I said, you businessmen can be careless after a few drinks.

  So do you have the money or not?

  Not to worry if you don’t. I tweeted ransom instructions to the Daily News and the Post. Sure I’m on Twitter. Do I look like a Luddite to you? I set up my account at the Apple Store on the balcony level.

  An observant reader should be able locate you. I hope for your sake that you’re trending.

  It appears that your Blackberry is losing its charge, vibrating ever so much more faintly. My heart grows sick – on account of the dampness of the tunnels. I’ll leave you now.

  Meet Me at the Clock

  - by R. Narvaez

  SNOW! AND LOTS OF IT.

  Lew Conrad stared out the window and watched the feathery stuff descend onto the cars and the street and the sidewalk. Blankets. This could be bad. This could screw everything. He closed the curtains and dressed as quickly and quietly as he could in his bedroom. He didn’t want to wake his wife. They always got along better when she was asleep.

  But, with an abrupt cease of her snoring, the great and powerful Magda stirred. Without lifting her head from the pillow or opening her eyes, she said, “Want coffee?”

  Lew tied his tie right up to his neck. “No thanks,” he said. “You make me bitter enough.”

  His wife mumbled, “Suit yourself.”

  Then she went right back to sawing her way through a redwood.

  Lew put on his best Brooks Brothers business suit pants – a little worn at the pants cuffs but only a busybody midget would notice – and then his shoes and then rubbers over his shoes. He took his old-fashioned gray fedora off the dresser and walked out of the bedroom. As far as the wife knew he was off to an imaginary office in midtown place. Let her keep dreaming. Only a nuke could get her out of bed anyway.

  In the living room, he took out a videotape box of The Godfather Trilogy. He slid out the sleeve for Part III, which he’d thrown away a long while ago, and pulled out a fat envelope containing one hundred hundred dollar bills. He put the envelope in his inside jacket pocket.

  He left the apartment building earlier than usual, and when he got outside he saw there was just one or two or maybe three inches on the ground, and so he decided, what the hell, he’d save what was left of his subway money and walk the thirty blocks to the 125th St. Metro-North Station in Harlem. How bad could it be? It was just a little snow. But the sky churned, as dark gray as a tunnel rat, and as he slogged his way uptown the snowfall grew heavier. And heavier. He slipped at a corner. And again a block later and almost lost his old hat. He really should have checked the weather. What a stupid thing to foul up.

  When he got to the station, his pants wet to his thighs, he ran up the stairs and caught the 5:50 a.m. to Scarsdale just as its doors were about to close.

  Lew felt it was only the first of many lucky breaks he was going to get that day.

  * * *

  Lew easily found a seat on his favorite side of the northbound train, so he could see the loveliness of the Hudson Valley. But a curtain of white hid all the good scenery.

  “Some snow, eh?” the conductor said, suddenly hovering above Lew, but looking out of the window and not at Lew.

  “Astonishing,” Lew said, showing his monthly pass quickly. It was a counterfeit, and he didn’t want the conductor examining it too closely. But for some reason the conductor gingerly took it and held it in his hands.

  “It’s a blizzard. That’s going to screw us up and down the line up all day,” the conductor said.

  “Absolutely,” Lew said, watching the man’s hands.

  The conductor stood there, watching the snow like a child. Lew’s counterfeit pass couldn’t stand much scrutiny. It wasn’t even the right color for the month.

  But the conductor only had eyes for the white fluff outside the window. He handed the pass back to Lew and then waddled away, looking past all the passengers as he went. “Yeah, some snow,” he said to himself.

  The weather slowed the train down, made it sluggish. To pass the time, Lew tried drying his pants by opening and closing his legs like an accordion player on espresso.

  The train pulled into Scarsdale at 6:45 a.m., a little late but leaving Lew with more than enough time to take his spot.

  He bought a black coffee for $1.50 using change he found at the bottom of his pocket. Then he looked around – all the other passengers were bundled up, huddled in groups and with heads tucked down. Magda called people like that “Penguins in the Arctic.” He turned and bent into a deep trashcan for a copy of the Wall Street Journal that lay jammed into a corner. He pulled it out and stood up, looking around again. “Penguins.” The paper was slightly stained but usable.

  At 7:01 Lew took in his usual spot on the crowded southbound platform, two cars from the back. He tapped the paper against his thigh, to all appearances a businessman with busy thoughts.

  A few minutes behind his normal schedule, Warren Kiner stumbled through the crowd and took his own usual spot, right next to Lew. Kiner wore a heavy parka, galoshes, a winter hat with fur-lined earflaps, and the look of a sheep.

  “Conrad. Good morning,” Kiner said, brushing snow off his shoulders.

  “Warren. Good morning. Some snow, eh?”’

  “Sure is, sure is. Listen, about today – .”

  “Shhh. Prying ears,” Lew said. “Let’s talk about it on the train.”

  “Sure, sure,” Kiner said, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. Of course.”

  Across the tracks and piling high, the snow fell in a steady thrum.

  “Say, I was wondering,” Kiner said. “Do you live in the Tudor on Walworth Avenue? I passed it the other day, and I’m pretty sure you told me you live near Fox Meadow, but I saw workmen redoing it.”

  “Yes, that’s ours. We’re having a little work done.”

  “Wow, I don’t know that I would consider renovating a gable roof, and one as steep as that, minor work. And are you getting all your windows redone? How are you guys living in there while all that work is going on?”

  “Oh wait a minute – you mean the Tudor right by Fox Meadow? No, we’re the Tudor a couple blocks over. You and Wilona should stop by sometime.”

  “We’d love to. Where exactly – ”

  “Oh, here we go.”

  Parting the dense white curtain as if emerging from a fairy tale, the southbound train chugged into the station. The train was near to full, but the two men were lucky to find seats together.

  “So, yes, everything is set,” Lew said. “Mr. Carswell can’t wait to meet you. Are you all set?”

  “I have the check. And I can’t wait to meet Mr. Carswell.”

  “Cash, Warren. You know I don’t trust banks.”

  “Of course. Cash. Right. Sorry.”

  “Magnificent. I love to help friends make friends.”

  “So, where will it be? Did you finalize that?”

  Lew took out his cell phone, which hadn’t worked since he stopped paying the bill two months earlier, and pretended to scroll around, making sure to keep Kiner from seeing the screen.

  “Yes, of course, three days ago. Sorry, but my secretary only reminded
me about it yesterday. She’s a hottie but not a smartie, like the kids say. Ah, here it is: We’ll meet at my regular suite at the Grand Hyatt, so it’s more convenient for everyone all around.”

  “Oh that’s swell.”

  When the train pulled into Grand Central, the two men walked together up the ramp. As they entered the main concourse, Lew pointed at the information booth in the center, topped with the shining golden clock.

  “Soon, that will be all yours, my friend,” he said.

  “I can’t wait.”

  “Meet me at the clock at noon then. And we’ll go up to my suite and have lunch brought up. So bring your appetite.”

  Kiner laughed and smiled and waved and then merged into the crowd queueing up the stairs.

  Lew felt great. Screw the snow. Nothing could stop him now.

  He hopped down the stairs to the food level, bouncing past dead-ahead-focused yuppies and turtle-slow tourists, and up to the coffee stand in the center. He looked above the queue and spotted a young cashier. Pimples. Headphones. Bored. Perfect. He lingered there, waiting for the line to dwindle. Just as a woman was leaving, he turned quickly to the cashier before the kid could close the register.

  “Say,” Lew said. “Can you do me a big favor and give me a ten-dollar bill for ten singles?”

  “Yeah, okay,” the cashier said, not even looking up. Classic.

  Lew held out the bills. With the register open, the cashier picked up a ten and handed it to Lew. They exchanged bills at the same time. Then as the kid was trying to count, Lew said, “Oh, pardon me, I think I only gave you nine. You’d better check. I’ve got to tell you, I’m a cash user. I love using cash. All these fancy debit cards and Paypals, it’s just not the same, know what I mean? I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”

  The cashier counted the bills. His lips moved as he did it. “Yeah, it’s only nine.” In a mumble.

  “Well, here you go, here’s another single,” Lew said. “Wait, wait a minute. You know what? Might as well give me a twenty. I love twenty dollar bills.” He handed over his eleven dollars.