Lights Out Summer

by Rich Zahradnik

  Cheering.

  Taylor had never witnessed anything as ugly and chaotic—not even during the race riots of the sixties. It made him think of war. A warzone. Was this what Billy had to deal with every day? Don’t be so fucking dramatic. I can stand at the edge of this. Get away if necessary. Billy was never safe. Armed and dangerous but running toward men who wanted to kill him, who did kill him.

  “Let’s go up the left,” he said. “Looks less … crowded.”

  “It’s like they’re having a party. A shopping party.”

  “Did you see the looks we’re getting?”

  “Yeah, I see those.”

  “We need to be careful. We’re not welcome. What’s a shopping party now could turn into something deadly real fast. For us. For them. There’s three working-structure fires and no FDNY on the scene.”

  Traffic in and out of the stores in the new block under attack was heavier, now that there were fresh pickings.

  Taylor and Samantha hunched down again when something crashed through a window. Other side of the street. Party maybe, but the crowd was finally balanced. It could tip either way—keep taking stuff or start hurting people. A shadow dashed to the right, making Taylor turn, then one to the left. The anxious energy of the street was inside him, his neck sweating, his eyes tingling from trying to focus on bodies, shadows, moving in and out of beams of flashlights and flickering building fires. He wasn’t afraid, but he was as worried as he’d ever been on a street in New York.

  Two patrol cars came down the street, abreast this time, with a bullhorn announcing anyone breaking and entering or stealing would be arrested. The blocked cleared. Again for only a few minutes.

  Three stores up, a crowd had started to form around the front of Jobson’s Pharmacy. Yelling. Two or three arms waved clubs.

  Samantha started that way and Taylor went with her.

  “Give it up, old man. We’re here to take what we want.”

  The old man in question was actually more middle-aged and sat in a lawn chair in front of the store. A shotgun lay across his lap.

  “We’ve been in this neighborhood for two generations,” the man said. “I’m not losing my business because the damn lights went out.”

  “What the fuck you do for us?” An echo of what the man with the TV had said. Was it a real grievance—or an excuse?

  “I give to all the community organizations. The churches. I have special senior citizen prices.”

  “All for shit. You’re not the only one with a gun.”

  “No he’s not.” Samantha shouldered her way through the crowd, her revolver in clear view without quite being aimed at anyone. She definitely had a different view of their odds than Taylor did. “Seems there’s enough available so that this gentleman can be left alone.”

  Grumbling in the crowd. Not much movement.

  She held her hand out to the old man. “Samantha.”

  “Monty Jobson. Thank you.”

  “Haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You’re helping. The police, they drive by and keep going.”

  “You going to stay with him?” Taylor said.

  “Seems the one bit of good I can do here. See how long it plays out. I need to do something with all this going on.”

  “Now I’m the one who’s worried. Should we be splitting up?”

  Samantha turned to Jobson. “You know how to use that thing?”

  “Served with the 101st in Europe. Learned it’s best not to be outnumbered if you can avoid it.”

  She stepped closer to Taylor. “We’ll be okay here. I know what I said, but I can’t expect you to stay inside during a blackout. Any other night, you’d be out here by yourself.”

  He kissed her. “I’m going to get more interviews. Please be careful.”

  “Both of us.”

  “Just no Alamos, okay?”

  “Right now all’s we have is a complete breakdown of law and order.” One dark chuckle. “Hasn’t turned into a total frenzy yet.”

  Taylor discovered Nicolae Bernath in the back corner of a big furniture and lumber store. It was cleaned out. The shelves had been wrecked.

  Bernath said he came to the U.S. after World War II. “For twenty-five years, I’ve helped all the children—Black children, White children, Catholic and not Catholic, Jewish and not Jewish. All kinds of children. Wood and supplies for school projects. I survived Auschwitz. The only difference is they wore boots and here they wear sneakers.”

  Back on the street, another police car rolled by, stopping as a tall teenager walked by with a box of stereo gear.

  “Where’d you get that?” the cop at the wheel asked.

  “Found it on the fucking street.”

  “That don’t make it right.” The cop looked at Taylor and shrugged. “Need to see him take it from the store to arrest him. Tell ya, they’re grabbing anything now.”

  Taylor went back to check Samantha’s position sooner then he might have, but he was worried. The crowd had thinned markedly, off to easier pickings. He went two blocks for a working phone, called in his latest to the station, then dialed the City News number.

  “Anything?”

  “One call, from Audrey DeVries,” said Nicholson. “She said Charlie phoned her, drunk and scared, really scared. He told her to get out of the apartment. She wasn’t safe. He wouldn’t say why. He said he was done, going. He was getting money from the church … no, from the chapel. He knew no one would be there now. He was getting it and leaving. She begged you to call her.”

  In the middle of the damn blackout.

  First, he had to call their neighbor, Max.

  “How’s the neighborhood?”

  “Quiet in Murray Hill. Hear it’s chaos other places.”

  “You hear right. Can you use your key, open the windows and make sure Mason has enough water? I hate to ask but—”

  “We’ll take him out. Like I said, it’s dead down here. I mean that in a good way.”

  “Thanks, Max. The old New York lives.”

  “Not enough of it.”

  Audrey picked up on the first ring.

  “He’s never sounded like that.”

  “That drunk?”

  “So drunk and so rattled at the same time. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

  “Have you heard of Our Little Chapel?”

  “Awful place.”

  “He ever mention any other chapels?”

  “None. He’s not religious in the least.”

  “Then he’s going there for money.”

  By the time he got back to the pharmacy, it was Samantha, the owner, and a uniformed cop wearing a riot helmet and carrying a baseball bat. The crowd was gone.

  “This is Todd,” Samantha said. “We were in the academy together.”

  Taylor shook his hand. “You the reinforcements?”

  “Lot of brush fires at one time,” Todd said. “We get one block under control and another goes up.”

  “We’re going to be all right here.” Samantha’s face was serious, confident.

  “There’s something up with the murder story. With Charlie.” Taylor considered leaving out the location, but decided against any backsliding. “He’s at that chapel I mentioned, but there’s no one else there now.”

  She hesitated a moment, likely running through what they each faced. “You go. Charlie’s not the sort I worry about. Todd’s deputized me. We’re going to try and keep what’s left of these two blocks safe.”

  “Thought only a sheriff or a marshal could deputize.” A pinprick of jealousy.

  “It’s a bit informal,” Todd said, with a laugh. “To be honest, we really should be deputizing. The commissioner called in everyone who’s off duty, but a whole lot didn’t show. Not sure if they didn’t hear the call because of the power cut or they’re pissed off.”

  “The contract talks?”

  “Yeah.”

  Taylor pulled Samantha over. “One last be careful.”

  “I will. I was a cop. A g
ood one.”

  “I know. But it’s insane out here.”

  “That’s why people need to step forward. Why we both need to do something.”

  “Don’t think we’re going to get enough of them to make a difference this time. Leave messages at my office. I’ll be back here as soon as I track down Charlie.”

  He jogged over to Broadway. He was sure there wouldn’t be cabs—empty cabs—but he checked anyway, and to his everlasting surprise, a city bus rumbled toward him. The one city service still operating. He ran to the stop and the bus door opened.

  “Let’s go. Last run of the evening. Thank God for that. Was almost in three accidents at those dark intersections.”

  The dark city, usually a bright mountain range of buildings sloping down from midtown toward Harlem, rolled past. It was as if the city itself had vanished. That was until he looked closer. A candle danced in one window, then another. Candelabra. A flashlight played across the wall of a third-floor room. Silhouettes at windows watched the blackened city from flicker-lit apartments—or maybe just sought slightly cooler air.

  Taylor arrived at the former church huffing, a stabbing pain in his side after the 12-block run from the nearest bus stop. Something—a flashlight probably—briefly played across the stained-glass window at the front.

  A white flash. Followed by the report from a gun. A second shot. Taylor ran from the front to the walkway he’d used the first time, next to the rectory. He slowed and eased along the path in the midnight darkness, again his hand on the outside wall, stopping every few steps. A car parked at the rear of the church took off. He found the entrance door and pulled. It was open.

  A man lay on the floor where the gambling tables had been. Charlie was on his back, his hand full of bills, the money held up to his chest. The bills were red. His shirt was red. Soaked. A puddle of blood formed beneath him. He’d been shot bad. More than once, going by the shots Taylor heard. He went down on one knee next to Charlie.

  “Who did this?”

  “Got too crazy.” His voice was a hiss. “This place. Doing everything he said. He wanted more. Couldn’t. Too much.”

  “Who, Charlie, the Concierge?”

  A nod of the head. “He wanted everything. Warn Audrey.”

  Charlie stopped breathing. He had no pulse.

  Great night to need a cop.

  He waited an hour—an hour while a big story went on all around him—for the police. Another half hour before a detective could take his statement. The detective worked fast. He had another shooting to investigate.

  Once allowed to leave, Taylor walked south, taking notes on the scenes he witnessed, interviewing people, phoning in stories as he got them. He might have been missing for almost two hours, but the lights were still out and the radio station wanted anything he could give it. He crisscrossed blocks, then went over to East Harlem, where the looting was worse, if possible. He headed west, back to the neighborhood where he and Samantha had started. Samantha had left about an hour earlier.

  The pharmacy owner said, “The cop arranged a ride for her.”

  No subway. The buses gone. The cabs not interested. Taylor zigzagged south toward the apartment, looking for looting (too much), hoping for Good Samaritans (not enough). Watching, interviewing, phoning. His voice was hoarse. His legs hurt so much he thought about sitting down somewhere, but knew he’d fall asleep wherever that was. The sun started shoving the darkness up the buildings and off the city as he arrived at their building. Samantha was fast asleep, still wearing her clothes. Taylor convinced Mason now was not the time for big, happy greetings. He dropped into bed in the same state of dress.

  The power was still out.

  Chapter 30

  The open windows at the City News Bureau brought no cooling breezes. The office was as stuffy and humid as any subway train Taylor had been stuffed into in the middle of August. Cramly was down to his crewneck t-shirt. Taylor refused to give in. Somehow, keeping his dress shirt on was the flag he flew for civilization. The thermometer hit 90 at noon, heading up.

  Silence. That was the strange thing coming from outside. The honking, car and truck engines, air conditioners—the general rumble of the city on a workday—were absent. With power still out in most places 15 hours after the blackout, many offices were closed for the day. Many workers stayed home.

  Taylor got in after four hours of sleep to find Nicholson still working—those WINS bonuses were motivators—along with Cramly, Novak, and Templeton, the wire service’s other reporter, an alcoholic who did the light lifting. Samantha walked with him because Lew Raymond couldn’t get in from New Rochelle, and she volunteered to staff the office for emergency private investigation calls during the blackout. They’d both laughed at the idea of what that might be. What wasn’t lost last night? Taylor understood her dedication to the job. It mirrored his. They’d kissed at her office, and she’d extracted his now regular promise to let him know what dark holes he was heading down.

  “They’re not all dark.”

  “Lately, I don’t know.”

  Power came on in a handful of neighborhoods. People in so many buildings continued to suffer. Pumps to push water up into apartment buildings needed juice, so those folks were without electricity and water. Food went bad in refrigerators.

  Daylight had sent some of the looters home with what they’d stolen, but not all, another sign of the total loss of control that twisted Taylor’s insides. The city he’d believed was the most civilized in the world, even with its faults, wasn’t civilized at all. The cops battled to control the pockets of pillaging.

  He made calls and collected statistics of the type a disaster correspondent should handle, not a police reporter. More than three thousand arrested. Crammed into every corner of the boroughs’ jails and holding cells. The courts had ground to a halt. Upwards of one thousand businesses had been looted, 418 cops injured, 18 seriously. The NYPD had been flooded with 45,000 calls during the blackout. The FDNY went out more than 23,000 times, most for false alarms, though 900 were real, 55 severe. Some still burned as of Taylor’s last check. Bottom line: the blackout cost the poor, broke city $1 billion.

  He typed up interviews, statistics, politicians’ statements, and each announcement as a neighborhood gained power. The work wearied him. City News was back to regular operation, or at least trying to take care of all their radio stations and newspaper clients. With only phones and no facsimile, he had to call each subscriber and dictate what he had.

  Taylor didn’t know how to push the story beyond the blizzard of numbers. He covered murders—one person’s life, a disaster for one family. A catastrophe of this size was about so many other things. Investigations of Con Ed, demands from politicians that looters get the harshest possible sentences—everybody was law and order now—judges saying they couldn’t process the arrested fast enough, and allegations that a total of ten thousand off-duty cops had ignored the commissioner’s call to come in and help. Politicians, unions, the justice system. This was the whole city’s story, not one person’s. If the city was dying, he didn’t want to cover it.

  Didn’t help he couldn’t keep his mind off Charlie DeVries. The story he’d been after for months was as hot as it could be. Everything, suddenly, pointed to The Concierge. The story would run, if he could write it. A rich White man had been killed to protect a criminal conspiracy. Charlie’s death, where he died, what he said, made the Concierge the suspect. Problem A, No. 1: who the hell was he?

  Charlie ran from the apartment after Taylor confronted the family. Ran and died. What terrible mistake had Charlie made? Was he involved in his father’s murder? Or next in line for some reason?

  Though desperate to start tracking down the Concierge, Taylor sat chained to his desk, taking stats, statements, and accounts of misery. A staffer from the office of former Congresswoman Bella Abzug—one of five Democrats challenging Beame in the Democratic primary for mayor—called in with four paragraphs of charges against Con Ed.

  When the ph
one sat still for a full half hour, Taylor picked it up and called Jersey Stein in the Manhattan DA’s office.

  Stein, usually even-keeled no matter what the bad guys or acts of God threw at him, was tense. “Unless you’re on fire or already shot, can’t talk.”

  “Wanted to see how it’s going.”

  “Seven hundred plus arrests in Manhattan. No paperwork. Cops brought them in and had to go right back on the street. Can’t arraign without paper. Cells jammed to the rafters. Which means the public defenders and civil rights people are coming up our asses.”

  “Got it. Quick one. You ever heard of a guy who operates under the name ‘The Concierge’? Supplies drugs, whores, other illegal services, probably some legal ones, to high society folks on the Upper East Side.”

  “Nope. Funny, though—the name, that is, if I thought anything was funny right now. The gang unit has been trying to get inside some sort of organization working those games in the same neighborhoods. The group isn’t connected to any of the traditional families. Smaller gangs, either. Our guys are having a tough time getting intelligence because its roots are deep into the community.”

  “Protected by the customers?”

  “Yes.”

  “So maybe this ‘Concierge’?”

  “Maybe. Who knows?”

  “Good luck with the paperwork. The city’s a fucking mess. All from a blackout.”

  “That was only the trigger. The conditions that drove people to loot were always there, and it really didn’t matter if it was the shooting of a kid or the lights going out. The point is, we have people unemployed, inadequately housed, drinking, and in the summer, in the street. We’ve created a huge class of poor, disaffected people who have no place to go. That’s your mess. New York is slipping down … a kind of slow drift as we become inured to the invisible cancer. My damn paperwork won’t change a thing.”

  Taylor knew Stein was one of the few justice guys in the cops and robbers business—rather than a law and order guy. But he’d never heard Stein sound this down. He’d never heard him say damn or any swear word.