The Heart of the World

by Nik Cohn

  There was a grand larceny concerning an estate his law firm had handled. There was tax evasion and perjury. He served fifty-six days on the first, twenty-six weekends at Riker’s Island on the second, but beat the perjury rap. He said that he had known nothing of these matters, that the whole thing had happened in his absence. It was possible. But the responsibility was his, just the same. So he did the time, was disbarred from his law practice: ‘As for politics, of course, I was dead meat.’

  Since his release, he had lived quietly with his wife and ten children, not far from Belmont Racetrack. His father had suffered a stroke, just shortly before the arrest, and had never known of his son’s disgrace. That was one good thing, Matty said. A blessing, he called it. But his voice was as flat as Johnnie Ray.

  For himself, he’d come to terms long ago. Leastways, if he hadn’t, he must be fooling himself. The way he felt, he was better off. New York politics had no need of one more old man.

  In the park behind us, lunch hour was over, the string quartet packed up and gone. Slow and heavy, as if we’d eaten too much, we walked towards City Hall. ‘So that’s the story,’ Matty said. ‘Or the fable, I should say.’

  City Hall itself was a marbled palace built in 1811. Designed by a Frenchman and a Scot, it was a perverse but pleasing bastard, part Georgian, part Palladian and part French Renaissance, ostentatiously elegant, and wholly artificial. In this city where politics had always been muck and bullets, devoutly soiled, the Council Chamber was a thing of mahogany panels and fluted wainscoting, and the people’s elected sat at slanting eighteenth-century desks arranged in a semicircle in front of a dais draped in flags. Overhead, its details picked out in gold, was a mural of New York Receiving the Tribute of the Nations; below, stuck to the undersides of the councillors’ desks, was wedged the rocklike chewed gum of the ages. ‘I had fun in that place,’ said Matty Troy.

  His own office had been in the basement, the West Wing. There he’d sit playing cards with the boys from Queens Boulevard, while upstairs the mayor and all his men would be sweating blood to balance the budget. After hours, Matty would slip across Broadway to the Longchamps. That had been the city pols’ bar then, and after he’d had a few pops, he would hit the street running, back on the circuit with Charlie Gilvary, poor bat-eyed Charlie, bouncing off buses, shunting through fences and over back lawns, more often on the sidewalk than out in the road, a dinner dance in Flushing, a fundraiser in Mineola, a wedding reception, a wake, a firemen’s ball, and everybody gladhanding him, slapping him on the back, all of the Clubhouse chiefs, the boys, because it still was a man’s world, and it was all laughs, a lotta laughs, so many laughs.

  Where Longchamps had been, there was now a Plymouth Shop, selling chainstore women’s clothing. Politicians did not drink now, not where they could be seen. So the City Hall place these days was Ellen’s Coffee Shop, run by Ellen Sturm. She had once been a Miss Subway System, and the outside windows were plastered with glossies of other Miss Subways. Inside was diet soda and lots of fatless fiber. So that was the difference, right there. At Longchamps, your dinner was six large whiskeys, and here it was skimmed milk.

  Fun was the word he kept returning to. There had been so much of it around, and today there seemed none at all. ‘Sometimes you read the papers, you watch TV, you talk to the people,’ Matty said, ‘and all you keep hearing, over and over, is “What in hell happened here?”’

  ‘Lots of stuff,’ was the short answer. Watergate, for one. Tapped phones, for another. TV, because on the screen the people could see your smile freeze while your face melted when you were caught in a barefaced lie, you couldn’t get some aide to cover your ass, the way you could with the press. And then, of course, there was 1975. ‘What happened here?’ New York went bankrupt, that’s what.

  The change had already started creeping in before the default, but the longer Matty looked back, he had to say a whole world had ended right here. Tammany Hall and the Clubhouse and the rest of the machine, they had all stood on one basic given, that the city thrived, always would thrive, and, however much of the pie you cut up, there would be plenty left.

  Of course there had been the depression, when all construction work had been frozen and the city was full of half-built skyscrapers, stairways that led to nothing, the blank stare of glassless windows. Dreadful times, and Matty’s father had often recalled them. In Bay Ridge, the people would wait at the garbage dump, and every time a new load was delivered, they’d dive right in, digging with their bare hands for any stray scraps of food. There were soup kitchens right on Broadway, doled out from the back of army trucks, and the breadline, the worm that walks like a man.

  But that was a special case, the whole damn country was in shambles, not just New York. And even then, you didn’t see too many pols in the breadlines, their tin cups in their hands. The machine kept ticking over. Believe it. When Fiorello La Guardia, the Little Flower, when they made him mayor in 1933, and he went running up the steps to City Hall on his Inauguration Day, shaking his fist at the marble walls and hollering E finita la cuccagna! No more free lunch! Death to Graft!, it sounded good, it looked great in the morning papers, but truly it was just wind. The machine kept ticking. Believe it. And when La Guardia was dead, ploughed under, there was still free lunch in the Clubhouse, more savory and fattening than ever.

  So when the city’s bankruptcy blew up, it hit like a thunderbolt. ‘I had people come to me and say they can’t believe it, this isn’t fair. Not fair,’ Matty snapped. ‘They’ve been ripping off the city for twenty, thirty years and suddenly the ride is over and all they can say is Not fair. And most of them really believed it.’

  One tale told it all. Back when he’d first gotten involved with the Queens Village Democratic Club, there had been six younger guys to the fore, all of them bright, tough, ambitious; and this Gang of Six – himself and Donald Manes, Nick Ferrara, Sy Thaler, Gene Mastropieri, and Jack Bronson – had formed an alliance. In the short term, their idea was simply to build up a power base; in the long, they dreamed of a whole machine, a network so strong that no New York politico, not even the mayor, would be able to function without its say-so.

  The first part had worked. In short order, the six had become chairmen and state senators, judges, district attorneys. And how had they finished? Himself in jail, Donald Manes indicted and a suicide, Nick Ferrara dead, Sy Thaler indicted and dead, Gene Mastropieri indicted, Jack Bronson indicted. ‘Batted a thousand,’ Matty said. ‘Not a man jack left standing.’

  Of a sudden, people stopped speaking out loud. At meetings, everybody sat deadpan and passed notes. The phones were all tapped or, if they weren’t, you thought they were, which worked out as the same thing. Special prosecutors went riffling through your garbage, searching for stray dirt. Shredders got real popular in a hurry. So did the street-corner conference. And the strain was something fierce. In the City Council, Dominick Corso, out of Brooklyn, got so maddened by the nagging and the dread, the reformers busting his chops, that he clean forgot his party lines: ‘You think it takes guts to stand up for what’s right?’ he railed. ‘That doesn’t take guts. What takes guts is to stand up for what you know is wrong, day after day, year after year.’

  The fear didn’t stop the stealing. It just took away the fun. Practical politics became a nonstop round of cold sweats and antacid pills: ‘But the funny thing was,’ Matty said, ‘the bigger the odds of getting nailed, the stronger the pull to mess around.’ We turned away from Ellen’s, walked back towards the park. ‘What’s the word I want?’ Matty asked. ‘Something to do with lemons… .’

  ‘Lemmings?’

  ‘That was us.’

  Round the back of City Hall, the marble ran out, and the walls were a dowdy brownstone. When the building went up, it had stood at Manhattan’s northern limit. Further expansion was deemed unlikely, and there had seemed no point in spending extra on a back view that would never be seen. So the city politic had remained, quite literally, a façade: ‘And that’s on its bes
t day,’ Matty said.

  What I had to understand, he said, was that New York was not governed by its elected governors, never had been. Look closely at its history – every major change had been dictated, not by pols, but by bankers, by realtors and Wall Street men, people you never saw and never would, most times you didn’t even know their names. Reformers called them the ‘permanent government.’ And they were in a whole other league. Working stiffs of councilmen could spend their entire lifetimes slogging and scheming away, and still they’d be nothing, the driest drop in the deepest bucket, compared to the big leaguers.

  It gave pause for thought. Once you grasped exactly how many billions were in the pot, and how little difference your own abstention made, it was hard not to come down with sticky finger. ‘Lookit,’ Matty said. ‘Whatever people tell you, I myself never took. Money just never bothered me that much. And anyhow, like I told Dick Reeves, There are so many legitimate ways to make money in politics that I can never understand why anyone steals.’ But then, he always had been eccentric.

  We had come full circle, back into the park. On the patches of mud that had once been grass, great stacks of police barricades were piled, on hold for demonstrations. Bull-buttocked cops strolled, watchful, on the cobblestones beyond, their back pockets bulging with blackjacks and/or flashlights, handcuffs, citation books, walkie-talkies. But a chill wind had come up. It was still February, and no fit season for protest. Matty was due back on the Island.

  A few minutes more, we sat on a bench close by Broadway, overhung by leafless branches and pigeons of deadly aim. At this off-hour, our only companions were drug dealers. A heavy man with heavy jowls, Matthew Troy turned up his coat collar for protection, stared dead ahead. ‘You really don’t miss it?’ he was asked.

  ‘That was another Broadway,’ Matty said.

  He kept thinking of Donald Manes, of the scandal that had brought him low and killed him. ‘Go figure,’ Matty said. ‘When we started out, I would of believed Donnie before I believed myself, which wasn’t saying a helluva lot, God knows, but still, we were partners, a team. He would of sworn on his mother, and so would I. That he never would take a bribe. And even after he knifed me, which he did, God rest him, even then I couldn’t hate him. I felt badly; I didn’t understand. But hate him? In my heart, I couldn’t do that.’

  They had met again when Lew Wallach died. Both Matty and Donnie had known him and owed him from way, way back. ‘So I go to the funeral and I listen to the eulogy, and then I feel a hand on my shoulder, it’s Donnie and he’s crying, he says I feel terrible, I feel just terrible for what happened, I just want you to know I love you. So then, of course, I’m thinking, If you feel so bad, how come you did it? And are you saying you wouldn’t do it again? In a New York minute? But it’s Louie’s funeral, and Donnie’s crying, his big fat face all twisted up and sweating, and I have my soft side – I like to make out I’m a tough guy, gruff talking, a terrible temper when I blow up, which is the truth, God knows, I just go crazy. But I can be sentimental, too. So anyhow, he’s crying, and I’m crying, and his wife is crying, and he’s saying I love you and I say I love you, too, and the usher comes up to us, he says You’re making an exhibition of yourselves, you better go in the other room, so we do, and we have a drink, we say I love you some more, and then we say good-night, we go home to sleep it off. And the next thing I know, it’s in the morning papers, Donnie’s told the press, about him and me, I mean us crying and everything, at Louie Wallach’s funeral, and I think, strange. That’s all I think, very strange.’

  They did not grow close again. From time to time, Matty would see Donald Manes at some function or a dinner dance, or he would be somewhere lobbying for the gas retailers and Manes would pass him by, smiling, with his fat hand out. He always looked very nervous, he was always pouring sweat and chewing on his lips, he looked an ill man, physically, in his head, both. ‘But I didn’t say nothing, it wasn’t none of my business, I just nodded,’ Matty said. ‘And then the whole thing breaks wide open, the scandal, the payoffs and all, and Donnie tries to kill himself, and Donnie’s in the hospital, he’s going to be indicted, then he is indicted, and then he does kill himself, he’s dead.’

  Up and down Broadway, the office workers came piling out at day’s end. Bundled deep into his overcoat, Matty fell silent. He took another antacid pill. He burped. ‘So then what?’ he was prompted.

  ‘So shock,’ he replied. ‘I mean, it surprised the hell out of me. I couldn’t figure it out, none of it, and I’m sitting in front of the TV, sort of watching but thinking at the same time, too, and all I keep thinking is used to be. I mean, We really used to be.’

  And that was all. Before one more question could catch him, he stood up straight, he buttoned his coat. His stomach growled. ‘Gas,’ said Matty Troy.

  8

  ‘Used to be, used to be. So sick I am of used to be,’ Sasha said. ‘Is just old men in their hasbeens, breaking wind on water, passing water into wind.’

  To him, Broadway’s histories had all been directed towards a single crowning moment, St Patrick’s Day, 1982, the day he first set foot on it. ‘Was raining, was sky falling down,’ he recalled. ‘I am coming up from deep dark earth, Times Square subway. Was Monday night, was corner of Nathan’s Famous, Forty-third Street, only then I don’t know it, all I’m seeing is Broadway, Great White Way. Baseball, Mom, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet. Levi Jeans, Lee Jeans, Jordache Jeans, Wrangler Jeans. Come Alive with Pepsi. Oh, brudder. Nothing Comes between Me and My Calvins. If You Got Time, We Got Beer. Forgeddaboudit. Takes Two Hands to Handle Whopper; Melts in Mouth Not in Hand. What to tell you? Is pissing down rain black like devil’s asshole, crazypersons everyplace shouting, screaming, one man trying to save my soul, one man trying to rob my wallet, one man with plan, and one man with gun. Hookers, hustlers, bad cocaine. Is Real Thing, Coke. Bluelights, red-lights, silver, gold. Have You Ever Seen Grown Man Cry? And I’m running out in middle street, staring up, every crazyman going crazy, honking horns, yelling, cursing ‘Geddoudagoddamway, stupid slavets.’ Raspizdyai srany, filthy genital person. But what hell? I’m crying, I can’t be moved. You’ve Come Long Way, Baby. Most beautiful sight in whole damn world.’

  Seven years later, his passion remained unquestioning, insatiable. He was not blinded to New York’s faults in general. Park Avenue and the South Bronx alike would send him raging back into Russian, spewing forth wild cataracts of lamentation and obscenity, tampon talk. Only on Broadway, he still found the America of his imaginings: ‘Dollar and Dream,’ he said.

  In the first weeks of our walk, he’d mostly been marking time. These somber glades we’d been trudging through – Bowling Green, Wall Street, City Hall – might belong to the cartologist’s Broadway, but not to his. Fretful as a tap dancer in traction, he itched to hit his spots, bust loose. TriBeCa gave him his chance.

  It was a wasteland turned playground. For decades, it had been almost uninhabited, an area of warehouses and wholesale outlets, greasy spoons, skid-row bars. But the outlandish rents charged by Nosferatu landlords uptown had revived it. From the late seventies on, a steady stream of artists and musicians, punk designers, drug dealers and their caravans had sought shelter in its cellars and lofts. The Mudd Club thrived; downtown was reborn as Downtown. Then the landlords caught up and TriBeCa – the Triangle Below Canal – turned chic. The pioneers scattered to the East Village, Hoboken, Long Island City, and were replaced by a second wave, less cold in hand: illustrators and fashion photographers, journalists, French restaurateurs, and actresses, lots of actresses.

  Some of these last, when not waiting tables, gave shelter to stray Sovericans. And it was fortunate that they did. One evening, shortly after we’d crossed Maiden Lane, Sasha had returned to Alexei Alexandrovich’s to find his drums stacked in the hallway. Since then they had commuted between his taxi and a series of soubrettes’ sublets.

  Currently, they reposed beneath the high brass bed of a former Tennessee beauty queen, a third runner-up for Miss
Wonder Bread 1980, now turned dancer, painter, performance artist. Her professional name was EmCee Marie.

  We approached her late one fine and breezy Friday afternoon, rising up from Lower Broadway like surfacing pearl divers. Having toiled so long and deep in darkness, the first flash of sun and open space stopped us dead.

  From the churchyard of St Paul’s Chapel, we could at last see trees, grass, sky. Most dazzling of all, we could gaze on Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, towering above us like some great upflung fist of freedom.

  It was a Gothic castle straight out of Jack and the Beanstalk. Outside, it exalted merchant majesty. But its true glory lay within, where the atmosphere turned devout. One step beyond the revolving doors, and we were plunged into a realm of cathedral half-light. Through the dimness loomed a stupendous marble stairway, granite walls thick as medieval tombs, elevator doors of hammered and sculpted copper, cartouches, sconces, illuminated tableaux, hanging lamps like censers.

  Cocktails were served in the crypt. Across the navelike lobby, Liquor Jack Young came sailing through the pillars, fully furled, like a square-rigged galleon. At sight of us, he tacked, hove to. ‘Have you seen a young lady pass, twenty-five, twenty-six years of age, five feet seven, 118 pounds, blond, blue eyes, full figure, small skull and crossbones tattooed on buttock?’ he demanded.

  ‘Which buttock?’ Sasha asked.

  Across the street was Park Row, which had once been Printing House Square, home to half the New York newspapers. Most of the offices had long since vanished, but the old Times Building survived, more or less, as a part of Pace University. ‘When I’m first coming here, I have girlfriend, forgetername, she’s taking classes in money. So I’m waiting in this park for her every night, right here,’ Sasha said. ‘Is hot, hot summer days, everything burning up, and crazyman is playing Max Roach drums. Right here, on Broadway.’