Urban Flight

by Jonathan Kirshner

  But Mississippi John Hurt, this was news. Everybody sings the blues different, but nobody played the blues quite like John Hurt. He played slow, and gentle, and peaceful, but it was still the blues. It dripped with the blues. You’d think Sammy would have mentioned this before.

  “Mississippi John Hurt?” Jason asked, with just enough in his voice to let Sammy know that he could take it back if he wanted to.

  “Now you know that’s where I’m from.”

  “I saw him at Newport in ’sixty-five.”

  “Should have seen him in Avalon in ’thirty-two.”

  Jason thought about what that meant, to have seen one of the great old bluesmen before he was “great,” and before he was old, on some dark night in an obscure Mississippi town, with Herbert Hoover in the White House during the depths of the Great Depression. They started walking again.

  “He said to me ‘Son…’ I was just a boy you know, he said, ‘Son, you know why baseball’s like nothing else?’ ” Sammy stopped talking and looked over at Jason.

  “No clock?” Jason offered.

  Sammy just stared back at him, but his eyes were smiling.

  “The defense holds the ball?”

  Now Sammy was smiling broadly. Jason grew increasingly desperate.

  “The open field?”

  “The space between the pitches.”

  “Between the pitches?”

  “You know, after the last pitch, but before the next one.”

  Jason climbed into the pilot’s seat of helicopter. He looked back at Sammy, asking to be put out of his misery.

  “You got the whole world in front of you. What’s the count? What’s he gonna throw? What’d he throw last time? Who’s on deck? You watch a baseball game, that’s how you’re spending your time. Between the pitches. Like floating on air. Two hundred times a game…anything can happen. Four hundred times in a double header. Only lost twice.”

  Jason stared outward and didn’t say anything, and Sammy had to nudge him a bit with the clipboard. Jason took it, and regained his focus. He noted the gauges on the instrument panel, checked a few boxes on the chart attached to the clipboard, and then signed at the bottom and handed it back to Sammy. Jason then brought the idling helicopter to life, and the initial moan of the engine was slowly drowned out by the sound of the rotors.

  As Sammy stepped back, Jason called out, “You taking good care of this tired old lady?”

  “She’s doing fine,” Sammy shouted back. “ ’Bout the only way to get around the City today!”

  “See you on the other side!”

  Sammy stepped farther back, put his ear protectors on, and then pulled the stays away from the helicopter. Only now that the copter was ready to go did Dave Edwards emerge from the door of the roof. He came trotting over to the passenger side of the helicopter. Handsome and in his late twenties, he was the station’s youngest on-air employee. He wore a suit and his tie blew from the wind of the rotors, but every hair was in place as he sat down next to Jason and put his seat belt on. He got right down to business.

  “Let’s take a sweep first: downtown, then up the East River, take a look at Connecticut, then over to Jersey.”

  “You got it.”

  Jason looked over to Sammy, who shook his raised fist, which was their “okay” sign. Sammy didn’t cut an imposing figure, but it was hard not to be reminded of the raised fist salute from the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Sammy must have known this, though they had never even come close to having a political discussion. Which was just fine with Jason. He smiled, shook his fist back, and lifted off.

  New York looked its best early in the morning, when Jason and Dave previewed the day’s locations to plan the timing of their reports. From the height of the helicopter the City’s scars faded into the background, and the skyscrapers stood together with the majesty of an old black-and-white photograph. Ribbons of concrete seemed to lead perfectly from the boroughs into the City, and the bridges, more than twenty and no two alike, stretched sinuously across the rivers.

  Jason headed downtown, planning to use the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as a starting point, before hooking around and up the East River, where they would catch the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges in quick succession. The Statue of Liberty kept watch over the Verrazano, and Jason liked to check in with her before heading back uptown. She was pushing a hundred, and the rust on her face looked like teardrops.

  Jason and Dave didn’t have a lot to talk about. Dave didn’t know much about music and Jason had never gotten a manicure in his life. But it was hard not to talk at all for four hours.

  “When do they want the first one?” Jason asked.

  “Seven-oh-seven.”

  “Closer to the top every day. Gonna make you a star.”

  “I’m going to ride this traffic right to the anchor’s desk. This business is just like any other. The thing is you gotta know what story is going. Traffic isn’t traffic. It’s what it means to—”

  “What’s that?” Jason interrupted, or would have interrupted, had he been listening.

  “Where?”

  Jason changed the helicopter’s direction sharply, and pointed at the road below. “There—on the BQE. Some maniac. He’s going to end up wrapped around a pole.”

  Jason gestured at a large black four-door car driving wildly down a relatively empty highway. It was going fast and jerking suddenly across lanes.

  “It’s eastbound,” Dave observed, “not our problem. The hell with it. What are you doing?”

  “Just a sec.” Jason started to follow the car, but it disappeared from view under a network of overpasses. He flew past them, brought the helicopter around, and hovered where he anticipated the car would emerge, but nothing showed.

  “Where the hell is he?” Jason muttered, mostly to himself.

  “I don’t care where he is. I care where we are, which is not where—Hey!”

  Jason pulled the helicopter down suddenly. He wanted to get a closer look, but he also figured if he went down fast enough, it would shut Dave up. He moved in lower and close to the overpass.

  “There he is!” Jason called out, more triumphant than excited, like he’d won a game of hide-and-seek.

  The black car was at rest on a patch of grass by the side of the highway. Jason couldn’t tell if its engine was on or off. There was no sign of damage or movement, or anything for that matter, except that the rear passenger door was open. Jason held the copter in position and looked around. He spotted a man in a light-colored suit a few feet away from the car, standing with his back to the helicopter and his hands on his knees. The guy didn’t turn to look up at the helicopter, which he must have heard hovering above, and Jason waited to see what he was going to do next. There was something about the scene that wasn’t right, he thought. The pieces didn’t quite fit together, and Jason was waiting for the clue that would make everything clear. The guy still had his hands on his knees, but he didn’t seem to be throwing up. There was a bag at his feet.

  Dave, looking a little white, broke the silence. “Are we through with this joyride? Because New York is waiting for me to tell them how long it will take to get to work.”

  Jason gave up and finally pulled away from the scene. “You think he’s okay? What was he doing? I think he was alone. Why do you figure the back door was open?”

  “Didn’t see it. Maybe his girlfriend’s husband got home a little early this morning. Out the window, down the fire escape, drove like hell, then pulled over to catch his breath when he thought it was safe.”

  “Is that the voice of experience?”

  “No comment.”

  Less than an hour later, the morning rush was in full swing. From that point on, the gig was pretty straightforward. Fly from toll to toll, check for crashes, report on delays. For more than six months the story had been the same: traffic, delays, construction. Not that many accidents. A car has to build up some minimum speed to get into an accident that matters, and nobody was going anywhere fast
near the City these days. So the main thing was to tell people where it was bad and where it was worse, so anybody who had a choice could cut their losses. Dave was good at his job, and he took it seriously. He had a little formula written on an index card and by tracking certain cars for just a few minutes he could calculate how long the delay would be at each place. Jason once thought about asking how it worked, but then decided better of it. They reported live, and his job was to hold the copter as still as possible during the reports. Dave spoke into a camera mounted behind Jason’s seat.

  “It’s another nightmare out there on the roads today. We’re sitting on top of the George Washington Bridge, and it looks like about an hour and a half wait.…The Lincoln Tunnel is a better bet, you can probably keep it under an hour. On the other side of town, two lanes closed for construction on the Triborough Bridge, and the FDR Drive is bumper to bumper. If you’re coming in from the boroughs, the subway is still your best bet. The transit desk reports all trains running on or close to schedule. This is Dave Edwards reporting from Channel Six’s eye in the sky; we’ll be back in thirty with another update.”

  By ten to ten Jason was done for the day. He set the helicopter back down on the pad, and Dave jumped out almost before it landed. Last on, first off, like he lived on the second floor and still took the elevator. Sammy came over, and they went through the same routine: engine, stays, clipboard, but in reverse. Jason had come up with some good stuff during the ride, and he was looking for a way to ease back into that John Hurt discussion just by accident.

  “Hey, Sam—”

  Sammy cut him off abruptly. “Any problems today, Mister Sims?”

  “Uhh…no.”

  “Don’t forget to sign the bottom, Mister Sims.”

  Jason signed the clipboard without looking, trying to decipher the look on Sammy’s face, which was blank. Not mad, not fooling around. Just gone. Sammy took the clipboard and walked away. Jason just stood there.

  “Nothing like a rooftop on a late summer day.”

  The voice came from behind Jason, who turned as he spoke. “Mr. Morgan?”

  It was Morgan, who looked pretty much the way Jason remembered. A little shorter, though still tall, and in his sixties. He had a hint of a southern accent.

  “Ever sneak up on rooftops when you were a kid, Jason?”

  Jason squinted a bit, trying to get a read of Morgan’s expression. It was overcast, but still he managed to throw a bit of a shadow, and it was hard to get a sense of him. “Sure, I mean, didn’t everyone?”

  “I never got out of the habit. Lot of romance on a rooftop. Most people think it’s the view, but it’s much more than that. It’s the hint of fear—more than just a hint, really—that makes it special. That primal fear of heights, of the possibility of falling, maybe even jumping. Makes a great view…majestic. Walk with me, Jason.”

  Morgan stepped forward but even in the light Jason couldn’t tell what he was up to. He walked slowly to the edge of the roof with Jason a half-step behind, and they looked out at the City.

  “This is my favorite roof in the City. I come here all the time. All alone up here, eight million people right down there.”

  “I don’t remember seeing you here before.”

  Morgan turned slightly, the way a teacher would lift his eyes to quiet a whispered conversation. “If you did, I wouldn’t be alone, now would I?”

  “Hard to argue with that.”

  “I wouldn’t try.”

  Morgan looked back out at the City with its long lines of traffic. On the avenues the traffic went back for miles, and across the streets cars pushed their way into the intersections. Everybody trying to get a few feet ahead just pushed the traffic back farther. One problem with Manhattan traffic was that most people didn’t own the cars they were driving. Buses, taxis, trucks, and commercial vans, they wrote their own rules. With no place to pull over, they just stopped where they wanted, creating new pools of traffic in their wake.

  Morgan kept talking, and Jason decided to counterpunch until he could figure out what the hell was going on.

  “Boy, traffic’s a bitch today. Guess I don’t have to tell you about that.”

  “The subways are running pretty well.”

  Morgan smiled tightly, and Jason could tell he’d decided to skip the speech about how he used to walk six miles to school in bare feet.

  “You still in law school?”

  “No, I dropped out last September.”

  “Huh. Right after Nixon resigned?”

  “I guess.… Listen, I don’t see—”

  “My wife left me about the same time. Must have been something in the air.”

  Jason stared blankly, and then turned and looked back out at the traffic. The gridlock was expanding, and more and more drivers were leaning on their horns to help pass the time.

  Morgan continued. “Point is, once you finish the morning shift, you’re a free man?”

  It was windy on the roof. Jason was getting cold, and at that particular moment, he didn’t feel very free. “Free man?” he asked back, lifting his gaze and inviting Morgan to rephrase his question.

  “You don’t have another job or something you do in the afternoon?”

  “I play in a band at night, so sometimes I sleep in the afternoon.”

  “What kind?”

  “Huh?”

  “What kind of music do you play?”

  “Nothing special. Mostly blues, a little rock, nothing you would have—”

  “I can see nine of my buildings from here. Upper West Side, lower East Side. I can see ’em, but these days it’s near impossible to get from one to the other. Two over in Jersey.”

  “Traffic’s a bitch.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, really,” Morgan offered, casually scuffing the rooftop with the tip of his right shoe. “Got a little proposition for you.”

  “Yeah?” Jason was not fond of the word “proposition.”

  “The traffic copter isn’t used from ten to four. Six hours, it just sits there.”

  “Well, there’s maintenance.” Jason decided he wanted to make Morgan work a little harder. He wasn’t buying the shoe trick, and doubted the old man ever made an unstudied move.

  “Okay, five hours. Still seems like a waste.”

  “I guess.”

  “How would you like to spend that time doing a little flying, let my people get some work done, instead of sitting on their asses in traffic.”

  “I don’t know, I mean—”

  “I’ll pay you half again what you get for the morning shift.”

  Jason stared ahead. He wasn’t opposed to making money, it was just that there was only so much that he would do for it. He looked down. It was a long way down.

  “Just one problem, though,” Morgan continued, brushing some dust off his sleeve, “technically, we aren’t allowed to use this copter for anything but the news. Bastards in City Hall have a permit for anything, and anything for a permit. Got to fill out three forms just to take a crap. No wonder people think this city is going down the drain.”

  “They say bureaucrats are the silent killers of every civilization.”

  “I could have my office get started on the paperwork, but it would be months before it came through proper.” Morgan sounded confident. He was wrapping up.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Technically, then, we’d be in violation of city code. Not that you’d be doing anything wrong, mind you, or that wasn’t allowed. It’s just that we wouldn’t have jumped through all the hoops and gotten all the rubber stamps that we need to make everything just so. But if I paid you in cash, and we kept this little arrangement between us, I can’t see how there’d be a problem.”

  3

  Jason got downstairs in time to watch the end of the newscast. Nothing looks as fake as a news set from the wings. It’s not that it looks any less real, just less authentic, like watching a puppet show from backstage. The little news desks sit on an island in the middle of
the room, bright, sharp, and perfect, but one foot to either side the place looks like a warehouse, strewn with cables, hand trucks, and half-eaten sandwiches. The newscasters are like astronauts sitting in the shiny lunar module having a little Tang, an oasis in the vast desert moonscape. Probably where the Chinese got the idea that the whole space program was a hoax.

  Jason wasn’t watching the news so much as he was watching Carol Chase, one of the anchors. Carol was a striking woman, if in a TV sort of way—pretty, blond, and busty. She wore glasses during the newscast, but they were part of the costume and came off with the blazer. The blazer was navy, and the shirt was always a light color, so the contrast and the V from the jacket showed off her chest. This worked, because between the blazer and the glasses the guys who ran the station could act like they were covering her up while they were showing her off.

  The other anchor was Nathan Johnson, black and in his late forties. Most of the talent had an on-air voice and an off-air voice, but Nathan didn’t. He spoke with the same clipped formality all the time, and was almost always working. He read the news in advance, did a little editing, and had quiet conversations with Lou about ­content. When Carol wanted something done, she would dispatch her assistant to communicate her instructions, and spoke directly only with Lou or Harry. Nathan didn’t have a personal assistant, and didn’t push people away, but he kept them at arms’ length. He was always the anchor man. He could have a cup of coffee with you, but he’d still be the anchor man. Most people talked to him like he was an ambassador at a state dinner.

  The show was in its final commercial break, which was visible on the monitors, and technicians and assistants hurried about. Adam, who had been walking by, eased over to where Jason was standing and whispered in his ear.

  “Give it up. You’re out of your league.”

  “Give what up?” Jason whispered back.

  “That chick once went to Europe with Warren Beatty, then dumped him for some duke.”

  “So?”

  “So you ain’t no Warren Beatty.”

  “Neither is he.”