Manhattan Nocturne

by Colin Harrison

  I called my love three times at work today and she did not return my calls. Sent roses at noon. Flower company called back at five to say roses had been rejected. Distraught, could not concentrate in late afternoon meeting. Called my love when I got home. Perhaps we could see a movie. No answer. Went over to her building. Cold outside. Doorman would not let me in. Said it was his instructions. I offered him a hundred dollars, but he would not let me in. Most upset now. Very upset. Don’t want to go home. Went to coffeeshop outside her apartment building. Perhaps Iris will come home. Maybe she went out to movies.

  “You get the idea,” Ralph Benson noted. “It’s his record as he stalked her. We could call it Memoirs of the Beast and sell it for a million dollars. You can have the movie rights, hmm. It gets quite detailed. It also has the account of him shooting her.”

  “Can I see that?”

  “Sure. You’ll see that his thinking was deteriorating.”

  Found her. Laundry. Inside with athe blue dress that she wore had the gun knew she was there A cross the street, watching thinking and couldnt just not tell her how much I loved her forever ands that no one else could have herr. No other man, never!!! I walked in to the estyablishment and I shot at her. She saw me and I shot to tell hereverything about it. The bullets hit and everyone screamed and I ran out. Now am in a taxi, medallion #3N82, speeding over Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan.

  I nodded. It was definitely a column. “Pretty conclusive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you giving this to me?” I asked.

  “After a certain negotiated point.”

  “You want me to publicize the coward’s entries and thereby warn innocent young women of the murderous nature of men.”

  Ralph blinked. “That is an admirable motivation, but it is not mine.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want all good things, Mr. Wren, but I can’t have them. I can’t even have a millionth of all good things. A bottle of claret would be nice, hmm. ‘Wine removes the sensation of hunger.’ So said Hippocrates. But what I would like, more than anything, is a pair of decent shoes for my wife, for me, and for Ernesto. People do not discard or give away good, unworn shoes. My wife mostly wears men’s shoes that are too large for her. I have nothing to give but my own ruined smile, my wit—ha!—and, last, whatever little I can pry out of the Babylon above me.” He looked at me, eyes desperate. “I was thinking of a thousand dollars.”

  “I don’t buy information.”

  “Five hundred—surely you’re good for that.”

  “Look, I wish things were different for you.”

  He picked up the computer and held it above his head, as if to toss it like a volleyball. “I’ll just throw it away like this, words into the void.”

  “No you won’t.”

  “No?” This seemed to interest him, and he lowered the computer.

  “You’d rather try to sell it to someone else.”

  “I hear negotiation in your voice, Mr. Wren. A tone of possibility! Five hundred. That must be close to your price.”

  “There is no price.”

  “That’s quite noble of you!” Ralph Benson spat.

  “Quite noble, hmmm! Your journalistic integrity is unsullied and, yes, like a well-turned-out gentleman, may strut itself on the boulevard of good intentions, admiring the cleanliness of its heels, the smoothness of its coat.” He swept his arms upward, and now in his articulate anger I glimpsed who he had once been. “Very noble! Now then, Mr. Wren, let us put all this in context, shall we? I am a penniless man unable to make a living. I am so unable to function in the world above that I am reduced to living in the netherworld below and having a half-wit colossus scavenge for my food! The addition of five hundred dollars to my holdings would raise those holdings to five hundred dollars. You, sir, are a worldly, successful man, far more powerful than I, a holder of position and reputation and capital. I have no doubt that you are rather well-compensated for your work. The subtraction of five hundred dollars from your holdings would go unnoticed by you. It is a sum that is now beneath your scrutiny. Five hundred dollars! Nothing to you. So I ask you, what is more equitable, down here in the world below? The maintenance of your priggish journalistic ethics, which are being violated every day by many of your colleagues, or the transfer of a small sum to a homeless, penniless fellow, in return for which he will hand over to you a useful trove of information?”

  I looked at him and then at my watch. I wanted to see Simon’s videotapes.

  “How much are three pairs of boots?”

  “Hmmm, the sale price per pair at Urban Outfitters is fifty-nine ninety-five.”

  “That’s about a hundred and eighty dollars.” I looked in my wallet, checked my front pocket. I had one hundred and thirty-two dollars, and I held it out to him. “That’s all I’ve got, assuming you don’t take American Express.”

  “Sold.”

  I nodded, somewhat miserably.

  “Ernesto!” called Ralph Benson.

  In a moment, Ernesto had scampered up the rope and, seemingly using only one arm, taken the computer down for me.

  “How can I contact you if I need to?” I asked. “Without coming all the way down here, I mean.”

  “Hmm, yes, simple,” Ralph Benson said. “Every weekday, I have Ernesto stand at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Broadway at eight P.M. and midnight. He stands there for ten minutes. Anyone who wishes to contact me or send me something—and there are a few, as a matter of fact—simply hands Ernesto a note. The next day, Ernesto will bring the response. If you want an immediate response, you need to mark the note accordingly, and then wait at the corner there. Ernesto will usually be back in twenty minutes or so.”

  I looked him in the eye and shook his hand. He was an odd fellow, and he hadn’t wanted to badger me for the money, but in the end I didn’t mind giving it to him. He was a man with a philosophy, which, I’m afraid, I am not. I rather liked Ralph Benson, and I suppose he felt that I wasn’t so bad. This was fortuitous for me, for later I would need his help.

  I drove east across Central Park, through the leafless trees, found the Malaysian bank, and dropped the car in a parking garage. On the street, with my breath smoking in front of me, I paused to examine the stark rise of steel and glass. Rarely had the city’s physical stratification been so apparent; it is literally another city the higher you go, a world of penthouses and expensive restaurants and corporate offices. In Manhattan you are never far from the brutal verticalities of class. And then, inside, beyond the sitting Buddha, I found that Caroline had indeed called and arranged my access to her private vault. I repeated the ritual of the previous week, taking the elevator to the fourteenth floor, signing in, and being led down the long white hallway. The attendant opened the door for me and departed. The room was as I had left it.

  I decided that if the tape Hobbs wanted was here, then I would take it with me in my coat, make a copy at home, and then contact him. But first I had to find it. I lifted a stack of tapes from the steel trunk, ordered them by number, and shoved each into the machine one after another, fast forwarding with the play button depressed, so that the figures moved jerkily across the screen like psychotic crack smokers, the picture ripped with two bands of static. I was looking for Hobbs to flash into view. I wish I could say that I found him among the strange pile of sweepings from the human tragedy Simon Crowley had collected. How much easier it would have been. But there was another discovery awaiting me, and at the risk of belaboring Simon Crowley’s voyeuristic sensibility, I will briefly reprise the sequence leading up to it:

  1: Car accident with delirious drunk man, trapped in wreck, calling for his wife, dead of head injuries in the seat next to him. He is inebriated and in shock. Blood all over his suit. Perhaps his legs are crushed, but he seems not to know it. Gloved hand of fireman on door frame. Man discovers his wife slumped next to him. Weeps and kisses her passionately, his hands on her cheeks, touching her bloody mouth with his. Suddenly believes she is alive,
seems to be insisting she is alive. More kissing, lifts up eyelid, talking to corpse. Man is cut out of his car by firemen.

  2: Retarded boy of about twelve learning to tie shoelaces; fails several dozen times; is not frustrated.

  3: Open prison yard, seen from atop a tower. Blue sky, haze of fences with triple coil of razor wire. Normal activities of exercise period. Then a fight on the perimeter. Guards become active, draw guns. Inmates, all black, lie down. Guards move about looking for something. Search unsuccessful. Guards move about with guns. Inmates undress, drop clothes to one side. Blue sky. Field of naked black men. Haze of fences.

  4: Man of about sixty in green uniform marked FRANK on front and QUEENS ELEVATOR CO. on back. He crouches in the bottom of an elevator shaft. Toolbox and flashlight. He fixes something.

  5: Asian women working in a Nike shoe factory in the Far East; piles of shoe parts around them, sewing machines and hot-glue pump-guns; a girl, perhaps exhausted, sews her finger to a shoe part and is helped by another woman; the women continue to work.

  6: Southern California. Palms swaying in back. A large shed filled with lawn mowers and lawn tractors, at least a hundred, most of them painted red, parked tightly next to one another. Mexicans are fixing the lawn mowers. A blonde woman pulls up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Sunglasses. Thin belt. Children in back of car. A tagged lawn mower is produced and loaded in back. The woman drives off. Mexicans move slowly among the lawn mowers. None have sunglasses.

  7: Sand-level shot, perhaps taken by a remote video device, of bombs dropping on Iraqi soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. Confused running, explosions, sand falling like rain. Image is not color but an odd, cool green, disturbed from time to time by adjacent, offscreen detonations. Iraqi soldiers screaming silently.

  8: An old man in hospital bed, his wife sitting in a chair. Man considers her with his eyes, looks away. Plays with control of hospital bed, trying to get comfortable. Back hurts him. Minute after minute of this. Wife sighs, etc.

  9: A camera follows a black woman from room to room. Cockroaches everywhere. She opens a kitchen cupboard glistening with roaches. Camera pans ceiling. Roaches. Woman and what seems to be a housing official go into a bedroom; each leg of a crib set in a coffee can filled with a lye solution. The cans are filled with dead, half-dissolved roaches. Official nods. Baby is crying; mother sees a bug in the child’s ear. Can’t get it out. Mother becomes hysterical.

  10: Party scene, somewhere in L.A. Valley of lights in the background. Poor-quality video. Camera appears to be attached at headlevel. Faces appear, speak to Simon Crowley. Nicolas Cage, David Geffen, Sharon Stone, a waiter who smiles emptily, Tom Cruise. Sharon Stone again. Conversations, etc. Trip to bathroom. In mirror, Simon Crowley looks at himself. He is checking the wire. A tiny optical cable is attached to his eyeglasses near the right hinge. Runs beneath long hair into collar, some device hidden in baggy jacket. Crowley in mirror checks face, teeth, eyes. Mouths something to himself. Grabs crotch. Returns to party. More of same, etc.

  11: Countryside, shot from a distance of several hundred yards. Man in overalls driving a tractor drags an old car behind him under a tree. Jumps down from tractor. Attaches winch to tree limb. Opens hood of car, attaches chains. Winches engine out of car as tree limb dips with each ratchet of the winch. Engine clears hood. Man drives tractor around to other side of car, hooks up chain, drags car away. Engine hangs from tree.

  12: Dusk, or dawn. A small, flat-bottomed boat manned by an Indian who poles the boat through a muddy river. He is skinny but vigorous. The boat moves along the bank past ancient stone temples and steps where women are washing clothes by beating them upon the stones. A water buffalo swims by. Ahead there is a fire on the bank. The man poles the boat toward it: an immense bier tended by two men with long rakes. Marigolds are strewn on the ground and two children play nearby. A small brown dog watches. The boat draws nearer. A human form is perceptible within the flames. One of its blackened arms has contracted upward in the heat. The children play contentedly; the dog snaps at a fly. Another water buffalo swims past, snorting air through his nose, eyes rolling, big as apples.

  13: A suburban movieplex. On marquee: RICTUS w/BRUCE WILLIS. Teenagers in clots move in and out of the light. Everyone is white. High-school girls promenade self-consciously; boys slouch. Cigarettes are being smoked experimentally. A stream of people leaves the theater: couples, groups of girls, groups of boys, older married people. Looking for their car keys, eyeing the teenagers. They have all just seen the movie. They have no expression.

  14: A tiny woman with white hair works in a basin, her back to the camera. She wears long yellow gloves, is hosing and washing something in basin, hosing and washing. She lifts an oily bird out of the basin, towels it off, gives the sleek little head a kiss, and takes it out into a yard. In the yard are perhaps a hundred similar birds, all clean. The woman disappears, returns with another oily bird, sets it in basin, washes and dries off. And repeat. And repeat.

  15: New York City, Lower East Side, night, traffic. Shot of Tompkins Square Park. Camera pans the inside of a messy van. Camera returns to shot of park. Cops pass outside. Then more. An advancing mass of people appears. Flashlights, burning torches. Cops assume formal riot-control positions. TV lights visible in distance. A rain of bottles and cans and sticks and trash comes toward the cops. The crowd advances. Cops meet them with riot shields and batons, whacking at their legs and shoulders. More cops appear. The van is bumped. The van is being rocked, protesters climbing on top of the roof.

  Suddenly this looked familiar. I slowed the tape to normal speed.

  Simon [whose voice I recognized from previous tapes]: You locked the doors?

  Billy [also recognizable]: Yeah. [Sounds of feet on the roof. Screams. Cops pass by van, swinging batons. Noises on van roof cease. More noises farther away, shouts. Bright flickering to one side, though the image is not in the frame.]

  Simon: The tires are melting.

  Billy: Destructive motherfuckers.

  Simon: I think we’re okay.

  Billy: Fucking protesters. [The crowd has passed. Three older policemen follow, one talking into radio. A helicopter circles overhead in trees, its sharp cone of light sweeping the scene below. Men holding television cameras, reporters are interviewing policemen outside a large blue mobile-control unit. A Chinese man goes by on bicycle with a delivery box on the front of his bicycle. He is stopped and sent back.]

  Simon: Over there.

  Billy: That’s a cop cameraman.

  Simon: Why is he filming license plates?

  Billy: He’s coming down here.

  Simon: We could drive out quick.

  Billy: No, they have it barricaded.

  Simon: We’ll be here until, like, four in the morning.

  Billy: I got some sandwiches and stuff back here.

  Simon: I’ll shit on a newspaper.

  Billy: Thank you for sharing that.

  Simon: Wait, wait.

  Billy: He’s coming.

  Simon: Just be cool. [A minute passes. A policewoman with a small handheld camera passes by. More police walk by. Many are standing around. A firecracker goes off, and a few policemen glance toward the sound. One talks into the radio.] All right, Billy, I’m gonna shut off this—[New image: the camera has been adjusted and zoomed across the street toward the sidewalk.] Okay, now we’re looking … [A commotion in the distance.] That’s the protesters—they’re unhappy with … [Commotion, and the crowd coming closer. Police start moving blue sawhorses into position. The streetlights above the trees cast pools of light and shadow. The crowd shouts angrily; police and crowd converge; a police van backs up and stops; TV lights are on across the park; more noise, more commotion; it seems that the surge of protesters has changed direction; the camera is now in position to show the ragged boundary between protesters and cops. People are running by. Now bottles are landing on the cops, and then another firecracker goes off; to the right, forty or so yards back, is a blinding red flash
followed by red smoke; the collective attention of the crowd is jolted toward the flash. In the foreground a large white man with some kind of long bat or club leaps forward and swings at a black policeman who is looking at the red smoke, catching him in the back of the neck.] Oh, fuck! [The policeman falls limp to the ground. The assailant runs toward the camera at an angle; in four strides he is off-screen. The protesters surge forward, and the cops look confused; some have noticed their fallen comrade and have rushed to encircle him; a bright light now shines on him, and a cop is radioing; other cops run up and begin administering first aid.] You see it? That guy hit him! [The helmeted police at the protest line have already heard on their radios that one of their own has fallen, and they suddenly push against and viciously beat back the protesters; a cop on horseback appears, rifle drawn; he aims at the heads of individuals and screams at them. The protesters fall back, and back, and back, until they are a dark mass, screaming.] They fucking whacked the cop!

  Billy: I know, I know!

  Simon: Wait a minute, we gotta get outa—

  I leaned forward and punched the stop button. I didn’t need to see the rest. I knew the rest. I knew all of it. As New Yorkers remember, beginning in the 1970s Tompkins Square Park began to devolve into a smoke-smudged encampment of homeless people, squatters (many of them the children of the executive classes and reared in such deprivation zones as Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, or Darien, Connecticut), drug addicts, hangers-on, lowlifes, part-time hookers, and street poets. I covered the story a number of times. The police would periodically roust the squatters out of their shanties and tents, only to have them return. Meanwhile the local residents living in apartments and houses wanted their park back. The representatives of the homeless made the point that these people had no place else to go that was either as safe or that offered the pleasures of a collective green. The city took the position that the taxpayers in the neighborhood and their children would benefit from having a genuine park, not a gallery of human misery defecating on what was left of the grass.