Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

  Benjamin went up and out of the drain and into the Forum again with the rest of them when the tour ended, from which their guide led them to the Tiber, near the bridge Ponte Rocco, the Basilica Julia. A stone stairway descends here down to a suspended walk overlooking a tall, arched opening that is the place of my outfall into the Tiber and that has been for longer than the stones that arch over it now, for longer than men have actually recorded.

  From this vantage, Benjamin and the others looked upon me and the easy, not very powerful flow out from me down into the river. These days, I no longer carry waste and debris out and away from the city through the Cloaca Maxima. That is done through other, newer parts of my domain, and handled in another manner. But still I continue to serve the city through it, draining off rain and storm water in the bed of its main course, which remains wide enough for a narrow boat to navigate between the stone blocks of its sides, which blocks themselves have narrow walks upon which a man can walk erect beneath the vault of its ceiling.

  I waited.

  When the tour members had seen enough of this, my final place, they began their way back up the stairs to the Basilica Julia and the street. One called goodbye to me, jokingly, by my old name, my first name, my original name, in that dead language.

  “Vale, Cloacina!”

  Some of the others laughed, and one joined him in bidding me farewell:

  “Yes. Goodbye, Cloacina!”

  From within the stone, I watched Benjamin remain.

  “Coming, Ben?” the historian called, looking back over his shoulder.

  “I want to stay a while,” Ben answered. “I’ll make my own way back.”

  The guide nodded.

  Ben waited.

  I did, too—till the French couple also on the walkway finally left, arms about each other’s waist, and then a little longer till the Italian teenager who had been leaning on the rail with his forearms and looking moodily out to the Tiber, finished his cigarette, flicked the butt out into the river, turned, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and left.

  When the teenager was gone and there were no others, and as the sun began to sink into the horizon sending streaks of orange through the western sky, I heaved into being, into form, and came to Benjamin on the walkway.

  If my heart could be broken, I think it might have broken then, with what welled up in me as I looked at Benjamin and with what I felt filling him. Broken with joy, with grief.

  He took a step toward me, hesitant, as his father had first been that night at the side of another river, only with a different kind of longing, a different need, and deep, deep as any I have ever seen.

  I opened my arms to him.

  He came to me, wrapped me in his own arms as I took him in mine, held me tightly, his face buried into my shoulder. I held him, and rocked him, and said, “Sshhh, sshhh now,” as his breath caught in his throat. “It’s alright,” I said. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

  He sobbed into my shoulder. Just once. But from within his heart.

  “Hush,” I said, stroking his hair, his father’s hair, and rocked him.

  After a short while, he straightened in my grasp, put his hands on my hips and stepped back. He was older now, his face a little fuller, small lines at the corners of his eyes. I was not. At least not as he saw me, I looked no older than I had to him the night I had taken him out of the abandoned house on East Fourth Street in Manhattan.

  He saw me as I am, which is how I was then. How I have always been.

  He nodded slowly.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for coming to me.”

  “I couldn’t not, Benjamin.”

  “I knew you’d be here. I knew somehow that this is where you had gone. Home.”

  “Yes, home.”

  “I don’t know how I knew.”

  “We just know some things about one another. Feel them.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” he said. “I wanted to show you something.”

  “Alright.”

  He took his wallet from his back pocket and opened it.

  “There,” he said, holding it up for me, so I could see a closeup photo of a young boy, a young boy with dark black hair and a familiar smile.

  I smiled back at him, the young boy. Again, I couldn’t not.

  “He’s very good looking. He seems to be a wonderful boy,” I said. “He has his father’s eyes.”

  “Yes,” Benjamin said, turning to the photograph to look at it himself. “And your eyes, too.”

  “Yes,” I said, looking into his own, which were green with flecks of gold—my eyes looking back at me.

  “What is his name?” I asked.

  “Davide,” he said.

  “Ah. That is a good name. Why did you name him that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It just seemed right. A good name.”

  “I think it is a very good name.”

  “Do you think my father would have liked it?”

  “Yes. Very much. And he would have loved Davide. And he would have loved you. He wasn’t able to. He died. But I know he would have loved you, and then Davide.”

  “Would he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I will need to go now,” I said gently. “It is how things are.”

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t know how I know, but I know.”

  We looked into one another’s eyes, into the green of them, with the flecks of gold.

  It was all, truly, that could be done. And it was enough. It had to be enough.

  I stepped back from him.

  “Once more,” he said, opening his arms. “Please.”

  I held him again. He sighed, loosening, and seemed almost to melt into me, this man, this grown man, this capable man, this father of Davide who for instant was an infant himself again, and then the boy to whom I had never been able to give all that he needed and that he deserved, and whom I could only hold now, and let whatever comfort and succor he could draw from me flow forth to him.

  He let go, stood looking down at me, tall, like his father.

  He held my shoulders. He bent and kissed me on the cheek.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you,” I said.

  He sighed. There was contentment in the sound, peace. He accepted. And would carry with him what he needed from me.

  “How does this work?” he asked. “Should I leave first, leave you here?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That would be best.”

  He stepped away. “Goodbye . . .” He struggled over the word, over what he wanted to call me.

  “I love you,” I said.

  He nodded, understanding. He turned and walked away. And did not look back.

  I waited till he was out of sight.

  Then I went back into my domain.

  It was comforting there, quiet, soothing. I sat. I put my face in my hands. I have never wept. I would have then, I believe, were I able. For grief, joy. For all the blessing, and all the hurt.

  In gratitude.

  In gratitude for Dovid. In gratitude for Benjamin. In gratitude for Davide, whom I would go to see some day, though I would not let him see me.

  I wished I had been able to do this, what I had just done now, for my daughter here in Rome long ago.

  And for my son in London.

  I knew I would never to be able to do it again. That somehow it would burst my heart.

  I would need to be careful in the future never to bear another child.

  But I was glad I had had Benjamin.

  I knew that he was glad, too, even in the face of all he had suffered. I knew that he had several times been up north of his city and seen the myriad stars glittering over the Hudson River, and that he would take Davide to see them, too, and that he would continue to know peace through the sight of them and the wonder of them, and that he might well hear things moving about in the night beneath them that others did not. And that Davide, too, would come to know something of me t
hrough them even if he could not form what it was that he knew into thought, only felt it at times, understood it in his heart.

  Whatever was to become of me, and all else, including the stars, in time I was glad that long ago I had first come into being—and that this day my son had come to embrace me.

  THE DEAD CLIENT

  BY PARNELL HALL

  NEW YORK’S CHANGED. WHEN I started working for Rosenberg and Stone, shortly after the dawn of time, the City was a fearsome place, at least for me. Attorneys had just been allowed to advertise, and a young, hotshot lawyer named Richard Rosenberg took full advantage, bombarding the airwaves with clever TV ads strategically placed on syndicated sitcom reruns on the local independent channels. The ads, all similar, were variations on a theme: an impoverished-looking man, usually black, with his leg in a cast, side-spied sheepishly up at his long-suffering wife, who stood stoically with her arms outspread in the living room of what was obviously a project apartment, and declared, somewhat petulantly, “What we gonna do now, George? How we gonna pay the rent?”

  The answer, of course, was to call Rosenberg and Stone. The lure was it wouldn’t cost you anything and you could make a pile of money. “Free consultation! No fee unless recovery! We will come to your home!”

  Richard wouldn’t, of course; he’d send me, and I’d come walking in in a suit and tie, flop down a briefcase on the table, and say, “Hi, I’m Stanley Hastings from the lawyer’s office,” and if they thought I was an attorney, hey, that wasn’t my fault.

  I would take down the facts of the case, all similar, usually the client tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, fell down, and broke a leg. I would fill out the fact sheet and get them to sign a number of forms, one to get their hospital records, one to get the police report, if any, and one, of course, retaining Richard Rosenberg as their attorney to act on their behalf.

  That form was always last, and by the time they got to it most people were so used to signing forms they signed it without reading it. Which wasn’t bad, they weren’t getting taken, the form was a standard retainer; still it always gave me pause.

  My job, though boring, was a piece of cake. It was also dangerous as hell. Because the people who called the lawyer they saw on TV tended to be, to put it politely, less than affluent. I plied my trade in slums and crack houses and projects with elevators that didn’t function and stairwells that reeked of urine. I worked alone and unarmed and fully expected to be mugged and/or killed. The only reason I wasn’t was because everyone thought I was a cop, otherwise why would I be there?

  But that was way back when. Then Giuliani cracked down on crime and Bloomberg cracked down on soda and the City changed.

  Cosmetically.

  Disney cleaned up Times Square and Columbus Avenue got a bike lane, and the nice neighborhoods got nicer and the not-so-nice neighborhoods didn’t. And do you think that created some resentment? Good guess. The junkies and muggers and crack whores and gangs are just more concentrated in the neighborhoods I frequent. And I’m older but no wiser and still look like a cop. But some things are different.

  One thing that disappeared, and I wasn’t sorry to see them go, was the squeegee guys. If you don’t know what they are, you’re not from New York. They’re the guys that hang out on street corners and wash your windshield against your will. Squeegees are windshield-washing implements, an amenity you used to find in buckets of water next to the gas pumps in service stations. Few squeegee guys had squeegees, and fewer still had water. Most had a rag, usually dirtier than the windshield they were attempting to wash. They would appear out of nowhere, plaster themselves to the hood of your car, and smear your windshield with all kinds of unmentionable filth. They were gone, and no one missed them.

  Which was why Nelson Jones was a surprise.

  I was driving back from an assignment in Queens, signing up a woman who had gotten her hand slammed in her apartment door. It was her boyfriend who slammed it, which made the liability questionable, but Richard would probably sue the City of New York for building a project with a defective door that injured its occupants.

  I was tooling past LaGuardia Airport when I got beeped. I have a cellphone, but I don’t want to answer it when I’m driving. They page me and I call in.

  I got off the Grand Central Parkway just before the Triboro Bridge and called the office.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” Wendy/Janet said. Richard has two switchboard girls with identical voices, so I can never tell them apart.

  “It’s Stanley. You beeped me.”

  “Stanley. Glad you called.”

  She always says that, at least one of them always says that, as if I just happened to ring.

  “What’s up?”

  “I got a case for you.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Got a pen?”

  “Always.”

  “The client is Nelson Jones. He broke his leg.”

  “What’s his address?”

  “Well, that’s the problem.”

  “You don’t have an address?”

  “He doesn’t have an address. Don’t worry, he’ll meet you on the corner.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, that’s what he said.”

  “Great. I suppose you’ll call him on his phone and let him know I’m coming.”

  “He doesn’t have a phone.”

  Irony goes right over Wendy/Janet’s head. As does practically anything else. Besides a voice, Wendy and Janet share the brains of a labradoodle. I don’t know who got the larger half, but then I wouldn’t know if I was talking to her anyway.

  “So how will I know he’s there?”

  “You’ll go and see.”

  “Any particular street corner?”

  “Huh?”

  “What corner will he be on?”

  “125th and Broadway.”

  “Which corner?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Doesn’t sound promising.”

  “You better find him. Richard really wants the case.”

  I came off the Triboro Bridge at 125th and Second Avenue, which sounds convenient, but Second Avenue and Broadway are about as far apart as you can get and crosstown traffic is the worst. The lights aren’t staggered or in unison, like up and downtown streets, so you usually hit every one. I’ve had taxi drivers curse when I gave a crosstown address.

  There’s no good place to stop on the northeast corner of 125th and Broadway, so I pulled up on the northwest corner instead. There’s no good place to stop there either, but you’re less likely to piss off a bus driver. I hopped out and looked around.

  Across the street a black man with a cloth was washing the windshield of a car that had pulled out of the McDonald’s parking lot and been caught by the light. He hobbled around the front to wash the driver’s side and with a sinking feeling I realized he was my client.

  He had a cast on his leg.

  He was the grungiest man I’ve ever seen. His clothes were not rags, but enough of them were missing to render it questionable. The pants were slit from the ankle to the crotch. Which might have been to accommodate the cast, but only one leg was broken and both legs were slit. The right leg was a different color from the left, as if the man had lain in paint, though which was the painted leg was not entirely clear.

  He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt. It hadn’t always been that way. The sleeves had been ripped off in jagged tears. It was a wonder there was enough fabric left to keep it on his shoulders. He had probably torn them off to use as windshield cleaning cloths, though the one he was currently clutching looked like it had been stolen from a garage, where it had served to wipe the oil off dipsticks.

  Things did not look good for our client’s sale. The driver had not rolled down his window, and when Mr. Jones knocked on it he gave him the finger.

  The light changed and the car roared off while our client was still leaning on it. Had he fallen, I’d have gotten the license number.

  “Nelson Jones?” I
called.

  He spun around, a one-legged man, ready to take on the world. “Yeah?” he snarled.

  “I’m from Rosenberg and Stone. You called the office.” That rang a bell. Our client lurched out into the street right in the path of a car. The driver leaned on the horn and fishtailed around him. Nelson Jones took no notice. He motored across the street without benefit of a crutch in a serpentine style all his own, swinging his cast in a semicircle and hopping his good leg forward. He made remarkable progress, which was good, as every car in uptown Manhattan was bearing down on him. He clung to the side of my car and demanded, “You the lawyer?”

  “I’m Mr. Hastings from Rosenberg and Stone.”

  He scowled, spit. “She-et! You Rosenberg?”

  “No.”

  “I call Rosenberg. Where he at? Wanna talk to the man on TV.”

  Richard had let a slick advertising executive talk him into appearing in a couple of his own TV commercials. I’d warned him it would be trouble.

  “Mr. Rosenberg handles the case in court. He doesn’t go out in the street.”

  “You tell him he gots to.”

  “He won’t.”

  “You tell him.”

  “I’ll tell him. He won’t. You’ll never see him again. You wanna see him you do one of two things. You talk to me, or you go to his office.”

  “Where the office?”

  “Downtown.”

  “She-et!”

  “Wanna talk to me?”

  “No.”

  I got back in my car.

  He frog-kicked his way around it, plastered himself to the windshield, banged on the glass.

  I took that as a sign he’d changed his mind. I got out of the car, opened my briefcase, and took out a signup kit with a fact sheet on top. The usual procedure was to fill in the name, address, phone number, age, sex, marital status. I figured I’d skip the usual procedure. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

  “Muthafucka knock me down.”

  I did not write that on the form. “With his car?”

  He glared at me. “What are you, comedian? Wit’ his car.” He waved his hand in the general direction of his face. “You think a car did this?”