City of Woe

by Christopher Ryan

  “How so?”

  “This kid —guy, really— he still writes a lot. Sometimes stands in an aisle, in front of some group’s CDs — he’s bitched for years about CDs replacing albums, believes the sound lost some of its warmth — and he writes for half an hour at a clip. He’s been coming here so long, we just let him be.”

  Mallory nodded. “Can you describe him physically?”

  “These days he looks like a throwback. Baseball hat, usually the one with the Allman Brothers mushroom logo stitched in gold on front. He got it years ago from a concert at the Beacon, a story he retells at least twice a year. About your height. Longish blonde hair sticking out around the ears and back of his head, toward his shoulders. It used to stick out in front too, but not for a couple of years now. Who knows, maybe he’s balding or something. Still thin. Still wearing those concert T-shirts of his. Always Levi’s, always black Converse high tops. He’s still got the biker wallet too, with the chain going from a belt loop to the wallet in the back pocket. But he ain’t a biker. Walks everywhere, takes buses, listening to a CD Walkman or carrying old paperbacks by Kerouac, Vonnegut, Castenada, doesn’t read nothing really new.”

  “Eye color?”

  “I haven’t seen his eyes in years. Always wears shades. Day, night, it doesn’t matter to him.”

  “Facial hair?”

  “No, this guy is always clean shaven. Always. His appearance hasn’t changed in 25 years.”

  Gunner nodded. “Any idea where he lives, where he works?”

  “Nah. I know what they buy, and how they behave in my store. That’s it.”

  Gunner jerked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing as if the past was behind him. “He used index cards in high school?”

  “Not at first,” she smiled, clearly looking back. “Used to write on the cover of his binder. But he’d complain about it getting smeared in the rain. Then he found the index cards down at the corner stationary store. Been using them ever since.”

  “That store still open?”

  “Fast Louie’s dead ten years now, but sure, it’s still open. Some Indian guy runs the place, but he sure as hell knows Dante.”

  “Why?”

  “This Dante guy’s how old now, 40-45? Still buys those cards from that store. Won’t go anywhere else. For music, he comes here and only here. For sneakers, it was up the street only, until that store closed. Dante duct-taped his sneakers for about a year after they closed, until another sneaker store opened at the same location. Thank God; guy would’ve been barefoot by now. Won’t shop anywhere else. To say this guy is a creature of habit is an understatement. Take him out of his comfort zone, he freaks. I’ve always been amazed he goes to shows at all. This guy never leaves the neighborhood for anything else.”

  Gunner smiled. “You wouldn’t be pulling our chain, lady, would you?”

  “Fat man, if I was pulling your chain, you dream about it for a week afterwards.” She smiled. “I know what I know and I’m giving you the straight deal on this guy.”

  Gunner was having just as much fun. “You sure about that, sister?”

  “You sure you even have a chain any more?”

  Mallory cut both off. “How are we going to confirm your account of this guy?”

  “Go ask Achmed. If what I’m saying don’t pan out, you c’mon back here and arrest me. Otherwise, I get to toss them pipes and we call it square. Deal?”

  Mallory, chuckling, nodded his thanks. “Deal. You’ve been helpful.”

  Gunner, now carrying the box of contraband, cut in. “Any clue as to which school he attended?”

  “He wore a shirt and tie, so that knocks out Lehman, the public high school up the block. Spellman? Mount St. Michael’s? St. Raymond’s? Kids from all those schools came in here. Still do. Who knew who went where?”

  Mallory nodded his thanks, started for the door, stopped, spun around. “Sorry, one more question. Dante? You got a last name for him?”

  “Detective, he’s just a customer.”

  “But you are sure his first name is Dante?”

  “Tell you the truth I never bought it as the kid’s real name. Seemed more a nickname back then, something the kids said to mess with him. But he seemed to like it.”

  Mallory nodded again. “Any idea why the kids called him Dante?”

  The older woman shook her head, the straight line where her lips should’ve been curling up on one side. “You know kids. Back then, now. Nothing’s changed. God forbid one of them gets caught liking school. The others become merciless.”

  “Which has what to do with the name Dante?”

  The woman’s eyes met Mallory’s, only a few miles from kindly now. “Far as I ever understood it, the kids tagged him with Dante because he read a lot. The poor schmuck could recite from whatever they were reading in class at the time, verbatim, at the drop of a hat.”

  “Recite?”

  “He could whip out lines from all the albums he owned, sure, but also from their lit books. Especially Dante. You remember Dante? As in The Inferno?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  The detectives did a brisk New York City stroll down the stained and cracked Bronx sidewalk, passing a retooled biker’s bar Mallory remembered busting for being a busy and dangerous crack market in the late 90s, a hotdog stand whose previous owner had been shot by a junkie short on funding for his next eight ball, and an auto repair joint that at one time had been a record-setting chop shop.

  In many ways, The Bronx had become a much better place since then, largely due to a tough Boston cop named William Bratton who served as NYPD Commissioner when Mallory was making his bones as an up-and-comer. Bratton’s key strategy was ordering cops to enforce quality of life crimes, arresting small time junkies so often that lenient judges finally had to give them prison sentences. The incarcerated crack/cocaine customer base crippled many dealers, shut the doors on about half the chop shops in the city, and sent murder, assault, and robbery rates plummeting. The Bronx wasn’t exactly a paradise now, but the crack wars that had produced wartime body counts were long over.

  Still, when Mallory looked around, he saw dark memories, and the spectre of their return. Though he never mentioned it to anyone, he missed Bratton, and the years spent in Bronx Narcotics, earning his gold shield by busting exactly the kind of skells who had ruined his birthplace. Those were the years when he really felt like The Job, though seedy and redundant, was noble, maybe even heroic.

  Part of that came from the faintly romantic, deeply buried dream that all those busts would somehow reclaim the place in which he’d grown up. Sure, to the outside world The Bronx of the 70s was a burning urban nightmare, but Mallory had spent his teens knowing that horror was “way down south” while his neighborhood was safe, open to wandering and exploration. Something was always happening in his Parkchester neighborhood, a maze of 171 red-brick buildings and crowded with dozens and dozens of acquaintances. Before adolescence, the seasons ran from roller skating to skateboards to bikes, from tops to skully to comic books (five for a dollar back then, and maybe an RC Cola for another quarter). After aging a bit, sports took over the seasons. Little League led to summer basketball tournaments, led to football in all its forms, from two-hand shove on concrete to kill-the-guy-with-the-ball (played illegally on well-manicured Parkchester lawns until security chased them off), to winter roller hockey played on cement because there were no iced over ponds in their neighborhood.

  But all that changed in his later teens. Inter-neighborhood fights, then interracial battles within Parkchester hardened everyone, and locked all the formerly open doors. Experimentation with drugs alienated former friends. White flight shrunk the roving packs of laughing, dozens playing Bronx Boys. By the time Mallory came home after his first year of college, his home turf wasn’t his anymore. By the late 80s, coked-up former athletes were making prey of the elderly. By the 90s, crack heads openly hunted the old and frail. Bratton’s mid-90s crackdown allowed cops to do something about all that.

  Mallo
ry had aspired to be a detective in the naive belief that the feeling of being a noble warrior for his home turf would continue. He was wrong. Politics and procedural limitations twisted the detective into a negotiator in a game that could never be won. A disheartened decision to transfer to Manhattan had tossed him from a steaming spoon to a broiling cauldron. Nowadays, everything was politics, favoritism, and subordination. Except when he and Gunner were on the hunt.

  And Gunner was on the hunt now. “Okay so, far from this guy being some avenging demon, our prime suspect is, in all probability, an OCD case stuck in his 1970s high school lit class heydays.” The big man grunted his disgust amiably. “Further proof that this case is complete bullshit. Hardly worth me denying Ms. Boom-Boom Callabuffo’s heaving bosoms the attention they so richly deserve, wouldn’t you say?”

  Mallory hunched his shoulders, lips pursed, eyes scanning the area; nothing out of the ordinary. They headed across two lanes of traffic under the Six train’s elevated tracks. One lane ran in each direction. There was an outer lane on either side, but double-parked cars more or less eliminated them. Rust and bird crap coated the underside of the tracks and the girders holding them aloft. More bird droppings speckled the blacktop upon which they stood impatiently. Cars in The Bronx never stop for pedestrians, so the detectives waited for an opening, then dashed across the first lane. They had to shout at each other to be heard over the thunderous passing of a train above their heads.

  They passed Jack’s Diner. It was closed down; another classic New York diner gone, another personal landmark taken away, Mallory noted. He used to take Gina there, in the wee hours, after going to a club or bouncing around local bars seeing people. He always had omelets and muffins. She never ate anything. It had been a romantic time. He and Gunner’s concept of romance were worlds apart.

  East Tremont Avenue curved to intersect with Westchester Avenue, its lowest point, before heading back up toward Throgs Neck and Long Island Sound. At this crossroads sat the DeLillo’s Cigar Store. It had survived virtually unchanged since the Forties. Mallory remembered it as seeming to be ancient the day he first bought baseball cards there and got Yankees Roy White and Horace Clark in the same pack. Maybe 12 at the time, he had been so happy he even shared with his brother the thick stick of pink gum included with the packs back then.

  The interior of the DeLillo’s Cigar Store was not quite as wide as its front sign. In what might be one of the most amazing feats of unsung architectural engineering in New York City, customer space was restricted to the width of the entrance, a strip that ran straight back without widening.

  To the left, behind the door, were floor-to-ceiling magazine racks offering everything from Newsweek to Sluts’n’Slobs magazine. On the floor directly in front of those were what was left of the day’s newspaper bundles, including The Daily News, The New York Times, The Post, Sports Eye and The Racing Form.

  To the right, so close that Mallory believed even the slightest weather-related change in the door’s width would cause a collision, was the same candy counter he remembered from his own high school days, now encased in glass. Adjacent to this sat the register and Lotto machines, one of the few acknowledgements to the passage of time. Behind them, there was barely enough space for a short, pot-bellied Indian with a pock-marked, unsmiling, moderately concerned face. Mallory assumed this was Achmed. Directly behind him were floor to ceiling shelves stuffed with cigarettes. Hanging above the proprietor’s head were racks of lighters, a display of Bic pens, another rack, this one offering condoms, and a wire line from which dangled recent Lotto winners.

  Amazingly, to the right and beyond the candy counter stood an old-fashioned soda fountain, complete with four spinning stools and what seemed to be the original Formica counter top. A fissure behind it served as the cook’s work area, and against the wall was a long, narrow, blackened grill. The cook, short, bent, and wrinkled, with the kind of bulbous face usually found in 1940s gangster movies, also seemed part of the original equipment.

  Opposite the fountain, along the left wall, were glass-door refrigeration units holding cans and bottles of soda, beer, juice, cartons of milk, and, oddly enough, an assortment of Hot Pockets. “So dense in here there isn’t room to fart,” Gunner mused.

  “And yet, no index cards,” Mallory said.

  “We haven’t gotten to the stationary department yet,” Gunner offered, squeezing back to the farthest reaches of the store.

  And there it was, along the narrow back wall: an assortment of stationary supplies, all school related: Ticonderoga yellow number two pencils, rulers, folders decorated with pictures from outdated TV shows, small boxes of little pink erasers, paper clips, high-lighters, magic markers, metal compasses, protractors, black and white marbled composition notebooks, thin spiral notebooks featuring outdated cartoon characters, and, right there in front of their eyes, two neatly stacked decks of 3 by 5 index cards. There were six packs total. Navy blue lines, bold red top line. They were identical to those found at the crime scenes, which wasn’t a big surprise, as they were identical to probably all index cards on the planet.

  “Holy shit that nasty hag was on the money.”

  Mallory lifted the top deck gingerly, considering the odds of dusting for fingerprints.

  “Please sir! Those are not for sale today! Please!”

  The owner was hurrying toward them, squeezing past the cook, slipping on some grease in his panic to reach them. “Please, return those index cards to their place. Please. Exactly in their place. Please.”

  Gunner showed his badge. “Why can’t we buy these, Achmed?”

  “Achmed? My name is Niraj.”

  “One of your business colleagues said an Achmed ran this store.”

  “And you are shocked by such a racist generalization? There is no Achmed, and no other businessman has ever asked me my name in the 10 years I’ve owned this establishment. Now, please, I am telling you I cannot sell index cards to you today.”

  “Sorry, we assumed—”

  “Yes, yes, that is the American way. To assume. Now please, return the cards.”

  Gunner reddened. “American way?” He fumed. “Listen, Nimrod—”

  “Niraj.”

  Gunner leaned over the counter. Stepping forward was impossible. “Listen, Mirage—”

  Mallory patted his partner’s back, showing Niraj his badge, speaking over his partner. “Sir, we believe these cards may be linked to a murder investigation—”

  “Very good for you, sir, but if you do not wish to add another murder to that investigation you will put them back for me now, please.”

  Gunner switched smoothly from annoyed cop to interested detective. “You under some kind of threat regarding these cards, pal?”

  From the front a customer called out. “Can I get some Pick-Fours up in here or what?”

  “One moment, please, sir.” Niraj waved to the customer up front, then turned, using the same wave to back the detectives off. “Always possible. If I do not have exactly six packages of exactly these index cards in exactly these positions to sell when this particular customer comes in, it will be my murder you are investigating.”

  Gunner and Mallory exchanged glances, turned back to Niraj. Mallory spoke. “Can you elaborate, please?”

  “When one takes over a business, one inherits the product stock, yes? But one also inherits the customer base and their expectations for such products, for better or worse, you see? Every week, like clockwork, this one customer comes in, purchases these cards. Always six packs. He is the only one interested in them. I made a mistake once, discontinued the line. The customer was very upset. Cost me hundreds of dollars in damages.”

  Gunner called his bluff. “There is such a thing as calling the police.”

  “Fine people. They check up on me frequently and I remain appreciative of their diligence, please, you must understand this. But it is easier to stock these cards than to try to enforce an order of protection. He stays away for awhile, yes, then suddenly he i
s right where you are standing. At that time, the police will not arrive before he has torn apart the store and fled. Too expensive a proposition, you understand.”

  “Why don’t you just hold them for him behind the counter?”

  “Yo! Come on! Lotto tickets, brother! You risking my millions!”

  “One minute more, sir! Please!” Niraj reached out, gently took the package out of Mallory’s hand, and placed it back on the shelf, adjusting the edges until it was just so. “I once tried this behind the counter suggestion. Had to replace the magazine rack. No sirs, the cards must be here, on this shelf, exactly like as they are right now, or this customer will be displeased.”

  “Fine,” Mallory relented. “Can you tell us when he comes in to buy them? What he looks like?”

  The owner, squeezing passed the cook, heading back up front now to sell Lotto tickets, stopped short, clutching his heart. With his free hand he pointed. “Now! Him!” In the doorway, partially obscured by the irritated Lotto customer, was a white male, approximately five-five, longish dirty blonde hair, wearing a black baseball hat and aviator shades, an ancient, faded, oversized dungaree jacket, baggy, beat up jeans, and old style Adidas.

  “Dante” nonchalantly raised his chin, just once, then grabbed Lotto Man by the back of the neck.

  THIRTY-THREE

  With alarming force, Dante slammed Lotto Man through the glass candy counter. The man’s nose shattered in a spray of blood and a chaos of falling Slim Jims, breath mints and chocolate bars behind which Dante bolted, hitting the street in a spirited, if not especially fast, run. Mallory and Gunner charged after him, slipping on candy trying to avoid stepping on Lotto Man, who was flopping around on his back holding his free flowing nose.

  “I’ma sue! Fuck Lotto! Somebody got to pay me!”

  On the street, Mallory and Gunner craned their necks to pick up the figure that had fled straight across the street but suddenly was lost behind two city buses. Mallory scanned down the block to the left, under the ‘el’ looking for a break in traffic. “Some coincidence him showing up here.”