by Rob Hart
“I need you to focus.” Ginny exhales. “I got a phone call. It seems as though your visit to Brooklyn didn’t go over too well with the king. There’s a bounty on your head.”
“All I did was hit some people in the face.”
“At a time of great unrest. This isn’t a joke. You don’t understand the full scale of what’s happening right now, and what you just did puts months of planning and work at risk. Because I’m not ready for what’s about to happen.”
“What is about to happen?”
Ginny pauses, but not for effect. “I’m about to lose a great deal of money, power, and influence.”
“I need to understand this, because I don’t. There’s a turf war. That I get. A bunch of goofy fucking hipsters are trying to, what, depose you?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I understand there’s money to be had. But honestly, a lot of this sounds made-up and ridiculous.”
Ginny looks past me, like she’s searching the room for something. “New York is not a city. It is an idea. And one of the most prevalent ideas is the romanticism of Old New York. These… children believe that New York has lost its authenticity. They have fantasies about how they think things should be, versus how they really are.”
“So I was wrong when I called it a turf war. It’s ideological.”
Ginny laughs. “All wars are about ideology. Ideology and money. They want my neighborhood for two reasons: One is because they’ll get keyed into all my business. But they also want the bragging rights. They want to be in control so they can say they’re in control of the most prime real estate in Manhattan.”
“I know this city has a problem with gentrification, but this sounds a little extreme.”
“Then let’s call it that, darling, for the sake of simplicity. Extreme gentrification.”
“But you’ve got soldiers lined up from here to Battery Park, right?”
“I don’t have as many people in my corner as you think I do. That’s why I’m trying to broker deals with the other Manhattan leaders. But everyone wants something. There are less and less people on our side because the city is emptying out. The natives are leaving. And meanwhile, the gents get stronger every day.”
“So,” I ask. “What does this mean?”
“It means that the hipsters have been waiting for me to escalate. Biding their time and building their power base. And today, they believe that I escalated.”
Damn. “So whatever happens now is on me. Ginny…”
Ginny waves her hand. “It was going to happen soon. I would have preferred more time, but no one ever gets what they want. The point is, it’s happening. I’m going to leave here, get dressed, and go see the leader for Harlem. I think he’s interested in working together.”
“Think you’ll get him on board?”
“I hope so. The truth is, I have more to gain from an alliance with him. There are a lot of goofy white kids moving into Harlem for the cheap rent, so his territory is already in danger, but where do you think they all want to come? The East Village. The Lower East Side. These are the historic neighborhoods for New York City’s youth. This is what they really want. My district.”
I ease back into the chair, stretch out my legs. This is just ridiculous enough that I can’t question it. “What do you want from me then?”
“To be ready. You already told me that you owed me one, for the information on Chell. Now I’m telling you that I’m going to cash in on it pretty soon.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“I’ll tell you when you need to know.”
We sit there in silence for a little while. It’s nice to sit across from Ginny like that. Like we’re not in a stage play.
Finally she says, “I’ll do my best to protect you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my friend.”
“Friend is a strong word, isn’t it?”
She looks hurt. “To me it is.”
I get up. I’ll take her call when I get it. Right now I need to be doing other things. Which means anything other than this.
“Before you go, there’s something you should know,” she says. “I poked around a little bit at the police department. Some people I know. Your name keeps coming up in the investigation into Chell’s death.”
“Well. How about that?”
“They don’t have much to go on, and they’re looking into your past. Obviously there are politics involved.”
“Politics?”
“With your dad. Given his hero status, they don’t want to move on you unless it’s a sure thing. Don’t you have an alibi? Something? Just get this out of the way?”
I look at my palm.
You promised.
Who promised?
“I’ll figure it out,” I tell her. “Go to work. Call me when you need me.”
Ginny stands too. She smiles, the one she wears under her wigs, and the lilt returns to her voice. “Yes, darling. Off to defend this city from the conquering hordes.”
The girls are gone and Bombay is in bed. I go to my duffel bag and dig out the scanner, plug it in next to the couch and turn the volume down until I can just hear it.
“10-35 code 2, Greene and West Fourth.” Unnecessary alarm caused by construction activities.
I sit in the dark for a little while until I realize that I am desperately in need of a shower.
The bathroom is next to Bombay’s bedroom so I put the water on low and I hope it doesn’t wake him. The bandage on my arm sticks a little so I yank hard. It hurts like hell, but it comes off without ripping the wound open.
I climb under the hot water and stand there, let it flush the grime off me. I check the cut on my arm and poke it around the edges. Doesn’t look or feel infected.
My ankle is feeling pretty rough. Landing on it twice has left it swollen. I can put my weight on it but it feels like a wooden joint. There’s a bruise on my stomach from where the king hit me, and a lump on my head from where Samson tossed me into the car.
Delightful. I turn the water as hot as it’ll go and lean my head against the porcelain tiles, think through what Bad Kelly told me.
Two sets of DNA. Maybe the killer raped someone else? Maybe he had a female accomplice, which is a little heavy, but not impossible.
I know someone had been giving Chell trouble, and I know she had at least two people angry at her: Fanny Fatale and The Hipster King. Either one of them could have been working with a partner. Maybe they were working together.
The hot water turns lukewarm. I turn off the shower and towel dry, redo the bandage on my arm. I find a sports bandage in the medicine cabinet for my ankle.
The shower felt good and it woke me up. I nestle into the couch and reach for a laptop, scroll through apartment listings on Craigslist. After reading a few dozen ads, I make the following conclusions:
An apartment of comparable size to the one I lived in will be at least three thousand a month.
A studio apartment will be at least two thousand a month.
There are plenty of people looking for roommates, which would knock the rent down. Most of them are looking for people to split one bedrooms or studios. Some are even offering closets.
As I move uptown, the apartments get more expensive. As I move south, they get a little less pricey. The cheapest apartments I find are in Chinatown, but I’m vaguely familiar with those neighborhoods, and those buildings are nightmares. I’d be splitting my room with roaches and rats. And they still rent for around fifteen hundred a month.
Things get a little cheaper as I head out to the boroughs. Williamsburg is off the charts. Lofts going for four thousand a month. But there are apartments in Bushwick and Bed Stuy going for eight hundred, nine hundred. What’s funny is that the listings say the apartments are in Park Slope or Williamsburg.
I think of Good Kelly and click over to Texas, scroll through the options in Austin. Right off the bat I find a one-story house with a back yard and two bedrooms. The kitchen is big enou
gh to prepare meals more complicated than toast and there’s even a driveway. It’s eight hundred a month.
If I lived in Texas, I would get a dog. I’ve always wanted a dog, even got tempted a few times, but people who get dogs and force them to live in small apartments are assholes. Dogs need room to run around. Dogs need yards.
A yard would be nice. Sit outside at night, stare up at the sky, not feel like there’s a bunch of people crowded on top of you. I wonder if you can see the stars in Austin?
The real question is what I would do in all that quiet.
The thing about living in New York City is that it’s never really quiet. It’s like when there’s a television on in the next room and you know it’s on, because you can feel the electric hum of it. To live in a place like this is to live in the middle of an electric hum that never stops.
So what do you learn about yourself when the world goes quiet and the humming stops and you can’t hear anything but what’s inside?
I concede defeat and dig the jump drive out of my pocket. Plug it in and the password prompt appears on the screen. I try Kent, the town in Ohio where Chell was born. Doesn’t work.
What would matter to her? Enough that she would use it as a lock?
She had an imaginary friend when she was a child. She told me about it once. He was a clown in a yellow and red outfit. Giggles. I try that and it doesn’t work either.
Has to be something important. Something really important. Something meaningful.
Before I can even formulate a coherent thought, I type in ‘Ashley’ and hover over the return key.
It wouldn’t be the first time she used me to protect her.
Was I important enough for this?
I yank the drive out and toss it onto the coffee table, close the laptop, and push myself further into the plush cushions.
The radio crackles next to me. “10-32, caller states male robbing woman. Southeast corner of Tompkins Square Park. Send a bus to assist?” That’s right on the corner. I’m in my pants and out the door before I hear the response.
By the time I get there, the cops are already talking to a shaken girl wearing a beige coat and hugging herself. Against the chill or the fear, I don’t know. She doesn’t have a purse with her, so I imagine it did get stolen. I light a cigarette and look at my phone and act like I’m waiting for someone, get close enough to hear the description: Two guys in ski masks, both of them wearing glasses through the masks.
One guy with his hand in a cast.
I’m caught in a loop and I can’t see the boundaries of it.
The cops lead the girl into the squad car to bring her to the station for paperwork. They close the door and one looks at the other and says, “Second one tonight. Fourth this week. Un-fucking-believable.”
An old guy walking a French bulldog stops and asks me what happened. I tell him it was a mugging. He asks for a cigarette and I know from his accent he was born here so I give it to him.
He talks at me like a person who’s very lonely, says, “This city is too goddamn safe, if you ask me. If you wanted to live here, you used to have to earn it. Now you come here and you get shit handed to you. Shame about the girl, though.”
“It’s still pretty safe.”
He shakes his head. “I miss the old days.” He doesn’t wait for me to say anything, just tugs the leash and leads the dog down the block.
Can’t sleep, even though I’m desperate for it. Too wired. I don’t like that I missed the mugging. I check into Apocalypse and Dave tells me there’s a patrol out, even though it’s a little early. I walk over to Tompkins Square Park and find Katrina in pumps and a skirt, walking around the park and talking on her cell phone. Her bodyguard is Todd, a nice guy with a mean right hook who bartends in the West Village. I catch a glimpse of him, moving through the trees like a wraith. They don’t see me.
The sidewalks are crowded and I drift south, my shoulders tight, my jaw clenched so hard my teeth creak. I feel like a screwdriver in a house made of nails. Who the fuck are these assholes terrorizing the people who live in my neighborhood?
My feet carry me independently of where I think I want to go, or should be going. I just walk, further south, down past Houston, to Delancey. I cut across to the Williamsburg Bridge, to those dark streets underneath that are veiled in shadows. I can’t do drugs, and I can’t drink. All I can do is walk.
I think about the man who wants to go back to the bad old days. Back to an authenticity that came in hand with a constant threat of violence. I don’t know that those days are even gone. The bad guys didn’t go away, they just got smarter. They wait and they think. They’re a dangerous breed, able to operate in a city that renders them invisible, as long as they don’t draw too much attention.
Doesn’t matter that the city is safe. People still get hurt.
The rain makes the street smell like urine. The first ten minutes of rain always does that, bringing the stench up from the sidewalk.
As I pass Curry Row on First Avenue I get an idea and duck into the spice shop underneath Milon. I ask the disinterested clerk for anything that smells like lavender. He points me toward the back and I find an ornate wooden display of scented oils.
I take one, crack the top open, and pull it in. The smell of it floods me, makes it feel like Chell is standing next to me. I like it.
At a bodega, I snag a copy of the Post. On the front page there’s some jingoistic crap about a war somewhere. The saga of the Greenpoint Goth is relegated to a small banner at the bottom of cover, and then the fourth page on the inside. Not much new to report. People must be losing interest.
What troubles me is the opinion piece running next to it.
After some nonsense about the heinous nature of Chell’s death, the columnist hits a point that makes me ball up the page in my hands.
What continues to haunt me about this attack, more than the brutality, is the photos of a once-beautiful young woman, her body scarred with ink like it’s a canvas meant to be on display. The question I have to ask, and the question all of us should be asking is: How does this help?
We have photos of her in a stiff bra and low-cut shirt that displayed her cleavage, leather pants that were so tight the killer had to cut her out of them, and heels worthy of the stage at The Hustler Club.
The “feminists” are going to crow about this and call it victim-blaming, but I prefer to think of it as preemptive-shaming.
How are our daughters supposed to respect themselves if they think this is appropriate? They’re the ones doing the real damage—by telling their daughters it’s okay to dress like this.
I pitch the paper over my shoulder. I want to punch the brick wall next to me. I take back everything I said. Fuck the Post.
Another few blocks and I find a rental truck sitting outside Good Kelly’s apartment. Tibo is sitting in the back, smoking a cigarette. He’s also wearing a pirate hat and an eye patch.
I pull myself on the truck bed alongside him and ask, “Why are you a pirate today?”
“Because I haven’t found the silver yet.”
“That’s… not the answer I was expecting. Though I guess I don’t know what I was expecting.”
Tibo takes the hat off and runs his hands through his dreads, trying to flatten them to his head. “I’m going to tell you a secret, Ash. You can’t tell anyone.” He pulls a map out of his pocket and smoothes it on his lap. I recognize the shorelines of Staten Island and Brooklyn, with the Verrazano Bridge connecting the two. It looks like the map he was studying in Apocalypse a few nights ago.
Tibo says, “In 1903 a barge capsized. It was carrying seven thousand silver bars. They only recovered about six thousand. There’s a bunch still left down there, and by today’s standards, they’re worth more than twenty-five million.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“The Army Corps of Engineers has had to dredge and detonate parts of the canal to make it deep enough for cargo ships.” He pulls out a smaller map. “These flow charts? T
here are some strong currents that lead in this direction.” He pulls out the first map and points to a spot a quarter of a mile to the east of where the barge sank. “There’s a little trench here, and I think this is where the bars ended up.”
Tibo believes the world is going to end in five years. Every two months he comes up with a new scheme designed to help him fund a sustainable commune, so he and a select group of people can ride out the end times. Get enough booze in me and his logic doesn’t sound too crazy. I tell him, “Best of luck then.”
“I need a boat.”
“I can’t help you with that.” I take out a cigarette and stop halfway to lighting it. “Actually I can. Talk to Kuffner. His dad has a boat.”
“Didn’t know that.”
“Well, there you go then. Happy to help. Cut me in when you find the silver.”
“Deal.” He shakes my hand and folds up the maps.
I ask, “Where’s Kelly?”
“Errand. She told me to stay here and watch the truck. Dave and Todd are upstairs getting shit together right now.”
“Good then. I’ll help you watch the truck.”
The rain picks up. We pull our legs inside. Tibo asks, “How are you holding up?”
“Could be better.”
“It’s a hard thing to parse out, you know.”
“How someone could hurt someone like that...”
Tibo pauses, confused. “Oh, you’re talking about Chell. I thought we were talking about Kelly. But yes, the Chell thing sucks, too. How’s the hunt?”
“Coming up empty.”
“Can I be nosy?”
“Sure.”
He arches an eyebrow at me. The eyebrow that isn’t covered by an eye patch. “Are you prepared to deal with the consequences?”
I pitch my spent cigarette into the street and place a fresh one between my lips, but I don’t light it. “I’m only doing what my dad taught me. He raised me to believe that you don’t hit women and you stick up for people.”
Tibo nods. “Maybe this guy just didn’t have that positive influence in his life.”