New Yorked

by Rob Hart

  I explain this all to Margo and she listens very intently. When I’m done she asks, “Isn’t being safe a good thing?”

  “I know plenty of people who would take the bad old days back in a heartbeat.”

  “That’s a little ridiculous.”

  “Maybe. But you live here your whole life, you understand a little better.”

  We settle on a trattoria nearby that does good eggs and coffee. I don’t like not working, but maybe some food will get the wheels spinning. Right now my head feels full of cotton.

  The restaurant is empty and a bored waiter with neck tattoos leads us to a table near the front window. Lunette is sitting in the back, trying to keep her head aloft over a Bloody Mary. I tell the waiter we’re moving and pull out a chair across from her. She barely stirs when I sit. She’s wearing big sunglasses even though it’s dark in the corner.

  I knock on the table. “Rough night?”

  She makes an affirmative noise with her mouth and looks at Margo. “Who are you?”

  I flip through the menu even though I know what I want. “You’ll have to forgive Lunette. She’s part Russian. Lunette, this is my cousin, Margo.”

  Margo reaches her hand across the table and they shake. Lunette takes a long sip of her Bloody Mary while the waiter takes our order. I tell him to bring me sunny-side eggs and toast and hash browns and a pot of coffee. He laughs even though it’s not a joke and goes back to the kitchen.

  “So,” Margo says to Lunette. “What do you do?”

  “What do I do?”

  “For a living.”

  “Is it important for you to know?”

  “Just… making conversation.”

  Lunette makes another noise with her mouth and digs through her purse, then reaches her hand up to her mouth. I grab her wrist. “Don’t be mean.”

  “She’s a gent.”

  “And she’s blood.”

  Lunette shakes me off and dry-swallows whatever pill it is she’s taking. To Margo she says, “I’m sorry dear. My hangovers make me into a different kind of person.”

  “I know the feeling,” Margo says. “But what’s a gent?”

  Fearing Lunette will give her the unkind version, I jump in. “It’s a nickname for people who move here but weren’t born here. Gent is short for gentrification.”

  “Why?”

  The waiter puts down my coffee and a glass of ice water. I drop three cubes into the mug and tell Margo, “Because when some trust-fund baby is willing to shell out three grand a month for an apartment, it drives up the surrounding property values and prices people out. Places like CBGB closed because of people like that.”

  Lunette nods her head. “Dreadful.”

  I take a swig of my coffee. “My landlord is pretty close to getting me out, I think. He could get four, five times what I’m paying, easy.”

  Margo pokes at her light-and-sweet mug. “Where will you go if you have to leave your apartment?”

  “I can afford a bench in the subway, but it would have to be on one of the crappier lines, like the G train.”

  “What about moving to a borough? You could go back to Staten Island.”

  “That would be like admitting defeat,” I tell her.

  “What about Brooklyn?”

  Lunette cringes. I laugh.

  Margo scrunches her brow. “I thought Brooklyn was supposed to be cool. I know a lot of people back home who talk about Williamsburg like it’s Shangri-La.”

  “Williamsburg is where you go when you’re afraid to be an adult. I wouldn’t last a week.”

  “If I move here, you could stay with me. We could figure it out.”

  I smile at her. “Thanks, but you don’t need that kind of trouble.”

  “So,” Margo asks both of us. “How do you two know each other?”

  Lunette laughs at the memory. “Some guy whipped his dick out on the subway and waved it in my face. Ash leveled him.”

  Margo purses her lips. “Does that kind of thing happen often?”

  “The penis on the subway or Ash hitting people? Both are surprisingly frequent. Don’t worry though. The city is safer than it seems.”

  I’m gearing to defend myself when the food arrives. The eggs are salty and scrambled, but I don’t care. I wave to the busboy for more coffee and Margo asks, “It’s not, like, that safe, is it? Did you hear about that girl? The one who got killed near here two nights ago? The one the papers called the Greenpoint Goth?”

  Lunette looks up at me. I keep looking at the plate. I don’t want to have this conversation. It would be rude to get up and go. I’m tired of talking about dead people. It seems like I can’t avoid it. I shrug my shoulders. “She was a friend.”

  “Oh Christ Ash, I’m so sorry,” Margo says.

  “Please don’t apologize. You didn’t kill her.”

  “My mom almost didn’t let me come here because of that. She didn’t want to drive me to the train station.”

  “It’s not dangerous,” I tell her. “Sometimes it can be. You just need to be smart.”

  Lunette says, “Chell was smart.”

  “She was. How about we all back the fuck off this topic of conversation?”

  “We can’t actually,” says Lunette.

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “About?”

  “About Chell.”

  I put down my knife and fork and fold my hands in front of me. I don’t look at Margo when I tell her, “This is terribly rude of me, but could you give us a second.”

  Margo nods. “I’m going to go out front and smoke.”

  I wait until she’s out on the sidewalk, then ask Lunette. “What have you got?”

  “I asked around a little bit because you’re too angry to have rational conversations with people. I found out on the day she died, she went to go meet with the head of her burlesque troupe. They’re doing a show tonight at Skidmore. At night, she was out at whatever mystery job she was working that nobody seems to know anything about.”

  “Good. All things I didn’t know.”

  “Yes, but there’s more. Do you know what she was doing in the morning?” Lunette pauses for effect. “Brunch with Ginny.”

  I let that glance off my chin, then nod and push myself out from the table. Margo is standing just outside, finishing her cigarette. She offers me one, but I take out my own. She asks, “Do you want me to leave?”

  “No. It’s fine. We’ll take you out tonight. I just have no idea what to do until then. It’s still early.”

  Margo tosses her cigarette to the street and says, “I need to be at NYU for a meeting pretty soon with one of the advisors from the film department. Maybe you and Lunette could come up with me and show me around the neighborhood a bit.”

  “Sure. Why don’t you go back inside to finish eating with Lunette. I need to make a call.”

  Margo heads inside. I walk down the block and my hands are shaking.

  Ginny lied to me.

  She said she hadn’t seen Chell in what, weeks? I should kick in her door and punch her in the face before her guards take me down, and it’s fine to because she’s really a guy. But the only way she’ll tell me the truth is if I confront her with it.

  I toss the half-spent smoke into the street and head back to the restaurant. Lunette is sitting by herself. She cocks her head to the side. “In the bathroom.” I sit across from her. She frowns, says, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Not much to say right now that won’t upset me.”

  “We’re going up to NYU?”

  “Yes. And it would be a big help if you came. She’s supposed to be staying with me, and she can, but it’ll be good if she has some other people to hang out with. Keep an eye on her. Can you do this for me?”

  “She’s sweet.” Lunette picks up a spent sugar packet and tears the pieces in half. “Is she my type?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “So, Ash.” She puts down the sugar packet
and takes my hand. “I know this is hard. I hope you’re being smart. Please promise me you’ll be smart?”

  “I love you too much to make you promises.”

  “Well, at least you seem… calmer than normal.”

  “I’m off booze until I see this through.”

  “You’re not drinking?”

  “Clean and sober.”

  Lunette’s face registers a level of shock that makes me uncomfortable. She says, “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you this serious.”

  We stop at the northeast end of Washington Square Park to get our bearings and so Margo can look up the address on her phone. Her meeting is in a building around the corner, and I tell the girls to head over because I need to run an errand.

  After they disappear, I head diagonally across the park to the chess tables. Most of them are full up with players, except for the one at the end of the line where Craig is sitting by himself, pondering the carefully-aligned pieces on the stone playing surface.

  His hair is wrapped into a sloppy ponytail, done with his hands and not a comb. His skin’s cracked from living outside and eating a diet that consists mostly of booze. But his gray eyes are sharp, and when I sit across from him, they probe me in a way that makes the muscles in my back tighten.

  I start the game the same way I always do. Clearing some pawns, a bishop, and a knight into the middle so I can castle my king behind the rook. Craig chips away at the sides of the boards, looking for an opening. I think I’m holding him back when he manages to snatch one of my pawns.

  And then another.

  And then my bishop.

  I panic and push into the middle. Put my spare rook onto a square I think will cost him his queen. I don’t even see the bishop that takes it out. It’s not long before I’m down to a knight and the three pawns guarding the king. Craig still has a lot of his pieces.

  The game is over, but I keep playing out of respect. Within a few moves he’s backed my king into a corner with a bishop and a rook. I knock over the king and he smiles for the first time since I sat down.

  “Chell died two nights ago,” I tell him as he resets the board. “Hear anything about it?”

  He shakes his head.

  I pull a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and slide it across the table. “Ask around, see what you can find out. I was black-out, so if anyone saw me stumbling around, that would help too.”

  He looks around to make sure no one is watching us, then crumples the money in his hand and pushes it into the pocket of his tattered Bomber jacket.

  Craig doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s worth the money.

  We play two more games and both times I hang on a little longer, until he decides to stop toying with me and gouges my defenses. When I’m tired of getting my ass kicked, I thank him for his help, then walk over to Mamoun’s to grab a shawarma, wait for the girls to finish.

  I want to work the case, but I don’t want to abandon Margo. I’m glad Lunette is sticking with us because that makes it easier. The two of them talk on an endless loop and I only have to weigh in occasionally.

  We grab dinner at Milon so I can introduce Margo to the joys of cheap Indian food. Then it’s time to drink. Margo wants to go down to the bars on MacDougal because that’s where her friends have told her to go. I tell her MacDougal is a great place to get puked on or date-raped by a frat guy.

  Instead we go to Stillwater. Lunette disappears for the juke box and fills it up with Faith No More even though we won’t be here long. The bartender slams down a glass of whiskey for me, but I pass it off and ask him if he saw me or Chell the night she died, but he didn’t.

  After a bit, we head across the street to KGB, where the red lights make everyone look like a junkie. The bartender offers me his condolences and I stop him from pouring me a vodka. Chell was a regular here, and I ask him if she’d been around and he says no. I can smell the alcohol and I want a drop, just a tiny little drop. Lunette and Margo are tipsy and that makes it worse.

  Bombay and Romer show up and they order drinks but say they want to knock off to Coyote Ugly. Drunken idiots drooling over tits isn’t really my scene, but Bad Kelly might be working, and last I heard she was dating a cop. That might be useful.

  I introduce Bombay and Romer to Margo and head for the bathroom where a guy I sort of recognize is ducking into the stall. He offers me a line of coke and I wave him off with a heavy heart.

  We leave and find Coyote Ugly is packed out the door and that annoys me. We push our way in and Bad Kelly is dancing on the bar in a black bra and skintight jeans. Her red hair hangs in sweaty ropes in front of her eyes. She’s pouring tequila down guys’ throats and they’re reaching up, trying to grope her, but she’s kneeing and elbowing their hands away.

  Lunette pulls rank on some guys at a booth in the back, making them get up for her and Margo. They think she’s hitting on them, so they try to squeeze back in after the girls sit. It’s fun to watch their crestfallen expressions when they realize they’ve been had. Bombay appears at my side with a glass of Jay on the rocks, but when I don’t take it he shrugs, throws it back, and proceeds onto his beer.

  I want to talk to Bad Kelly but she’s on the bar, and I don’t know what else to do with myself because it’s too loud inside for a conversation. Some guy grabs me and yells into my ear that he needs to hire me to find someone. He rattles off some details, his face way too close to mine, but I’m not listening, and when he’s done, I tell him I’m booked. I consider exit strategies when I notice Bad Kelly waving at me.

  She rubs her fists at her eyes like she’s mock-crying.

  Sorry about Chell being dead, is what she’s trying to say.

  Most other people would do something like that and set me off, but Bad Kelly has a stunning inability to understand what’s appropriate in polite society. We’re a little similar like that so I give her a pass. I point at her and then at the door of the bar. She holds up five fingers, spread out, so I go outside and wait.

  The crowd makes me anxious. Too many guys flailing their arms because they drank too much and there are woman nearby. Just as I’m finishing my first cigarette, Bad Kelly comes out wearing a heavy fleece. A guy’s fleece. Probably demanded it from someone standing at the bar. She meets me at the curb and takes out her own cigarette, the pack ragged and wet from being crammed in her sweat-soaked jeans. She leans toward me for a light and asks, “You okay, sweetie?”

  “Not even close.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for.”

  “What do you need?”I light another cigarette for myself. “Information. Anything you can tell me about Chell. What she’d been up to.”

  Some guy with a popped collar and a backwards baseball cap comes up to Bad Kelly and gets two inches closer than appropriate. “Hey gorgeous. Taking a break?”

  She wraps herself around my arm, her body warm and small against mine. “Boyfriend.”

  I tell him, “Fuck off.”

  He takes a step toward me, but when I don’t take my eyes away from his, he retreats. When he’s out of earshot Kelly says, “Thanks.”

  “My job. So, anything?”

  “Haven’t seen her around lately. She’s been off in Brooklyn, working on something for Ginny.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “She didn’t tell me. I mean, I didn’t ask her. But she said something about the ‘fucking hipsters.’”

  “That’s good. One other thing. Are you still dating that cop?”

  “We don’t date. We fuck.”

  “Want to do me a solid? And if you pull this off, I’ll owe you big time?”

  She speaks slowly, drawing out the word. “Depends.”

  “When there’s a high profile murder like this, the cops withhold details so they can separate the real suspects from the cranks. I need to find out what they’re holding back from the press. Can you poke around?”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “You’ll t
hink of something.”

  “Me and this guy have been on the skids.”

  “And?”

  “You’re essentially asking me to let him fuck me so you can get an inside track.”

  “First off, that’s not what I’m asking you. And I wouldn’t even ask you this if it wasn’t important.”

  Bad Kelly turns away from me and crosses her arms. She says, “I’m not a whore, Ash.”

  “I didn’t say you were. I’m not saying you have to fuck him. But are you never going to see this guy again?”

  She drops her cigarette and shakes her head. “You’re an asshole.”

  “Kelly. How many times have you called me on the tail end of a bad relationship to keep things clean? I have always been there for you.”

  She shakes her head, still refusing to look at me. “You are such an asshole.”

  “I’ll owe you.”

  “Yes, you will.” She heads back for the bar.

  For a very fleeting moment, I feel guilty. The feeling passes.

  Margo and Lunette are sharing a cigarette outside the front door. They’re deep in conversation so I don’t try and break in. Some guy comes up to me and asks if he can have a cigarette. I tell him a pack costs eleven bucks and to go buy one if he wants one so bad. Inside I find Bombay drinking a new beer. He sees me and puts two fingers up to his mouth.

  Good, because I don’t smoke enough anyway.

  By the time we fight our way back outside, Margo and Lunette have disappeared. Bombay lights himself a cigarette, then lights mine. I take out the card for Noir York and the thumb drive.

  He asks, “What do you need?”

  “Anything and everything. Whatever you can tell me.”

  He nods, sticks them in his pocket.

  “Another thing,” I tell him. “Find out everything you can about Nellie Bly.”

  “The journalist?”

  “You know who she is?”

  “Sure. She was a journalist back in the 1900s. She was famous for infiltrating a mental hospital to uncover abuse of the patients.”