by Norman Green
“So if you got four principals, they’re clearing a half a million each?”
“Something like that. Probably ain’t an even split, but they’re doing more than okay. And a few cops pulling some heavy green to let the door stay open.”
“Worth killing to protect.”
“Saul, are you kidding? I know guys who’d skin you alive for a tenth of that, and so do you.”
The cab left me on a sidewalk in Corona, Queens, early in the morning, and then hastily departed. It didn’t look like the kind of neighborhood where you’d want to raise your kids, but there seemed to be plenty of people who were trying to do just that. I had an appointment to meet up with one Francis O’Neill, and the building he was looking at was a joyless gray brick lump that would not have looked out of place in Magnetogorsk. It was located on a joyless gray semi-industrial street in a neighborhood populated with similar buildings. The gang tags on the front of the place were the only touch of color, but you could hardly call them cheerful. I leaned on a light pole out front and waited. After some time, three white guys came out of the building; two of them were slight, Eastern European–looking guys dressed in suits and the third guy was a tall, long-nosed dude with a short gray beard and a gray ponytail. I figured O’Neill for the nose, and I was right. He paused to shake hands with the two suits. “I’ll get back to you if I decide to do something here,” he said. “I’ll have to give it some consideration.”
“Don’t considerate too much,” one of the suits told him. “This won’t stay on the market long.”
“No? You mean you’re gonna be dropping your asking price? Because at two and a half, I’m not sure you’re going to find a buyer at all.” They went back and forth in that vein a few more minutes, and then one of the suits went back inside the building and the other one started walking away. The tall guy walked up to me and stuck out his hand. “Mr. Fowler?” he said.
“Mr. O’Neill. Thanks for seeing me. Two and a half for that place? Million? Seriously?”
“I know, I know,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder. O’Neill, it turned out, was the sort of garrulous soul who starts a conversation with himself every morning and keeps it going all day long. Those of us who wander in and out at random are expected to know our lines. “But that’s just their opening number, they know they’ll never get it.” He dropped his voice down. “Actually it’s not a bad price, to tell you the truth. The whole damn place is section eight housing.” He must have noticed my blank expression. “Government subsidized. What that means, my friend, is the state pays the rent, and the state is never late, the state never sneaks out in the middle of the night, the state never holds out on you behind a leaky toilet or mold or a broken window or some damn thing, figure, twelve hundred bucks, average, for every apartment in the place, direct deposited in your account every month. What’s not to like? And I’ll tell you another thing. The gays have started moving into this neighborhood.” He tapped his temple with a forefinger. “You can’t go far wrong, following the gays. You know why? Everyone else follows them. The creatives, your artist types, then the young professionals, then the rich people. You buy this place for, okay, two and a half is a big nut, say you get them to go two and a quarter. Commercial, that means you gotta come up with five hundred thou. Okay? So you buy it, you suck up that section eight money for a couple of years, then you sell to some schmuck who watches too much HGTV, okay, let him sweat the new roof and replacement windows and the new boiler and all that shit. Probably get three for it. Maybe a little more. Listen to me, I’m talking myself into this and probably boring the shit out of you at the same time. You had breakfast, Mr. Fowler? Because I’m starving.”
We started down the sidewalk. After a moment, his phone chirped at him. He looked at it, then glanced at me. “Excuse me,” he said. “Gotta make a call.” He punched some numbers. “Come on,” he said. “Pick up, dammit, pick up . . .” He stared up at the sky, a look of supplication on his face. “Babe?” he said to the phone, looking relieved. “Babe. It’s time to get up. You gotta get out of bed.”
Pause.
“Why?” He looked my way and shook his head. “Because you gotta. It ain’t no good to stay up in that bed alla time. Go on out to the kitchen now, okay? Open the fridge. You see them pills? Top shelf. Says ‘brain’ on the bottle. Yeah. Brain. B, R, A, okay, okay, I’m just tryina help. I know you can read. Take two of them pills. I’ll wait while you do it. Shit.” He looked at me again. “Fuck, man, she put the phone down.” He made as if he wanted to throw his own phone, but went back to talking into it instead. “Babe . . . BABE! Okay, okay, sorry. You took the pills? You took ’em? Good. Now don’t go back to bed, okay? Look at some television for a while. I’ll be home soon. Yeah. Love.” He made kissy noises, then ended the call and stuck the phone back in his pocket. “Doctors,” he said to me. “Don’t you wish they would just admit it when they don’t know what the hell to do? The money I pissed away on rehabs and drugs and every other damn thing, and what did they do for her? Nothing. I should strangle every one of ’em. I finally found a homeopathic guy, treats you with natural shit, he’s the only one managed to help her at all.”
Alzheimer’s was my guess, and the guy didn’t want to admit to it. What do you say to someone is a fix like that? To watch someone you love die from a slow corrosion of the soul, that had to do something to you. “Sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he said. “Not mine, neither, for that matter. Where were we? Coffee, that’s where we were. Come on, I know a place.”
It was a Lebanese joint. One of the interesting things about NYC is that, from every ethnic group on the planet and probably a couple from outer space, a few native sons move to the city, and in any random neighborhood you can find a hole-in-the-wall where some guy cooks with reverence and care, the way his mother did.
O’Neill ordered half the menu.
“You weren’t kidding, you must really be starving.”
“Takes a lot of calories to keep this much self-esteem operating,” he said with a grin. “So tell me about your problem.”
Melanie.
I was weary of telling her story, but I gave him the shorthand version, I left out her mother, the tongs, and my family history. Just a nurse who went missing, used to frequent the Hotel Los Paraíso.
“Did you know I used to be a cop?” he said, when I finished. “Don’t hold it against me. I spent more than a few years in that precinct. That’s how I got interested in that place on Tenth. I bought in out of sentiment, and sentiment will screw you every time. You spend too much time there, after a while you don’t see the hookers no more, you don’t notice the burned-out car halfway down the block. I figured someone would buy the place and put in a bunch of million-dollar condos, first they gotta buy out my lease, and they will, but it’s taking a hell of a lot longer than I thought. I’ll never get my money back out.” He eyed me. “So now you wanna know what to do. I guess going home ain’t that high up on your list.”
“Wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“In my day,” he said, “you hadda know the streets. You hadda know the players. What I woulda done, I woulda started working all the contacts I had, figuring someone knew something. Some you hadda bribe, some you hadda threaten, some you hadda bounce them around a little bit. You know how that goes. I mean, I know it ain’t right, not now and not then, but back in the day, certain guys in the precinct, they knew someone was holding out on them, they put the guy in a box and started squeezing. You get what you want, you let the guy go. Not the right thing, like I said, but that’s the way the game was played. Don’t happen that way no more, not much, anyway. I know that probably don’t help you too much.”
“Not sure that approach would work for me.”
“No,” he said. “You gotta know the players. And I been gone outa there awhile now. ’Course, I still got some friends in the precinct. How they would catch your guy these days, you gotta have a crime scene, you gotta have the body. You get the forensics g
uys to do what they do, maybe you get the guy that way. Or maybe he’s in a bar, right, and he runs his mouth and somebody gives him up. But I mean, there’s usually a life span to that kind of skell, your guy ain’t gonna die in a rest home. You know what I mean. He’ll get his, somewhere along the line. Which don’t make you feel much better, I know. I tell you what, let me think about this for a while, okay? Like I said, I still know a few characters down there. Let me ask around, maybe someone seen something, maybe we get lucky. But to tell you the truth, Mr. Fowler, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”
They got new cabs for the outer boroughs now, a sickly green instead of bright yellow, but at least you have a prayer if you need a ride out of Queens. I got lucky, flagged down a greenie and he rode me into Manhattan, let me out right across the avenue from Los Paraíso. I thought about the shopping bag sitting up there on the top floor, the one on top of the safe. Probably more than half full by now . . . Gelman told me that he had not seen El Tuerto, the money man, come to make his regular pickup, not since the first time I showed my face in the joint; the pimps were sitting on an uncomfortable bunch of cash and they didn’t want to move it, not while I was around. I even gave some thought to going back in and taking the rest of it; man, how funny would that be, but their money was not my objective.
It was a thought, though.
I wondered, again, who El Tuerto was. Wondered how he got the nickname.
A woman walked out of Los Paraíso, and she annihilated all thoughts of money from my mind. She was tall and very dark, she had hazel eyes, long lashes, and short hair, I remembered her face, how could you not, she’d been accompanied by one of the Chinese pimps the last time I’d seen her, and the two of them had been followed by a cowboy on a Triumph. Big tall white kid. This time she was alone. I thought I knew who she was: Aniri, the African, from Seconal. I’d heard her story from Heather, the girl from Delaware. The goonas had been particularly unkind to the girl. Sold as a child to an Italian syndicate by her own uncle, moved on from Milan to Alphabet City. I have always had a tough time understanding why some people become the object of so much cruelty. I’d had my share and more of second chances and I had spurned them all one after another, always confident that I’d get another shot . . . But maybe it’s a statistical thing, maybe out of seven billion people there’s a certain number who are going to roll snake eyes every time they touch the dice, no matter what.
I wondered what was keeping her erect, but then you never know, strength comes in funny shapes sometimes.
A cab pulled over but she waved him away, she stood there as cool and serene as Buddha until a limo pulled up, and then she walked over and got in the back.
I had to follow.
Yeah, another hotel in midtown.
I followed her inside. She went straight past the front desk and punched the button for an elevator. I actually got in with her, punched the button for the floor below the one she’d chosen. I didn’t know what else to do, I hadn’t thought this through and I didn’t have any kind of a plan. She did not favor me with a glance but her image watched me calmly from the elevator car’s mirrored surface. When we got to my floor and the doors closed behind me I began breathing again, and then I raced for the stairwell and ran up one flight. I got to her landing in time to see her disappear around a bend at the end of the hall. I was wondering what to do next when I heard the elevator doors rumble open again.
A short Hispanic woman dressed in a housekeeper’s uniform pushed a cart out into the hallway. She was followed by three red-faced college-age kids, a little on the beefy side. They looked like they didn’t know whether to stare at her ass or hide their faces so they tried to do a little of both. The maid ignored them; she pushed her cart up to a door close to my end of the hall, knocked twice, then opened the door and vanished inside. The three kids looked at each other, two of them balled their fists up, the third one held up a hand to stop the other two. “No visible marks,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled through the hallway door. “She gets marked up, we don’t get paid. Got it?” The other two nodded and then the three of them walked in the other direction, the one Aniri had taken.
Not good.
They ain’t come here to party, I told myself. Heather told me that the pimps were mad at Aniri because she’d fallen in love, or in something, and this looked like a setup. I shoved the stairwell door open and ran after them, they were almost to the end of the hallway and they ran when they saw me coming; by the time I got to the far corner one of them had a door open and I got there just as he went through and tried to shut it behind him. I banged my shoulder into the closing door, heard the kid go sprawling to the floor inside.
How stupid will you look, I asked myself, if she isn’t in there?
But she was, she was backed up against the far wall, standing stiff, eyes wide.
I could feel myself ogreing up, inflating, Ogun was definitely pissed at these three clowns, he filled me with his power; they might have been young and strong but they were out of their weight class. The first one was clambering back to his feet, as he turned to face me I caught him with a short left just above the ear and he went straight back down again. The first guy through the door had Aniri by the upper arms and he was grinning like he’d just pulled the ace to match his flush, she still had that blank look on her face but she reached one hand slowly down into her bag. The other kid looked undecided. I didn’t give him time to think, I vaulted the bed but he bear-hugged me so I couldn’t hit him. “I’ll kill this bitch!” the other one yelled, but then he made this weird noise, kind of a gargling shout; the one holding me turned to look at his buddy and his eyes went wide just as I head-butted him, he let go of me and reeled backward, blood blooming out of his nose. Aniri stepped past me then, her hand held straight out in front of her, she was holding a small spray can, she pushed the nozzle down and the stuff came out in a stream and the kid began clawing at his face. The one who’d been holding Aniri was in a fetal position on the floor; all of his attention was focused on the act of breathing.
“Pepper spray,” she said, strangely calm. She stowed the can back in her bag.
“I think your employers might be unhappy with you,” I told her, panting slightly.
“You might be right,” she said. Her hands were shaking, and she swayed on the spot.
“We should leave. Are you gonna be okay? Can you walk?”
“Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly, and she moved, pausing next to each of the fallen men, and by the time we got to the door she had three wallets, two watches, about a half an inch of loose bills, and a whole bunch of keys. “This way,” she said, wobbling in the direction of the elevator.
“You sure you don’t want their shoes?”
“Come,” she said, her pronunciation betraying her origins for the first time.
Outside on the street she stopped for a moment, stood blinking in the sun. “Do you know which way to the park?” she said.
“Uptown,” I told her, trying to focus. The last of my adrenaline was still ebbing. “That way. Do you think we should sit down somewhere . . .”
“I would like to stay outdoors,” she said, and she turned and headed uptown.
I followed her. “What happens next? If you go back to Los Paraíso . . .”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, her voice belying the confidence of her words. “No use to anyone if I can’t work.” She glanced at my face. “I know you,” she said. “I’ve seen you drinking coffee in front of that bodega on C.”
“I had a sister . . .”
“I was at Melanie’s memorial service,” she said. “The Worm and the other two have been talking of nothing but her, and you, for days now.” And then she did it, she hit me with that knowing little quarter smile, for an eye blink there was something or someone very familiar in her eyes, something I should have expected. Someone I knew.
Someone who knew me.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said again. “I’ll be
all right. Do you know about the four . . .” She stopped, looked away for a moment. “Five. Do you know about the five fundamental forces?”
I shook my head. “My education is incomplete.”
“The first four are gravity and whatever.”
It sounded like something she’d memorized out of a book but didn’t understand, and it felt like I was supposed to ask the obvious question. “Okay, what’s the fifth?”
“Right about now,” she said, “I think you are.”
Sirens sounded a couple of blocks behind us. I turned to look as cops in blue disgorged from cruisers pulled haphazardly in front of the hotel we’d just left. I stopped to watch them make their unhurried way into the building. “Maybe you should reconsider,” I said. “Maybe we should get in off the street for a minute . . .” I turned back, but she was gone.
Some guy I didn’t recognize occupied Shmuley’s chair inside the cubicle, and it dawned on me then that it was Saturday and Gelman didn’t work Saturdays. I was wearing the raincoat, the guy in the booth growled something at me but I just showed him my key and kept going.
No Hector, the kid was not in his usual spot in the hallway. Inside, maybe, sleeping, or maybe he was at preschool. I wondered if they did preschool on Saturdays. I wondered if he was okay, did his mother feed him breakfast, was that the only pair of pants the kid owned, was he better off with his prostitute of a mother, who seemed to be really trying, or would he do better in some foster home where nobody really gave a shit? I went through the same inner debate every time I went past his spot, whether he was in it or not. It never changed much and I never got close to any kind of answer, except the usual one: God, isn’t there something you could do for this kid? What the fuck?