Nick Bones Underground

by Phil M. Cohen

  “So?”

  “An old friend who’d moved down here told me what was really going on, and I knew my fate lay in the labyrinth. As tenuous as things are here, the Velvet Underground is the only vestige of decency left in New York. Do you know we have universal health care down here? Everything Upstairs has become shit.”

  Under less pressing circumstances I might have elected to dispute the absolutist character of her statement. As the moment did not allow for debate, I remained silent.

  She pulled a tablet from her belt and inquired about the attack. I told her, including my role in it. I showed her the expired Zap, which she examined and placed in a plastic evidence bag. She asked me if I could see any motive for the assault. I told her they were looking for a key, but I had no idea what door it unlocked.

  “They barged in. The guy I killed shot Shelley in the arm. I had no idea what else he was going to do. So, I remembered the Zap in my pocket, and I shot him after he shot Shelley.” I watched the progress of our gondola as we moved along in the dark. “It’s all my fault you live down here?” I asked.

  “Ethics, you always said. Philosophy that’s worth anything is about ethics.”

  “Philosophy’s about a lot of things,” I said, grabbing onto a rail as we rounded a curve a bit faster than prudent. “After all these years of studying, what matters most to me is talk of right and wrong, understanding what’s good and bad, and acting accordingly.” I never thought anyone would act based on my words, though I’d hoped. We approached a fork in the tunnel. One of the men jumped off the gondola and pushed a lever. We headed leftward. “I remember you joined the cops Upstairs.”

  “Right after graduation,” she said. “I became a murder police. Pretty quick, too. I spent every day looking at corpses, so many of them suicides, others murdered for the most idiotic reasons. Day after day living in the heart of the abyss.”

  Reflecting on my own perpetual state of mind, I said, “I’m sailing in the same boat.”

  “Oh really? How many freshly minted corpses have you ever seen in one day?” she said, giving me a cynical look in the murky darkness of the tunnel.

  “At the end of a day I’m adrift with little comfort, even without having to process dead bodies. Grant me a measure of melancholy at least, without corpses.”

  “You were always a gloomy guy,” she said. “So, yeah, I’ll give you your case of the blues.” We continued silently.

  “And what are you doing down here?” she asked after a few moments.

  I explained my new life as a private detective, that I was searching for Shmulie Shimmer, Upstairs, Downstairs, wherever the clues took me.

  “Nick Bones,” she mused. “Back in school I thought a lot of things about you, but never that you were tough like that. Shooting people dead, a PI in the Velvet Underground.”

  Two hours ago I’d never held a weapon, much less shot one, much less killed anyone. To me, tough was having a go at Zeno’s paradox or debating the influence of this person on that person in the history of philosophy. I looked down at my palms.

  “What makes someone tough?” I asked.

  Another rhetorical question, requiring no response. Toughness, when it came at all, arrived in the circumstance of the moment, a gift of destiny, the obverse of grace.

  A cluster of colored lights appeared in the distance.

  “That would be the station,” she said.

  It was reminiscent of the sheriff’s office from countless Hollywood Westerns, a collection of rooms connected by a set of Christmas-style lights, the rooms all painted a light brown, a couple of uniformed cops sitting outside on folding chairs drinking coffee, maybe a jail in back. A sign hanging in the middle of the lights read VU Precinct 1. Simone ushered me inside where, among all the bustle, a guy too big for his uniform sat behind a wooden desk. A sign on the desk read, Sgt. Cromby.

  “This guy involved in that fracas?” he asked Simone.

  “He’s the other shooter, the one who shot the Zap,” she said. “Looks to me like self-defense.”

  He gestured toward a chair across from the desk. I sat. Simone gave him the expired Zap. She transferred her notes to his tablet, which he took a few moments to review. He checked my ID and went over my story three times.

  “You’ve given me your best description of what happened?” he asked following the third recitation.

  I had, I assured him. We were done. Piece of cake.

  “As you might understand, Professor,” Officer Cromby said, “our resources down here are limited. We don’t have the personnel to thoroughly investigate matters. I’m not certain how plausible your story is, but I’m letting you go, anyway.” He told Simone, “Take Professor Friedman wherever he’d like to go.”

  I thanked him, reassuring him my story was true.

  As we exited, Simone asked, “Where do you want to go?”

  I needed to speak with Shelley. “I’d like to see how the guy who got shot in the arm is doing. Can you get me there?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  We climbed aboard the same gondola that had brought us to the station an hour before. Simone gave the order to the drivers and we were off.

  ***

  “You’re going to make your way Upstairs when you’re done visiting, I imagine.”

  “Sure. I’ll be done with my business,” I said.

  As we took a fast curve on the tracks and I had to regain my balance, I was again struck by the extraordinary revelations I’d experienced in the less than four hours that passed since my arrival.

  “I’m amazed by this place,” I said.

  “The best of Western civilization lying twenty feet beneath a dying city,” she said.

  “Who’d have thought?”

  “That’s how we like it.”

  “You live down here permanently?”

  “The lines between up and down are somewhat permeable for those who have the reason. I go Upstairs to visit my mama. When I do it’s like leaving a country. I can’t persuade her to come live down here. She’s got too many friends up there, she says. She’s too old, she says. So, I visit her regularly.”

  A medium-sized rat darted in front of the gondola. Simone barely gave it a glance.

  “You mother lives in Brooklyn, if memory serves,” I said.

  “Bensonhurst.”

  “When’s your next visit?”

  “A day or two. I’m overdue. Been working pretty hard down here.”

  In the shadows of the tunnel I looked my former student in her eyes. “Care to add Garfield Place to your itinerary next time you come up for air?”

  Without hesitation, she said, “Yeah. I can see doing that.”

  “Just send a text when you’re coming. I’ll be waiting.”

  I gave her my contact information, and straightaway wondered what could come of this. It had been a while since I’d entertained a woman in my place. As I traveled down this barely illuminated tunnel, the prospect of a female crossing into my apartment filled me with a guarded happiness.

  Another batch of lights loomed ahead, several storefronts clumped together beneath a sign reading, The Real Sinai Hospital. I stepped off the gondola. Simone and I shook hands.

  “Just text me when you’re on your way. We’ll order takeout and reminisce,” I said. The gondola rolled on. I could not help but gaze into the darkness where Simone had just been.

  CHAPTER 15

  INFORMATION SQUEEZE

  THE REAL SINAI HOSPITAL was a miniature of its equivalent Upstairs. A few nurses in teal scrubs scurried about, serving the patients lying in its rooms. A medicinal smell filling the air assured me I’d entered a hospital. A nurse asked how she could help. When I told her I was looking for Shelley Tanzer, she directed me to his room.

  Shelley lay in bed dressed in gray PJs, a tube running out of his good arm, his long hair spread on the
pillow like a wet mop, a scarecrow that had lost its stuffing. A glass with a straw rising from some orange liquid sat before him on a tray, untouched.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he said as I pulled the single folding chair in the room near the bed and sat. “They got me all tied up like I’m a pig off to the slaughterhouse.” He did look helpless. “Get me out of here.”

  “Why are they keeping you?” I asked, noticing yet another photo of the Kobliner Rebbe, this one hanging on the wall opposite the bed, angled downward.

  “For observation, they said. I’m here for observation. What the hell do I need observation for?”

  “What did they say?”

  “Infection. They want to make sure I don’t get no infection from the goddam bullet went through my arm,” he said, anemically waving his bandaged arm my way.

  “Sounds reasonable,” I said.

  “Who gives a shit about reasonable? I hate it here,” he said, shaking a fist at the world. “I wanna get the hell out.”

  A nurse entered and inquired as to Shelley’s needs. “Get me out of here. That’s all I need,” he said. She urged him to drink the liquid sitting before him, that he needed hydration.

  When the nurse was out of the room, I asked, “Those guys at your place, what did they want?”

  “What ya mean? They didn’t want nothing,” he said, the paragon of innocence.

  “Don’t screw with me, Shelley. They were looking for something. The one guy said something about a key. He shot you the minute he walked in the door. Then they started tearing the place up. If the cop hadn’t come in, I’d have been shot, and you’d have been smacked around until you gave up what they were looking for.” Shelley grimaced at the thought. “What did they want?” I repeated.

  Shelley raised his eyes to the Rebbe’s. “They think I got the formula,” he said.

  “What formula?”

  “The formula for Coca-Cola.”

  As this had been a long day, I momentarily missed the irony.

  Shelley cackled. “What ya think, Prof? Lerbs. Those assholes musta thought I got the formula for Lerbs hidden somewhere in that hovel I call home.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “Do I? If I had the formula for Lerbs, sure as hell I wouldn’t write it on a piece of paper and let it sit around in my place hidden underneath, I don’t know, like a plate of hummus so some jerkoffs could come and take it, now would I?”

  I agreed that wouldn’t be wise.

  Pointing to the ceiling with his good arm, he said, “No sir. I’d have the formula up there in a secret cloud locked up under a great big pile of numbers only I knew and nobody’d figure out in a million years, wouldn’t I?” Pointing this time to his head, he added, “But anyway, that fat bastid kept that thing secure up in his own private cloud, up here.”

  “I agree. No one but the village idiot would have something that invaluable lying among all that Phantom of the Opera crap cluttering your place. Whatever else you are, the village idiot you’re not,” I said. “No surprise you don’t have the formula there.” I leaned forward. “He said they were looking for a key. What key?”

  “Whaddaya mean?” he said, grimacing as he took a sip of the liquid. “Stuff tastes like yesterday’s garbage.”

  “I mean anyone who can sign their name with one mistake knows you’re too smart to write the formula on a piece of paper. What is the key?”

  “Ah, go fuck yourself,” Shelley said.

  I stood up and gently closed the door. I went over to Shelley. I leaned into the bed and over him.

  With a suspicious look, he pulled himself toward the wall and away from me. “What are you doing, Professor?”

  I grabbed his wounded arm exactly where the bullet had penetrated it, and I gave it a very healthy squeeze.

  “Christ Almighty that hurts,” he screamed. “What ya do that for?”

  Squeezing harder, I said, “Shelley, at the end of this long and extraordinarily weird day, I need a straight answer from you.”

  “Whaddaya want?” he groaned.

  “What were those guys looking for? I killed one of them. Maybe that saved your life, I don’t know. But I killed a man. What did I do that for?”

  “Aright, aright, for the love of God. Let me go. I’ll tell you,” he said, pulling his arm away from me as I loosened my grip and stood.

  “What was the key those two men were looking for?” I said.

  He looked at the Rebbe as if for divine inspiration and grinned. “They were looking for the key to my heart.”

  I leaned in to press the bandaged wound again.

  He pulled back, nearly hugging the wall. “Aright. Aright. Don’t do that again. I’ll tell ya, ya bastid.”

  I counted silently to five, then bent over intending another dose of pain.

  “The key, the key to the kingdom,” he said, letting go with an absurd giggle.

  I squeezed. He screamed.

  “Spill it,” I said. “What key?”

  He breathed hard and looked at me, now with fear in his eye. “Okay. Okay. There’s a room down here not far from me in the VU got a load of shit in it. It’s part of the reason I moved down here. To hide that stuff away.”

  “What shit?”

  “You know, Shmulie shit.”

  “What kind?”

  “Nothing much, really. Stuff he left behind when he got sent off.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “You know. A room full of shit. Papers, notes, and other stuff he didn’t want put in the sky, cause he thought it wouldn’t be safe digital. Stuff he shoulda shredded and then shredded again and throwed in the river, but he give it to me that day in his office instead.”

  “Why didn’t you get rid of it?”

  “He tole me not to. It might come in handy someday, he tole me.”

  “What did those guys want with that stuff?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw ’em before. I guess they heard Shmulie hid something. Maybe they were working for someone wants the stuff for themself, or just wants to destroy it.”

  “Yes?” I said, wondering what kind of materials Shmulie could have held on to.

  “It’s the sort of stuff can make big trouble for certain parties.”

  “What parties?”

  “Some really big shits in the Upstairs.”

  “Who?” As this wasn’t getting anywhere, I squeezed again. I was shocked at how increasingly easy it was to administer pain again after you’d done it once.

  “Fuck it, man, enough,” he said. “There’s stuff there Shmulie thought could be used in a pinch like, you know, like leverage against people want to hurt him.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Stuff. You know. Stuff. Papers, lists, secrets.”

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “What do I know? He give me a couple of boxes and I hid ’em away.”

  “You didn’t look at them?”

  “Hell no. Not interested. Not one bit.”

  “This was supposed to keep him safe?”

  “Yeah. He said it could do some real damage to the whole world if all the crap got out.” He picked up the juice and took a sip.

  “The key’s at your place?”

  He put the juice down and said, “You get me outta here, the key’s yours. I’ll even take you to the place. You can swim in all that crap all you want.”

  What I really wanted was to make my way back to the ladder at Track 42, climb up, and go home. I had no need to immerse myself in another piece of this puzzle. My job was to find Shmulie Shimmer, nothing else, and surely not a couple of boxes of Shmulie shit. That was my rational side at work. Instead of going home, making up with Maggie and eating some real food for dinner, my irrational side obliged me to say, “How can I get you out?”

  He smiled like a s
ix-year-old who’d just pulled the last cookie from the cookie jar. “Just tell ’em at the desk you’re bringing me home and you’re gonna take care of me. Tell ’em you’re my uncle or something.”

  I followed Shelley’s suggestion, and straightaway they released him into my care after I claimed to be his long-lost uncle Nick.

  CHAPTER 16

  PSYCHO PATH

  SHELLEY TANZER’S DOOR WAS open wide, no police remaining.

  “Christ on Sunday. This gonna take a year to clean up,” he said.

  Far less concerned with esthetics, I demanded, “Where’s the key?”

  “Ah, what’s your hurry, Professor? You got a hot date at the Outtaluck? Lemme make you some tea.” Before I knew it, he presented me with a cup of overly sweet tea into which he’d stirred three sugar cubes. “I gotta take care of something. Be right back.” He hustled away.

  The aroma of peppermint filled the air as I sipped. The memory of my recent days unfolded before me like a bad movie—the events surrounding Abe, Maggie, Mingus, Esther, my sojourn underground, Simone, and behind it all, the missing Shmulie Shimmer. I finished the tea.

  A deep and distorted voice returned me to the present. “I have returned, Professor.”

  I looked up. Standing before me I beheld the Phantom of the Opera, a half-mask, black tux, a black wig with his hair slicked back, a rose in his good hand, left arm heavily bandaged. Shelley Wolfman Tanzer decked out in full Phantom regalia.

  “You’ve changed clothing,” I said.

  “I have changed identities,” he said. “Know me? I am the Phantom of the Opera,” he announced, bowing low. He stood erect and said, “I’ve come to tell you, sir, you’ve been dosed.”

  “Say what?” I said.

  With a flourish, Tanzer said, “Dosed. I’ve fed you the greatest entertainment drug known to humankind. A triple dose. Three times the little rat babies in your tea.”

  “Why?” I asked, the only thing I could think to say.

  “Following orders,” he said, and backed toward the shadows.