We drove down Lower Broadway toward City Hall. I was starting to sweat. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Maybe I was endangering poor Fouad, who would have been better off at the L.I.U. reserve book room dealing with his civil engineering. By the time we reached Canal Street, I was convinced of it.
"Look, pull over," I said.
"What for, mister? You worried about man in van?" He gestured behind him. "I see him all the time at park. Never looks at girls. Don't take it amiss, but you are too nervous. He is bad guy. You good guy. Not to worry. Allah will punish him." And with that he made a hard left off of Canal and then a right down an alley. Then two more rights and a left. Then another alley and another right. I was in the hands of Allah.
By the time we hit Vesey Street the van was out of sight. "Over there," I said, pointing at Shannon's Bar, a dimly lit local joint with a shamrock in the window and a couple of missing letters in its neon sign. Fouad stopped out front.
"Keep circling the block," I said.
"Sure thing, mister," he replied. "Meter running."
"Yeah, right. Meter running."
Fouad disappeared, and I glanced in each direction past a row of decaying brick and cast-iron facades before entering the door immediately to the right of the bar, number 408. The inside of the building was one of those older, dingy, turn-of-the-century warehouses that cried out for gentrification but hadn't yet made it. The entryway was an ugly sea-green lit by a single bulb that revealed the name of the one-time residents: S & J IMPORTERS. It must have been a long time ago. There were several names on the building register, but none of them faintly resembled "Swami X." I had started up the stairs when a ferretlike character darted out at the top of the landing, his eyes bulging with urban paranoia.
"What do you want?" he said.
"Swami X. I'm looking for someone named Swami X."
"Who?" he shouted again as if he were hard of hearing, although he could not have been more than thirty.
"Swami X," I repeated.
"Him. What could you want with him? Are you the caseworker?"
"No. I'd just like to talk with him."
"Talk with him? What for?" Suddenly he looked very sad.
"I thought you might've come to see me. I do these paintings. No one ever comes to see them. They're of the Holocaust . . . Treblinka, Bergen-Belsen . . . neorealist portraits of the chambers exactly as they were, taken from original photographs."
"Maybe some other time. Where's the Swami?"
"He doesn't live here anymore."
"Do you know where he moved?"
"No. He disappeared over a year ago. Adresse unbekannt, as they say. Address unknown. Return to sender."
"Jesus," I said.
"Why do you say 'Jesus'?" he said. "You're Jewish, aren't you?"
"It's just an expression."
"So the Swami's gone. That's not surprising. He probably killed himself. Every genius kills himself eventually. This is a kingdom of the dumb. You sure you don't want to see my paintings? You know, it's funny. Someone else was here yesterday, looking for him."
"A short black guy, wears a baseball cap turned backward?" Outside, I could see Fouad's cab whistle past.
"Yeah, that was him. He got real upset when he found out the Swami was gone. I thought he was going to have a breakdown or something. He didn't want to see my paintings either. Neither did his friend."
"His friend? Who was his friend?"
"Some creep called Kid Siena. He said I should know who he was because he was a famous graffiti artist. What an ego! I mean, graffiti art isn't art. It's just decoration. A few bright colors on a subway car. You know what I think? All those black and Latino rebels secretly wish they were on Madison Avenue. One call from an ad agency and—"
"Any idea where I could find Kid Siena?"
"How should I know? Defacing the Museum of Modern Art, probably. Now if you'll excuse me, I have serious work to do." He turned and disappeared off the landing.
Slowly I opened the wire glass door of the building. Vesey Street was empty. It had started to rain and a small puddle was already reflecting the blurred neon of Shannon's Bar. I waited for Fouad on the stoop. It didn't take long. In about thirty seconds he came skidding around the corner like the front runner at Le Mans. His back door was already open.
It was easy to see why: the van was thirty yards behind him and gaining. I dove into the back, slamming hard against the seat and reawakening my fragile ribs just as a shell came crashing through the rear window, splattering tiny pellets of safety glass all over the rear of the cab. I interrupted Fouad, who was muttering imprecations in Arabic at twice the speed of sound.
"The Harvard Club," I shouted.
"What?"
"Forty-fourth Street. I need to make a phone call and it's the safest place I can think of."
The van had disappeared from view by the time we hit the traffic on Eighth Avenue. I did my best to clean up the backseat while reassuring Fouad all repairs would be taken care of. For some peculiar reason he was laughing. "This like old days with Red Cross. Fouad dodge grenade, dodge Uzi, run roadblock. One time go right through gate American Embassy, crash into guardhouse."
We pulled up in front of the Harvard Club with still no visible sign of the van, but I knew he couldn't be far away. Indeed, if he was truly a professional, he would have changed vehicles by now. Whatever he was up to, he would probably restrain himself in this bastion of bourgeois meritocracy. The only paid assassins around here were of the boardroom kind.
I left Fouad double-parked outside and walked straight in with the swagger of an up-and-coming member of the Class of '75. My father had been a graduate, actually, and I had gone there many times as a boy. I knew precisely where the phones were, or used to be, over by the cloakroom. I could see they were occupied for the moment, and I stood at the edge of the lounge, staring across at the portentous portraits of famous alumni: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK. I used to feel contemptuous of the pomposity of the place and critical of the value system upon which it was based, but this time I felt ill-at-ease, almost overwhelmed by a sense of inferiority as some nameless gumshoe off on a ridiculous wild-goose chase across New York. Almost as quickly, that same sense segued into a feeling of uncontrollable rage. And then I had the first hallucination of my life: among the gallery of portraits, somewhere between a president and a Nobel Prize winner, was my father, in his Wall Street suit, holding an attaché case and staring down at me with a look of extraordinary disapproval. My head swam and my face flushed and I felt like running up and smashing the painting, when my father's image suddenly started to cry. Just as suddenly, I realized where I was, shook myself a few times, walked into a now open phone booth, and called my younger son. I was still trembling as I dialed his number.
"Hello, Simon."
"Hi, Dad. You in New York?"
"Yeah." It was soothing to hear his voice, grounding.
"How is it'?"
"Adventurous. How's school?"
"I dunno."
"Not so great, huh? What is it? Math again? Negative numbers? I'll help you when I get back."
"Yeah. I was by your apartment. There was a woman there. She says she's working with you. Not bad, Dad."
"Chantal."
"She's a good cook, too. Made me some chocolate stuff. Profit rolls? She said she used to be a chef."
"Profiteroles. Look, Simon, I need your help on something. Ever hear of a graffiti artist named Kid Siena?"
"Oh, yeah, Dad. He's fresh. Kid Siena—wow. He did some bad burners on the Woodlawn Line by the 180th Street station. It all got buffed, though. You know—erased. You met him?"
"No. But I'm looking for him. Do you know where he lives?"
"Un-unh. Those guys, you know. They move around a lot."
"Yeah. I know. How about his real name? Do you know that?"
"Kid Siena? ... I think . .. no."
"What about that book you have, The Lords of Hip-Hop? Maybe it's in there?"
"Yeah, yeah. R
ight. Hold on."
While Simon went for his book, I glanced over at the bulletin board of coming club events. Thursday night they offered a sushi bar, a retrospective of Godard films, and a lecture on debentures. Something for everyone. In a second Simon was back on the line. "Here it is, Dad. I got it. Kid Siena . . . Jorge Mariposa."
"George Butterfly," I said.
"What?"
"That's what it means. Jorge Mariposa is George Butterfly in Spanish. No wonder he changed it to Kid Siena."
"Yeah. That's weak," said Simon. "Anything else you wanna know?"
"That's about it," I said, already thumbing through the M's in the Bronx directory.
"Guess I gotta do that math now, huh?" He sounded as if he were headed for forty years in the gulag. I thought of his brother, who ripped through his homework in about fifteen minutes, and felt bad for him.
"Guess you do."
I said good-bye and hung up just as a group of alums from what looked like the Class of aught-seven shuffled through the lobby from the main dining room. They exited the front door to reveal my friend from the van standing in an alcove about fifty feet away from me. He didn't say anything, but nodded to me with the apparent warning that, at least in this city, there was no escaping him, and walked out. I continued to search the directories, finally finding a Jorge Mariposa in Manhattan on Columbus Avenue. Judging by the address, it must have been in the Nineties.
"What it like in there?" said Fouad as we drove uptown along Central Park West.
"Lot of old farts nodding out, lot of young farts on the hustle. Pretty dull in all, but it does have a good cigar stand. Anyway, it's safe."
''Don't take it amiss, but in Beirut that the first kind of place we blow up."
"We? I thought you were with the Red Cross."
He said something in reply, but I was too busy checking behind me for the guy in the van, trying to figure which vehicle he was driving now and who his accomplice was, because I doubted he was working alone. Or maybe that was just paranoia. But then I remembered the wry definition of a paranoid Nathanson had once given me in therapy: someone who knew all the facts. Therapy. I hadn't thought of it in a couple of days. If what it lead to was having visions of my father hanging from the wall of the Harvard Club, maybe it wasn't such a great idea.
The address on Columbus Avenue turned out to be a middling housing development on Ninety-fifth Street, the kind of place that brought together junior Columbia faculty and upwardly mobile Puerto Rican accountants in a common devotion to rent control. Apparently Jorge Mariposa wasn't doing too badly for a graffiti artist. Maybe he was one of those I had read about who had gone big-time with museum sales, gallery representation, and dinner at Elaine's. Or perhaps it was something else.
I found him listed as apartment 9F on the building register, but when I pressed the buzzer next to his name, there was no answer. I pretended to fumble through the local throwaway paper until a couple of women who resembled Aunt Sonya entered with shopping bags. Giving them my best "I'm-no-mugger" smile while mumbling something about the unspeakably high price of sturgeon, I drifted in after them as they unlocked the lobby door. Then I let them take their own elevator and rode up to the ninth floor alone, emerging in a grimy, institution-green corridor, my feet echoing off the worn marble floor. I had come a long way in my search for Otis King.
I don't think I would have gotten any further had the Satuloff family been spending that particular Wednesday evening in a state of domestic tranquillity. But from the looks of things, the Satuloff family didn't spend too many evenings in that state. Two minutes after arriving on the ninth floor, I was standing by the incinerator, studying the names on the doors and trying to decide which one to knock on first, when Mrs. Satuloff and then Mr. Satuloff came stomping in and out of their apartment, alternatively slamming the door in the other's face as if this were their nightly ritual. The Satuloff kids were visible across the living room, looking on like spectators at a bullfight. It was ultimately Mrs. Satuloff, a tall woman in a blue reindeer sweater and penny loafers, who came to rest out in the corridor with the door finally, or semifinally, shut behind her.
"One of those nights, huh?" I offered.
"You know the problem with men today," she said. "They want you to be everything-wife, mother, wage earner, support system, priest, rabbi, and mistress."
"It's their revenge for the women's liberation movement."
"You're not kidding," she said. "My first husband was so threatened by my working, I had to pretend I was a housewife when we went to dinner parties. My second husband wants me to earn more money, so I took two jobs and now he hates me. I wonder what my third husband will be like."
"An ax murderer'?"
"Sometimes I think it'd be better that way. At least I'd know where I stood. You know what the problem is now? We're all living in a sexual netherworld and nobody knows what the hell to do. You ever talk to your average sixteen-year-old kid today? They don't know if they're male, female, or kangaroo."
"I know what you mean. We got a guy right on this hall named Jorge Mariposa."
"Oh, yeah, well, him. That's a different matter. Nothing to do with sex whatsoever. Or not directly."
I didn't know what she meant, so I just nodded.
"I don't think we've met. I'm Alice Satuloff."
"I'm a cousin of the Freemans." I picked a name off the nearest door.
"God, they're ancient. You deserve extra points for coming around and spending time with them."
"I'm just an old-fashioned guy. What about this Mariposa'? I saw him a couple of times. What does he do?"
"Well, I can't really say for sure. And I'm not really into local gossip. You know, people who live in glass houses . . ."
"I know what you mean. But every time I'm here, he seems to be coming in the same time I'm going to work. Seven A.M."
She grinned. "That must be closing time at the Club Los Cocos."
"The Club Los Cocos?"
"You must not be from around here."
"I'm not. I'm from, uh, Brooklyn Heights."
She looked at me strangely. "Don't you read New York magazine? That new fast-lane place on Ninety-sixth and Columbus where everybody's supposed to—"
Just then the door opened and her husband came out.
"I thought you were dying out here. Who's this?"
"The Freemans' cousin."
"Reilly," I said, pressing the elevator button.
"Reilly? The Freemans have a cousin named Reilly'?"
"Yeah. It is funny, isn't it?"
"They never mentioned having a cousin at all."
"He doesn't know about the Club Los Cocos."
"That's weird."
"Why's it weird? Not everybody on the Upper West Side is a coke fiend. Some of us have healthier ways of dealing with our depression, don't we?"
"Are you implying something, Alice?"
"I'm not implying anything. I'm just stating what is obviously the case."
"What is obvious to you is not particularly obvious to me."
"Oh, yeah? Well, why don't you tell that to the guidance counselor at the Ethical Culture School who had to tell you after fourteen years of family life that your own daughter . . ."
At that point I got in the elevator.
11
The Club Los Cocos was like a bad set from Miami Vice, with mirrored peach glass walls and ten-foot-tall brushed aluminum palm trees that looked like they were borrowed from some department store window. All the men were dressed up in cream-colored suits and white T-shirts like Don Johnson, and the ladies weren't wearing much of anything at all. They were dancing to a frenetic salsa band that was moving up and down at an irregular pace on an elevated platform.
I surveyed the room, trying to choose the right person to guide me to Mariposa, when the sight of someone who was hard to miss made that search irrelevant: Otis himself was dancing by one of the aluminum palm trees. He looked wired to the ceiling as his feet spun around and his arms flailed in
every direction doing some whacked-out combination of the pachanga and the kazatsky with two Puerto Rican girls and anyone else who cared to join in. With his celebrity and his zaniness he was making the evening for about half the people in the room as well as for several burly Los Cocos bouncers in orange mesh tank tops who looked on from a
ramp by the side of the bandstand.
I made my way over to him, edging my way through the dancers, but he spotted me before I could get him. "Ah, it's Brother Dick! Brother Big Dick! I heard you was lookin' for me .... Stop the music, you spic, wop motherfuckers!" he shouted to the band. "We gotta stop this salsa shit for just one second. C'mon stop, José, Carlos, Luis, Miguel, or whatever your name is. Stop!" They stopped. Everyone in the room turned and faced Otis, who was walking toward me, his face dripping with sweat. He put his arm around my shoulder, hanging on me in stoned weariness. "Everybody," he cried out, "this white boy done come all the way from Los Angeles, California, to see me." He looked me straight in the eyes. "Well, you seen me, now fuck off'"
"All right. I'll leave.'.' I made a move to go.
"Hey, my man, just kiddin' you. Can't you take a joke?"
Otis flashed a sweet, little-boy smile. "What you wanna do, anyway? Carry me back to El Lay, make some people rich, play 1980s Stepin' Fetchit for the moo-vee companies? Yes, massa. Yes, massa. Lawdy, lawdy." He wiggled his hands like a Holy Roller. "That's who I am, man—Stepin' Fetchit. Ain't no difference 'cept I say motherfucker and talk about how big my dick is. That's what white folks love nowadays, cursin' niggers. How you think Eddie and Richard got so big? You don't see white dudes sayin' shit like that. Not even Sylvester Slambo Stallone. Not even motherfuckin' Belushi said that kind of shit 'less he was imitating black people. You want to laugh at us more, motherfucker? You wanna see me dance? You wanna see me tap? You wanna see me shuck and jive and get so stoned I can't even stand up and my life is a tragedy you write about in one of your books of motherfuckin' sociology I can't even read 'cause I got dyslexia and that ain't all? You want that?" He grabbed my lapels. "Well, then, laugh, motherfuckah, laugh!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and then clutched his stomach, doubling over in pain.
The Straight Man - Roger L Simon Page 8