“The fact she’s dead is looking like proof enough.”
“Or something else. She was mugged. Some senseless New York violence.”
“Nobody’s given me anything to counter the theory that that conversation was a threat, likely a murder threat, against your father. You haven’t. Martha had no reason to make it up. You already said you were unhappy with your father’s management of the money.”
“Everyone liked my father—because of all the money he passed out. To everyone but his family.”
Charlie waded into the heaving throng. Arms, legs, torsos moving, twisting. The tang of sweat oddly mellowed by cigarette smoke. Everybody was rubbing everything against everybody’s everything else.
Taylor returned to the bar.
As he had nothing better to do, and planned never to come back to this place, he positioned himself so he could watch the night pass at Studio 54. Bits of garments came off men and women. Some didn’t have much to take off. They were already in some form of underwear, negligee, or transparent clothing. He counted at least four drug deals. Two guys next to him at the bar did lines and went back to dance. The bartender sanguinely wiped up the little bit left. At different times, he saw Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry, Jack Haley Jr., the child actress Brooke Shields, and all those familiar faces that he was certain were someones but didn’t know who because he didn’t follow the someones columns in the papers. Warhol appeared in four different locations, like he was a ghost specially assigned to haunt the disco. Except for the shock of white hair, he looked something like normal in his traditional tux. A man in a thong sat on a motorcycle. Dancing, sort of. A gold-painted nude couple formed a frozen statue, his hands thrown in the air, her hand on his dick as she crouched as if about to start a blowjob. Tough position to hold, in so many ways.
Charlie and his friends returned to the table, left to dance, returned. Did that all night.
The one thing he didn’t see in Studio 54 were leisure suits, the supposed uniform of the disco male. Studio 54 was a cut or four above those, he figured.
By four a.m., the place had only started to clear a little. Charlie’s party got up and headed for the exit. Taylor followed. He didn’t know what these people did afterwards, but it had to be something worth witnessing once.
Chapter 22
The six of them climbed in a stretch that took off east on 54th Street and turned uptown on Broadway. There were no cabs around to “follow that car” with this time. Anyway, the money for the fare was inside Studio 54’s cash register.
What was I thinking? Of course they have a car. Like they are going to walk to the subway like me?
The street was empty but for the trickle of people coming out of the club. Oddly, this was an almost safe time to be in Times Square. Since the nice pickings from the theater crowd were long gone home, the professional muggers were gone too, leaving the desperate sort—drug addicts who weren’t well armed. In Times Square, that left the odds in your favor for keeping your money or your life. Even the hookers had thinned out, gone to rest before the next shift at the Crossroads of the World. The porn theaters that ran 24 hours a day lit the streets with bright white marquees framed in flashing colored bulbs.
Taylor hurried along at a good clip despite the quiet. There was a big difference between less dangerous and actually safe. As he went, he came up with an idea. He stopped at an all-night diner on 46th Street on the east side of Duffy Square and ordered a coffee. He got out the calling card Charlie DeVries had given him. After he took a few sips from the heavy white-porcelain mug, he went to the shop’s payphone, dialed the number on the card, left his name and the payphone’s number with the answering service and sat at the counter drinking more coffee, which he needed at this point. He’d dumped in a third packet of sugar, in case that might help.
The phone rang, sounding especially loud at 4:30 a.m. in a Duffy Square coffee shop. All heads—which meant four, counting the waitress and cook—turned.
Taylor raised his hand. “Got it.”
“Who’s looking for me?” said Charlie.
“It’s Taylor.”
“You want to talk more at four thirty in the morning?”
“Nah, I’m done with work. Looking to hang out.”
Charlie repeated Taylor’s words. “Okay. Conditions.”
“To hang out?”
“This place appears in no story.”
“Like I said, want some fun.”
At a place I can never write about? What’s the point?
He might get closer to Charlie. He was curious what these people did at this time of the morning, and his night was already blown. Might as well take a low-odds shot in the dark that he’d get a lead for later.
“Oh, it’ll be fun. Everything here is absolutely illegal. Dangerous also,” a drunken snort, “to the sort of fella who asks questions. I’m getting you in, but you’re on your own after that.”
Taylor hustled across Duffy Square and Times Square to the Paramount Building and City News Bureau’s offices on the nineteenth floor. He took eighty bucks out of the emergency cash box in Novak’s desk, leaving a five and a nickel. He wasn’t sure if Novak would consider this an emergency, but he knew he couldn’t go wherever he was going with a dollar and loose change. Check that. Novak would not consider it an emergency unless a really good story came out of the trip instantly—like tomorrow—a story Taylor had agreed not to write. He’d work it out with Novak later. He called Checker Cab on the office phone and waited in the lobby of the building.
The taxi made a right and another right to head up Tenth Avenue toward Washington Heights, Manhattan’s secret northern neighborhood and the location of the address Charlie had given him. Maybe it wasn’t so much secret as a neighborhood few visited unless they actually lived there. The Heights had good housing—apartment buildings and row houses—yet it was a long subway ride from midtown, with Harlem and Central Park in between.
As the cab traveled north, Taylor occupied himself by rolling through his geographic memory of the city, an internal map acquired through years of visiting crime scenes all over the five boroughs. Washington Heights wasn’t even Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood. That was Inwood, if you meant on the island of Manhattan. It was a place so green, rocky, and hilly, it seemed to Taylor he’d already reached upstate when he visited Inwood. Finally, there was Manhattan’s geographic asterisk, Marble Hill, which was the only part of the borough attached to the North American mainland (and the Bronx). This was because the Harlem River had been filled in on the north side of the neighborhood in 1914 after the Harlem Ship Canal had cut the neighborhood off from Manhattan on the south. Little geographic details always helped in stories, though some more than others. He couldn’t think of a crime that had brought him to Marble Hill. It would happen someday. This was New York. Nowhere was safe.
The cab stopped at the address on St. Nicholas Avenue written in his notebook, a church. The front door was boarded up. Lights from inside flashed across the stained-glass window facing the street, illuminating reds, greens, blues, and whites.
“You must really need to pray,” the cabbie said.
Or might want to start.
He paid, got out and headed toward the back, which was the only instruction Charlie had given him. Hadn’t even told him the place was a church.
The walk along the side of the building grew darker as he moved away from the street. This side of the church had no windows because what looked like the rectory was attached. There were a lot of good places to get jumped in New York at 4:45 in the morning. This one would make the list, particularly if Charlie had it in for him. He ran his fingers along the gritty stone wall to guide him under a canopy of trees in total darkness.
A door sprung open steps away from him, throwing out blinding light and music that was more bass bump than anything else.
A big bouncer—more the enforcer type—grabbed Taylor and pushed him up against the church wall.
“Interesting way to greet your gu
ests.”
“I know who all my guests are. When they’re coming. Buddy, none of them fucking looks like you.”
He spun Taylor to face the wall, patted him down, turned him back again, looked at the cash in his wallet and laughed. “How long you think you’re staying?” The only other thing he found was the reporter’s notebook.
“What’s this?”
“A notebook.”
“It looks something like the kind cops use.”
“No, not a cop.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Charlie DeVries invited me.”
The man yelled into the rectangle of light and noise. “Hey, Eddie. Charlie DV say someone was coming?” There was a wait, and a grunted “yes.” The goon pulled Taylor off the wall and pushed him toward the light. “You’re a guest tonight. Go find Charlie. Bother any of the regulars or break any of the rules and I’ll break you on Broadway.”
All the pews were gone, replaced by circular tables out by the walls and a gaming pit in the middle. Taylor counted two craps tables—the busiest—two roulette, and three for card games. The altar was still in place, with enough candles to pose a fire hazard around the edge of the nave, which was the dance floor. By Taylor’s rough estimate, there was even more flesh on display here than at Studio 54—so much he was finding it hard to find a place to look and not end up staring at someone’s private parts.
Jee-suz. If the Greek Orthodox God of my mother does start sending down lightning bolts, this place will top the target list.
He found Charlie and his gang in the front corner with a close-up view of the dance floor.
“The chronicler of our life and times,” Charlie said. “Slide over here.” He pulled on the arm of a black-haired woman and she slipped off a chair and onto Charlie’s lap. “You like Our Little Chapel?”
“Novel use for a closed church.”
“Yes.” He laughed and started hiccupping. “Novel.”
Bobby Livingston, who sat on the other side of Taylor, appeared to be more with it, his dark-blue eyes scanning the room like he was looking for a sin he wanted to try.
“Do you come here every night after the club?” Taylor said.
Bobby focused on Taylor. “No. This is but one option. Our Charlie likes to gamble when he can stand up. And see the dice. I like something a bit more physical.”
Taylor wasn’t sure what that meant, but it made him think of two legal sex clubs he’d heard opened recently.
Charlie got up, and the woman dropped to the floor with a squeal. Turning to Bobby, he slurred, “I’m gonna go back to the craps. Maybe they unfixed the dice.”
“Take a bit of a break, partner.”
“I did break. As the night is again no longer young. Why does that always happen? I’m playing. I’m down twenty.”
Taylor knew he didn’t mean twenty bucks, so he understood even better the bouncer’s reaction to the money in his wallet. Bobby poured Taylor a Jack Daniels and Tab without asking if wanted the drink, then joined Charlie at the table, where Charlie pushed stacks of cash across to place a bet. Nope, not twenty bucks.
The black-haired woman dumped on the floor struggled to get up—hampered by six-inch heels and booze and probably something else. He helped her. They half danced for a few seconds because she was so unsteady. He got her into her seat.
“Who runs the place?” Taylor said.
“Brave first question.”
“Somebody must, right?”
“Somebody always must.” She offered a lopsided smile. “Some things maybe you may not want to know. As you’re asking … the Concierge is in charge of Our Little Chapel.”
At this point Taylor didn’t care how drunk she was. He needed basic info. A starting place.
“That’s a title, not a name.”
“No, he’s called The Concierge. No one knows his real name. People—the right families—need things. He takes care of it.”
“A casino?”
“Just a part of what he does. He delivers too. Drugs. Women, I hear. Think Bobby may avail himself of that service.”
“What else?”
“A smart man wouldn’t ask more questions. Didn’t Charlie tell you no reporting? The Concierge plays an important role in high society. That’s all I can say.”
He looked into the bleary green eyes of her passably pretty face, though her mouth was too small. It didn’t look like she meant high ironically. He wasn’t asking.
Taylor gazed around what was, in essence, a major criminal enterprise—if the woman was to be believed—that provided illegal pleasure to the rich. He’d agreed to make this goddamn visit off the record. What a story. I’m a fucking idiot. No, Charlie knew what he was doing. Taylor would no more break his promise to drunk Charlie DeVries than he would to sober, pious President Jimmy Carter. You blow your credibility with sources, and you’re done.
He couldn’t write a story on the visit. Okay. Maybe there were connections in this room he could track down later?
He took a hit off the Jack and Tab, stood up and started a slow walk around the room, checking out the faces of the men and women at tables, then those gaming, looking for … he wasn’t sure what, he wasn’t sure who. A face he knew, in a place filled with people who rarely entered the world he covered? Probability was pretty low. Even if he was off the record, he could still look around.
Someone disagreed.
A new bouncer, normal height but muscular, slammed him into the inside wall.
“Enough slamming, man. We’re in church.”
“Bud told me to keep an eye on you.”
“Why? Charlie invited me.”
“Your first black mark. His judgment isn’t very good most times, and he isn’t really a favorite customer.”
“Who are your favorite customers?”
The thug smashed him twice into the wall, sending jarring pain from the pack of his skull to his eyeballs and clearing his head of whatever expensive buzz he’d had. More raps like that would do real damage.
Taylor grabbed the thug’s left shoulder with his right hand and spun from the wall. He levered the bouncer hard and fast over his hip, putting him on his back. The hip sweep he’d been perfecting in class for the past month.
Time to go.
He didn’t even get a chance to turn. Another bouncer grabbed him from behind in a hammerlock. The joints from right wrist to elbow to shoulder screamed. The first thug rose to his feet and pulled a thick sap from his jacket pocket.
“Goddammit no!” Charlie yelled. “I’m tired of fixed.”
He heaved over the craps table with a crash. Bills floated onto it like autumn leaves. The bouncers left Taylor for Charlie and to retrieve the house’s money.
Police sirens wailed from outside, a few blocks away.
The thundering music died, and a woman’s voice came from the sound system: “Please do not panic. This is our weekly clean-out, under arrangement with the relevant authorities. We have ten minutes to disperse. Walk quietly through the rectory. There will be cars for everyone, though some may have to share.”
The last part of the announcement caused the only groan.
The two goons holding Charlie looked unsure what to do.
Taylor went over. “You don’t want a customer caught in here. That would be bad for business.”
They stayed frozen, one with the sap at the ready. Taylor was pretty sure these two had difficulty keeping more than one thought in their heads at a time. The table’s staff picked up the bills and asked the other players how much they had down.
Bobby Livingston stepped up and handed the two enforcers big wads of cash. “Good man, good man. No one’s complaining. The boss will be happy.”
They let go of Charlie. The lead thug pointed at Taylor. “You in here again, you’re a grease stain on the sidewalk. I don’t care whose friend you are.”
“Do you think up those lines ahead of time?” Taylor was already walking toward where the crowd exited.
; “Talk to any of our customers about being customers—”
“I get it. Grease stain. Sidewalk.”
“No. Then I fucking shoot you.”
Taylor moved through the rectory, which was clearly the storage place for the booze, food, gambling paraphernalia, and—Taylor didn’t doubt—drugs. When he came out the back, Charlie stumbled behind him, followed by Bobby.
“Be seeing you,” said Bobby.
He and Charlie walked toward the street. Charlie puked.
“Damn, Charlie, my shoes.”
The limos pulled away. In front of Taylor, the sun rose over the South Bronx, illuminating high in the sky a spiral of smoke from one of that night’s fires, likely arson, likely destroying housing people needed. The sun tinted the roof of Our Little Chapel an orange that said sin rather than new beginning.
Chapter 23
“I’m still pissed off,” Samantha said. “We talked about this before.”
“I know you are.” He said it without much enthusiasm—a mistake that made her angrier—because his head throbbed like the bass beat in the clubs last night. Purely lack of sleep. Never got the chance to drink enough booze to have a hangover. He should have spent this Saturday in bed, but he had work to do.
She scooted in front of him and walked backwards. “I am serious. I was a cop. I know how dangerous all this is. That club, or church, or whatever the hell it was. Everything illegal? By yourself?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Gambling. Drugs. Enforcers. There must have been guns. How good are you at disarming someone with a gun?”
“Not quite there on that one yet. Not so good with two against one, either.” He offered an apologetic smile as she fell in alongside him.
“You can’t go into that sort of place without some kind of backup. No cop would do it.”
“I’m trying to get a story. I’m not a cop. I had to play things as they played. Anyway, two wouldn’t have gotten in.”
“Taylor,” she took his arm, lowered her voice to a whisper, “you could disappear in a place like that. Never be found again. The richest people in town. Drug dealers. Cops on the pad. I can’t have you disappearing on me. I won’t.”
Lights Out Summer Page 15