Manhattan Noir

by Lawrence Block

  Rex looked at the kid, watched him sit there, watched how young he was.

  “That take college. You got a chance?”

  “Grades, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Got a A in math, A minus in physics. B’s, everything else.”

  “You got a sheet?”

  The boy looked around the scuffed room. “Till this, I ain’t never been arrested.”

  “If you get outta here,” Rex said, “I ain’t gonna tell you stop hanging with your boys. They your boys, you ain’t gonna turn your back. But you got choices. They got some shit going down, you stay out of it. You following me?”

  The boy shrugged. “Don’t see how it matter. Cops got my ass. I ain’t getting out.”

  “Are you following me?!”

  The boy jumped in his chair, to hear Rex shout like that.

  The guard in the corner turned to look.

  Rex asked one more time, quietly, “Are you?”

  The kid gave him a wide-eyed nod. “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay,” said Rex. “Now you tell me one more thing. You kill that old lady?”

  Right into Rex’s eyes, the Landry boy shook his head.

  “No, sir.”

  Something and Something Else was both surprised to see Rex walk into the precinct squad room. “Hey, look who’s here,” the white one said, but Rex sat in the chair at the black cop’s desk. Might as well give him the collar.

  “Came to confess.”

  The cop’s eyes opened wide, got white all around them.

  Matched his damn teeth.

  “Confess? To what?”

  “Was me shot that old lady. That gun I give you, it belong to me.”

  “Jesus, Rex, what kind of bullshit is this?”

  “That kid ain’t done nothing.”

  “Neither did you.”

  “You got a witness seen him?”

  “We’ll find someone.”

  “You won’t, ’cause he ain’t done it. You got his prints on the gun?”

  “No, but—”

  “You got mine?”

  “Yeah, but I saw you pick it up!”

  “Can you prove that’s when them prints come from? Nah, forget it, I know you can’t. I shot the old lady and I give you the gun, with my prints from when I done it.”

  “Rex,” the white cop said from his beat-up desk, “you did this, tell us why.”

  “He was robbing her,” said the black cop. “Wanted her pocketbook.” Way he said it, it was clear to Rex he wasn’t buying that.

  “Uh-uh,” Rex said. “Not that. ’Cause she look like Berniece, that’s the reason right there.”

  “Who’s Berniece?”

  “Skinny-ass bitch that sent me up.”

  Something looked over at Something Else and Rex knew he had them.

  “Fuck,” Rex said. “Why you think I been jerking you ass-holes around? Do that kid a favor? Why I’m gonna do that? Do I owe him something?

  “Then why’d you change your mind and give us the gun?”

  “You was gonna take me in! I thought I could give you some bullshit story, put my hands on the gun so you’d think my prints come from then, and you’d be dumb enough to buy it.”

  The white one flushed. “And why’re you having a change of heart now?”

  Rex shrugged. “Didn’t expect you to be so dumb to where you gonna go pick up that kid. He all right, that boy. Ain’t done nothing.”

  “So you’re just gonna give it all up? You’re gonna go back inside, just like that?”

  “Shit,” Rex said. He thought about the room with the roaches, the job with the sawdust. He thought about the Landry boy’s eyes.

  He thought about things that wasn’t there before someone made them, and he thought about the pressure building, building.

  “I was going back in, sooner or later,” he said. “I got tired of it, is all.”

  “Well, damn,” the cop said. “What the hell, garbage is garbage, I guess. If we can’t get one of those kids, I suppose we’ll take you.” He looked over to Something’s desk and waited for the brown teeth to smile. “All right,” the white teeth said, “if that’s what you want, I’ll book you. That it, Rex?”

  “Yes,” said Rex, and added, not to neither of these fools, but to himself, definitely to himself, “sir.”

  THE MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENT IN NEW YORK

  BY JUSTIN SCOTT

  Chelsea

  I will cut her heart out,” Tommy King announced in a loud, clear voice, placing near equal emphasis on each word.

  I said, “You shouldn’t be saying that.”

  “Who you going to tell?”

  “See the blondes at the bar? How do you know one of them’s not a cop? Or a cop’s sister looking to get him promoted?”

  Tommy King lowered the decibels to a vodka mutter. “Whoa. Almost blew it. Thanks, Joe.”

  We were seated at a four top in the back of Morans, an expensive Irish joint on Tenth in Chelsea around the corner from what I was already thinking of as “my apartment.” Which was premature, considering how negotiations had gotten jammed up. Tommy King was the real estate agent who had steered me to it after a six-month search. The table was roomy because he always reserved for three and gave his name as “Dr.” King.

  “I don’t want to give the cops any ideas. Shouldn’t even tell you.” He was finishing off his second martini, not drunk enough to ignore. I was used to his harping on his ex-wife, but suddenly he was vicious, gripping my arm and pulling me close to whisper, “I’m going to buy a surgeon’s scalpel.

  What she did to me. I just have to figure out how not to get caught—What’s the matter? You’ve never been mad enough to kill anybody?”

  Hoping to shift the subject from ex-wife killing back to business, I said, “Right this minute I could kill the owner of that apartment.”

  “No, no, no. Jesus H., don’t even say such a thing.” He ducked lower. “You don’t want to do that. Kill him and you’ll end up negotiating with his heirs. I’m telling you, heirs are the worst. Soon as they inherit free money, it’s not enough.”

  “It’s the most beautiful apartment in New York.”

  “I used to say that about my wife. The most beautiful woman in New York. She still is, I’ll give her that. Opens up that big smile of hers, she lights the whole street.”

  “I didn’t realize you were still seeing her.”

  “From a distance. You have to get right in her face to see the evil.”

  Tommy waved his glass for a third drink.

  I stood up. I’d heard enough evil-ex for one night. From a distance almost sounded like he was stalking her. “I’m out of here. We’ll go up again tomorrow, right?”

  “Seven p.m.”

  “Why so late?”

  “He wants you to see the sun changing colors on the Empire State Building.”

  “He’s enjoying jerking me around.”

  Tommy put down his glass and said, seriously, “Two things you want to keep in mind, Joe. He can only jerk you around if you show him he’s getting to you. And, he knows what he’s got.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What you just said, man. The most beautiful apartment in New York.”

  It was a walk-up. And the kitchen was a bad joke.

  It ran the full length and breadth of the parlor floor of a Greek Revival town house built in 1840. It had two fireplaces and nine-foot ceilings. Listed as a one-bedroom, it had the extra nooks and crannies you find in an old house. One would hold a desk. Another, the upright piano I’d had in storage since I came to New York. It had a view in the back of narrow gardens and a view out front, across the street, of a gigantic plane tree in a green field beside a gothic stone seminary whose church, gardens, and dormitories occupied the entire block from Ninth to Tenth Avenues.

  The plane tree spread its branches in a hundred-foot circle that screened the only ugly thing in view, the seminary’s 1960s-modern three-story office complex that had all the charm of
a suburban elementary school. When I asked how the church had skated it past the Landmark Commission—which maintained strict architectural control of historic blocks like this one—Tommy had answered, “This city was built on loopholes.” The tree blocked most of it. Above the tree the Empire State Building sailed into the sky like a vertical ocean liner.

  “Hard to believe you’re in the city,” said Richard, the owner. Richard had renovated the building forty years ago when—he told me every time I went back for another look—brave pioneers could buy crumbling property on a dangerous street for what today would buy a time-share in a parking garage. He had knocked down rooming house partitions and opened it up into floor-throughs, occupying the ground floor himself and renting the rest. Now, old and Florida-bound in a booming market, he had emptied the rentals by the simple expedient of jacking the rent to Park Avenue penthouse rates and had sold the third, fourth, and attic floors. “Mine” was the last and most expensive, since, Richard assured me, it was the best.

  His negotiating strategy was effective, and downright intimidating. I had instructed Tommy to offer forty thousand less than his exorbitant asking price, then Richard raised his asking price by forty, making it insanely exorbitant. I should have walked away. Instead, I walked in at 7 o’clock, agreed that it was hard to believe we were in the city, and admired the light on the Empire State Building shift color from a metallic tan to red to blue-gray as the sun crept past the city.

  It took a while, but Richard was in no rush. He was a non-stop talker who loved a captive audience. He told me that the reason the staircase sagged was some idiot had cut a main beam in the basement while running a new sewer line when they converted the original town house into a rooming house for the dockworkers back in World War II. He told me he put a new roof on the building. He told me that a disused air shaft could be converted to a kitchen exhaust fan in “your apartment.”

  He told me a bunch of gossip about people on the block who fell into two categories: amusing eccentrics who owned buildings and apartments, and gypsy peasants who rented.

  He cackled that the house of a neighbor he was feuding with was haunted. “Really is. You could buy an apartment in his building for half what it’s worth.”

  I had checked that out already. It was going cheap all right. I didn’t see any ghosts. But it was completely ordinary and the only view was of a housing project on 18th.

  “Having the seminary across the street is like having a country house outside your window. Except you don’t have to drive there and mow the grass. You want to get outdoors, you walk two minutes to the river.”

  Then he made my blood run cold by telling me that a couple had looked at the apartment this afternoon and seemed to like it a lot. Money was no problem. The guy’s parents were rich. And if they wouldn’t help, the Swiss bank that employed the woman would front the down payment. He watched me react and seemed to like what he saw.

  “You really should live here,” Richard said. “You’ll never find another place like this. Chelsea Piers, best gym in New York, is right down the street. I’m selling paradise.”

  I turned my face to the window. The Empire State Building had almost disappeared in the dark. Just then, they switched on a thousand floodlights, painting it white as an iceberg.

  “Look at that,” Richard crowed. “I just have a feeling in my gut you belong here. I don’t know if I ever told you, but this apartment has a track record when it comes to romance. Everyone who ever rented it met somebody and had a love affair. Right here in these rooms.”

  I should not have told Tommy King that I wanted the kind of home that a woman would like to share.

  “You’re asking a killer price,” I said.

  “It will only get more valuable,” he countered. “Nothing will bring it down. It didn’t go when the Towers went down. I was watching on CNN thinking, Oh, God, the Empire State Building’s next, I’ll never get my price without the view. Then I realized the terrorists don’t know from shit about the Empire State Building. You gotta be a New Yorker to love the Empire State Building—sure enough, they went for the Pentagon.”

  He was right. It would not be the most beautiful apartment in New York without that spire changing colors by the hour.

  Richard said, “Nothing but a haunting will ever bring it down, Joe. And don’t get any ideas, because this building is not haunted and never has been. No scary ghosts, no evil spirits. It’s a great investment. Turn around and sell it in a flash. For profit.”

  “I’m looking for a home, not a stepping stone.”

  “Everyone wants to move up.”

  “Not me. This is up.” Another mistake I realized as soon as I said it. I had told him exactly how much I wanted it and he didn’t bother to conceal a smile.

  Tommy King stepped in, too late to repair the damage, saying, “Listen, Richard, thanks. We gotta split. We’ll come back tomorrow. Seven o’clock?”

  Richard touched my arm, exuding fatherly concern.

  “You might want to think about if you really belong in New York.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “A lot of people your age who can’t afford New York are buying in Brooklyn. Manhattan may not be your town.”

  On the street Tommy said, “I thought you were going to slug him.”

  I turned on him. “Next time you see a class of high school tourists from the boonies? Look for the straggler staring at the skyscrapers. That’s the kid who’s coming back. Manhattan’s been my ‘town’ since I came here on my senior trip. I don’t care who’s moving to fucking Brooklyn, I’m not.”

  “Whoa. I believe you, man. You turned red as brake lights. First time I’ve seen fire in your eyes.”

  “I’ve settled for second best too many times.” I couldn’t believe I had just admitted that out loud, but I was so upset I dropped every defense and proceeded to spill my guts to Tommy King. “I didn’t hold out for an Ivy League college. I didn’t fight to get into a first-rank law school. I didn’t hold out for the job that really would have gone someplace.”

  “You’re general counsel of the biggest printing company in the city.”

  “I sign off on contracts. If a problem gets interesting, I’m told to hire outside counsel. I married a woman mainly because I didn’t know how to say no when she asked. And I didn’t fight for a fair divorce. I’m through settling. I’m through letting things happen to me. I want that apartment.”

  “I believe you, man. You look like I feel about my ex.”

  “I really blew it with Richard, didn’t I?”

  Tommy said, “I bought it today.”

  “What? Bought what?”

  “Scalpel.”

  “What?” I said again, though I knew what he meant.

  “It’s just a skinny little handle with a bunch of blades. Like razors. Cops’ll figure some kid got her with a box cutter.”

  I figured it was time to get a new real estate guy. Tommy King was nuts—creepy nuts—telling me all this because in his twisted heart he really believed that he was right and she was evil. It didn’t matter that he was the listing broker. Richard would sell to whatever fool paid his ridiculous price.

  On the way home I got a call from another broker at Tommy’s agency, a partner named Marcy Stern, a woman with a shrill, demanding manner that matched her pointy face and darting eyes. “Listen, Joe, you’re out of there tomorrow morning.”

  I was living rent free, baby-sitting an apartment for sale.

  Tommy had gotten me the gig and I figured I was safe until I found a place of my own because the plain white box in an ugly white box building was listed for an insane price. Wrong about that. “How can you close in one day?”

  “All cash deal. The client wants to dump his stuff before he hops his flight to Singapore. Get your junk out by 8.”

  “Didn’t I sign something that said I’d get a couple of days notice?”

  “Not if you want help getting another free place. Call Tommy King.” Tommy had a similar live-in security g
uard arrangement, sleeping in a succession of apartments on the market since he lost his home to the ex-wife he hated so much he wanted to cut her heart out.

  I called Tommy.

  “Don’t worry about it, I’ll get you another one soon as I can. Bunk with me till then.”

  I thanked him for his generosity and he repeated what he had said when he first offered me the apartment-sitting deal.

  “Why watch your down payment get smaller? Bad enough watching prices go higher.”

  At a quarter to 8 the next morning, Marcy unlocked the door with the agency key and looked surprised that I was still stuffing clothes into bags. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ll be right out of your way.” I picked up a garment bag, a laptop backpack, and a suitcase—everything else was in storage. The suitcase, which had been damaged by an airline, broke open. My laundry fell on the floor.

  Marcy and the new owner, a Chinese guy in a blue suit, along with a huge guy who appeared to be his bodyguard, watched me crawl around picking up my underwear, and shut the door firmly behind me as I shuffled down the long, dreary hall to the elevator.

  Tommy was on the phone when I got uptown to his latest temporary place—a glass and mirrored palace in the sky with views of the park and both rivers. He pointed me toward one of the halls and mouthed, “Third bedroom on the left.” Then he continued loudly on the phone. “Hey, by the way, my ex is looking in Chelsea. She’s got a new boyfriend wants a pied-àterre. No, leave me out of it. If she hears I’m involved she’ll run the other way. I might have something you can show her. I’ll give you a heads-up.”

  As soon as I bundled my stuff into the bedroom, which had hardwood floors, a marble bathroom, and no bed, Tommy wandered in saying, “You gotta raise some more cash for a bigger down payment so the bank’ll cut you a mortgage to meet Richard’s price. So the question is, where do you get the cash?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Most clients’ parents chip in.”

  “My folks don’t have that kind of money.”

  “Can’t they take a home equity on their house?”

  I explained that a bank appraiser would not bother getting out of his car for their tiny ranch with a shallowly pitched roof on a quarter-acre lot. “If every neighbor on their block chipped in with a home equity loan, they might raise enough to send a crippled kid to Disneyland. No, Tommy, not everybody is rich. It just seems that way.”