Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

  “He’s the one who got shot like ten times, right?”

  “Nine times. He a survivor.”

  “I thought that was Beyoncé.”

  “You know a lotta hip hop for a white lady.”

  “I think a lot of white ladies like hip hop.”

  “For serious?”

  “I think you would be surprised.”

  “Like that dude to be or not to be.”

  “Hamlet?”

  “Shak-a-speare. My Drama teacher say he was like the original white hip hop artist cuz his plays rhyme and he be talkin’ ’bout how the system is all kindsa messed up. He spit the truth yo, like Tupac.”

  “That’s very cool.”

  “You a writer?”

  “No. Why, is that what you want to be?”

  “Uh-uh. I wanna be a firefighter like my uncle Ray. He ran up all them flights a stairs an’ saved a whole lotta people before he died. What you wanna be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How you don’t know? Aren’t you already supposta be somethin’?”

  “Probably. Got any ideas?”

  She watched his eyes crinkle as he looked her up and down searching earnestly for the right answer.

  “You should be a teacher. Or a mama.”

  “Why?”

  “Duh. Cuz you good with kids. Like you don’t talk to me like I’m a baby, you talk to me like I’m a man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You don’t gotta get all polite or nothin’. I just tell it like it is.”

  “Spit the truth, right?”

  “Right. Well, I gotta go.”

  “Really? I mean, sure, of course, you have things to do.”

  “Feel better, shorty.”

  “Thanks, bullfrog.”

  “You crazy!”

  She stayed on the step as he ran up. She could hear the rubber of his sneakers squeak against the floor every time he hit the landing and turned sharp for the next set of stairs. She didn’t watch but she was pretty sure he was climbing two at a time, racing himself like only kids do.

  She brought her knees up toward her chest and slowly unlaced her shoes. She was afraid some other neighbor would walk in and ruin everything by brushing past her or worse yet asking if she needed a hand. There was no way she was willing to sacrifice this moment, this almost memory, for a few more breaths toward recovery. She flexed her toes and gingerly dipped them toward the filthy floor. She could feel generations of women in her family gasping at the sight. The floor was cold. She wondered whether it was a boy or a girl, or would have been. She pushed herself up, grabbed the banister, leaning into it slightly like a crutch, and started her way up. Her sweaty feet left little prints behind that disappeared almost before she could catch them.

  THIS POSE IS A PROBLEM

  BY BILL BERNICO

  BOB AND SUE BERGMAN STEPPED off the plane at JFK International Airport, waited for their luggage on the carousel, and carried the bags to the first car rental counter they found. Bob chose a mid-size sedan and before they left the lot, Bob opened his suitcase and withdrew the GPS he’d brought with him from Wisconsin. He plugged it into the accessory outlet and punched in a search for hotels in New York. The screen had so many little red arrows on it that they nearly obliterated the rest of the map. He had to start over and refine the search criteria, confining the search to Manhattan only. He instinctively chose the red arrow that was closest to his present location and entered its address into the unit. The unit brought the couple right up to the front door of their hotel on Forty-second Street. The name on the front of the building identified it as the Hilton Manhattan East Hotel.

  “I told you it would be better to rent a car than to take a cab,” Bob told his wife. “Can you imagine what one of those cabbies would have charged us to get here? They’d have probably taken the long way around, like that cabbie did to Clint Eastwood in Coogan’s Bluff, remember?”

  Sue Bergman nodded and said, “Yes, and he wanted to charge Clint for luggage when all he had was a briefcase.”

  They checked into their hotel, unpacked their luggage, and stowed the suitcases in the closet before collapsing on the two full-size beds. Sue pulled a stack of glossy nine-by-twelve photos that they’d brought with them for this trip. The photos had all been bought at movie memorabilia shops over the past few years. They were stills from several of the couple’s favorite movies. On the back of each photo, Bob had penciled in the street address of the particular location. The purpose of their trip to New York was to visit all these film locations and pose for pictures at those exact spots. The two Wisconsinites were both movie buffs, having seen several hundred movies from the forties through the eighties. They didn’t really care for contemporary movies, preferring the classics from days gone by.

  Bob changed into a pair of comfortable walking shoes, knowing that he and Sue would be doing quite a bit of travel on foot to get where they needed to be. Bob knew that the first place he wanted to visit was the twenty-third precinct police station that Coogan had visited on his trip to New York. He held his hand out toward Sue and asked for the Coogan’s Bluff photo from the pile. She found it quickly and handed it to Bob. Bob turned the photo over and read the address to Sue.

  “It’s on West Thirtieth Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues in Manhattan,” Bob announced. “See why I brought along my GPS? Right after we get some lunch we can drive over there and take our shots. I’ll bet we can get half a dozen good shots before the day is done. Hell, we’ve got three days here. That should be more than enough time to get everything we need.”

  “And won’t they all look terrific in our scrapbook?” Sue said. “That first section we put together from the Los Angeles locations turned out great. The second section with the film location photos from Chicago was not as good. At least I didn’t think so. But this section will be the best of the three. Do you realize how many movies were shot right here in New York?”

  “I hope that’s a rhetorical question,” Bob said, “because there were hundreds and even I couldn’t remember all of them.”

  “I know,” Sue said, patting the pile of movie stills in her lap. “But we’re only interested in the ones in this stack. Let’s go eat. I’m hungry.”

  They found a restaurant nearby and spent as little time there as they could, wanting to spend the bulk of their time in the city finding movie locations. When they’d finished, Bob and Sue got back into their rented car and followed the GPS unit’s directions. “Looks like we can keep going this way on Forty-second Street and then turn left on Park Avenue,” Bob announced.

  “I’ve always wanted to see Park Avenue,” Sue said.

  As Bob approached the intersection at Park Avenue, Sue looked out her window and pointed to a tall building. “Bob, look,” she said. “It’s the Pan Am Building where Coogan landed in that helicopter, remember?”

  “It’s the same building, alright,” Bob agreed. “But it says MetLife on it. Looks like insurance was more lucrative than airlines. I’ll bet they bought it from Pan Am.” Bob turned right on Park Avenue and pulled to the curb. He got out and stood behind his rented car as he snapped several photos of the oddly shaped skyscraper before he slid behind the wheel again. He turned to Sue. “Good catch. I would have missed it.”

  Bob continued south on Park Avenue and caught Thirtieth Street heading east. As he passed Fifth Avenue Sue said, “I wonder where Saks is.”

  “I don’t know,” Bob said, but the police station has to be up ahead just a couple more blocks.” He stopped for the light at the next corner and looked up at the street sign. “Avenue of the Americas,” he said. “What happened to Sixth Avenue?” Sue saw a man standing at the corner, waiting to cross. She rolled down her window and yelled to the man, “Excuse me.” The man turned toward the sound of her voice. “Can you tell me where Sixth Avenue is?”

  The man’s brow furrowed. “What are you, some kind of wise guy?” he said and crossed when the light changed.

  Sue rolled
her window up again and turned to her husband. “That was odd. I guess people aren’t very friendly around here.”

  Bob drove on and had gone only half a block when he looked out his window and spotted the familiar police station. He stopped in the middle of the block, amid horn honks and shouts behind him. “That’s it,” he told Sue. “I’ve got to find a place to park so we can get some pictures.” He circled the block and then widened his search, eventually finding a parking place two blocks away. “See,” he said, turning to Sue. “This is why I brought comfortable walking shoes along.”

  The two of them got out and walked at a brisk pace toward the 23rd precinct building. Bob looked all around him and commented, “For some reason I thought this place was a little more out in the open. Look at this street. I’ll bet I could spit across it and hit the other side.”

  He and Sue walked up to the front of the building, touching the rough stone exterior with their hands, looking, Sue was sure, like a couple of out-of-town tourists. Bob handed Sue the camera and then stepped back against the building, pointing at the front door while she snapped several photos. They reversed their positions and Bob took a few photos of Sue in much the same pose.

  Satisfied that he had what he came for, Bob took Sue’s hand and walked her back to the rented car. Once back inside, Bob turned on the digital camera and brought up the photos they’d just taken. Sue leaned in to get a look and the two of them smiled at their accomplishment.

  “What’s next on the list?” Sue said.

  Bob pulled a printed list from his pocket and looked over the locations before announcing, “According to this, we’re only four or five blocks away from Macy’s Department Store.”

  “Miracle on 34th Street,” Sue said. “That’s one of my favorite movies. Let’s go see it.”

  When he got to the corner of West Thirty-fourth Street and Seventh Avenue, Bob looked up and down the streets. “We’ll never be able to find a place to park around here. How about if we park this car somewhere else and take a cab back to this corner?”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Sue said. “You’ll probably want a cab anyway when you want to get pictures of the Plaza Hotel. You know, a picture of you getting into a cab, posing like Cary Grant in North by Northwest.”

  “Good idea,” Bob said, driving away from Macy’s. They found a parking place nine blocks away and spent another fifteen minutes hailing a cab. They got out in front of Macy’s and told the cabbie to wait around the corner while they took their photos. The cabbie smiled, imagining these two running up a pretty hefty bill before they were through.

  Before they got back into the cab, Bob turned to Sue and whispered, “Let’s try to act like we belong here, or this cabbie’s gonna run us all over town. Let me do the talking.” When they got back into the backseat of the yellow cab, Bob told the driver to take them to the Plaza Hotel and then settled back in his seat.

  The cab pulled up in front of the hotel and before Bob could open the cab door, a doorman from the Plaza Hotel pulled it open and swept an arm out, inviting them to step out of the cab. Bob looked at Sue and raised his eyebrows. “Now that’s service,” he said, sliding out of the cab and extending his hand out to Sue. She took it and stepped out of the cab, taking the camera from Bob and stepping ahead of the cab.

  Bob leaned in to the front window and told the cabbie to wait for them. The doorman had closed the cab’s back door but Bob opened it again, posing with his hand on the door, as if he was catching a cab. Sue snapped several photos and again switched places with Bob for her turn as the model. When they’d finished, Sue and Bob slid back into the cab and closed the door, leaving the doorman standing there, waiting for the tip that wasn’t coming. The cab pulled away from the curb. “Where to now, mac?” the cabbie said.

  Bob checked his list and announced, “Grand Central Terminal.”

  “You got it,” the cabbie said, occasionally glancing at the ever-rising amount on his meter. When he got to Grand Central, he turned around in his seat and said, “You want me to wait here, too?”

  “Yes,” Bob said. “We won’t be long.”

  The nervous cabbie looked Bob over and pointed to the meter. “You’re running up quite a tab here, bud. Suppose you give me a little down payment while I’m waiting. I’ve been ripped off once too often to trust anyone.”

  “Oh, sure,” Bob said, looking at the meter and peeling two twenties off the roll he had in his pocket. “Here, that should keep you happy until we get back. It’ll just be a few minutes.” He and Sue stood across the street, snapping several photos of the outside of the building before going inside to compare the glossy photos to the actual locations. They both posed again in the approximate place that Cary Grant had stood during the filming of the Alfred Hitchcock classic thriller. Bob checked another location off his list and took Sue by the hand, walking her back out to the waiting cab.

  “Let me guess,” the cabbie said. “The United Nations building, right?”

  Bob and Sue looked at each other in wide-eyed amazement. “How’d you know?” Bob said.

  The cabbie exhaled deeply. “You think you’re the first tourists to want to see movie locations? North by Northwest was a big deal for New York when they filmed it here back in ’59. Of course I was only nine years old at the time, but my mother told me all about being outside the Plaza when they were shooting that cab scene with Cary Grant, so I knew right away what you two were doing.”

  “Well, that should save us a few explanations,” Bob told the cabbie.

  “I take it you got shots inside Grand Central Terminal,” the cabbie said, driving on to the UN Building.

  “Uh huh,” Bob agreed.

  “I don’t suppose I have to tell you that it was also used in The Out-of-Towners, do I?” the cabbie said.

  “Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis,” Bob offered. “That’s another one of our favorites.”

  “Tell you what,” the cabbie said. “When you’re done taking your pictures of the UN Building, I can drive you over to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel where those two actors tried to get a room. After that I can drive you through Central Park and point out a couple more movie locations.”

  “Thank you very much,” Bob said. “That’ll save me a lot of time looking them up.”

  “All part of the full service,” the cabbie said.

  Bob and Sue got their UN photos, got back into the cab, and sat back as their personal guide drove them to the Waldorf. The cabbie waited at the curb as Bob and Sue snapped a few photos of the outside of the Waldorf before going inside to pose for a few more shots. When they had what they came for, Bob and Sue got back into the cab, smiling at their accomplishments.

  The cabbie turned around and asked, “Get everything you need?”

  Bob and Sue both nodded and smiled. “I think so,” Sue said.

  “I don’t think so,” the cabbie said. “Do you remember the scene in The Out-of-Towners where that couple sat on the steps of that church to rest and eventually went inside to pray?”

  Bob and Sue looked at each other and then back at the cabbie. “You know where that church is?” Bob said.

  “Sure,” the cabbie said confidently. “When we come back out of Central Park on Sixty-fifth Street, we’ll be less than a block away from it. You wanna see it?”

  “You bet,” Bob said, and off they went to fulfill yet another goal in their quest for movie locations.

  After they’d taken exterior and interior photos of the church, they got back into the cab and sighed.

  “Where to next?” the cabbie said.

  “That’s it for us for today,” Bob said. “We’re beat. We can pick this up again tomorrow. Hell, we’ve got three days. No sense knocking ourselves out the first day.”

  The cabbie slipped one of his business cards through the slot in the Plexiglas partition. “Call me tomorrow whenever you’re ready. I can pick you up wherever you’re staying. Is that where you want to go now?”

  “Yes,” Bob said.

&
nbsp; “No,” Sue interjected. “We have to go back and get the rental car that we left parked on the street.”

  “And where would that be?” the cabbie said.

  Bob and Sue looked at each other. “Uh oh,” Bob said. “I hope you remember where we parked it.”

  Sue shrugged. “I thought wrote it down before we left it there,” she said.

  “Let’s not panic,” Bob said. “Let’s think back.” He looked at the cabbie. It has to be somewhere near where you picked us up. You have that written down on your clipboard?”

  The cabbie checked his drive sheet before offering, “It was near Bryant Park. I’ll take you there now.”

  Bob let out a deep breath. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I thought we’d lost the car.”

  “When we get back to it, let’s turn it in,” Sue said.

  The cabbie turned around in his seat. “If you like I can follow you back to the car rental place and then drive you back to your hotel.”

  “That would be great,” Sue said. “Thank you so much.”

  The cabbie dropped Bob and Sue off near Bryant Park and the memory of where Bob had parked the rental came back to him a little at a time. He paid the cabbie for the time on the meter so far and then drove the rental car back to the turn-in garage. He and Sue took the cab back to their hotel and promised to call the cabbie again the next morning.

  Back in their room, Bob and Sue looked at what they’d photographed that day and were pleased with their results. The digital pictures on the camera matched the glossy stills in both location and pose. Their scrapbook would be one section richer when they returned home to Wisconsin two days from now.

  The next morning after breakfast, Bob called the number on the card the cabbie had given him and told the cabbie they’d be standing out in front of their hotel at nine o’clock. The cabbie was there a couple minutes early and greeted the couple as they slid into the backseat to continue their quest for movie locations.

  “Well,” the cabbie said. “Where would you like to start this morning?”