Read Manhattan Nocturne Online
Authors: Colin Harrison
Manhattan Nocturne (13 page)
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And then, behold the adulterer. In the mirrored brass of the elevator I gazed upon myselfâflushed, hair wet, lips slightly swollen. I felt less shame than I should have, I felt a dark little thrill, I felt an echoing pleasure in my balls. I tightened my tie and buttoned my wool coat. I would, of course, have to understand myself as a man who had, for the first time, cheated on his wife. Almost spontaneously. Yet I see now how much better it might have been if I'd understood myself in
another
way, tooâthat I had entered a labyrinth far stranger and more dangerous than I could ever imagine, far more wretched than the mere banality of adultery. The brass elevator door slid open, and I walked out of the lobby, past the front desk and Napoleon, the uniformed doorman. He was
a tiny, greasy thumb of a man, and his eyes darted sideways as I went by. He gave me a slow, unctuous nod, tipped his finger to his cap, and indicated that a taxi was waiting outside. Only by the merest chance, after I had settled into the cab, after the doorman assumed I was looking elsewhere, did I see him glance at his watch, pull a pen and pad from his pocket, and make note of somethingâmake note, I realized only later, of me.
another
way, tooâthat I had entered a labyrinth far stranger and more dangerous than I could ever imagine, far more wretched than the mere banality of adultery. The brass elevator door slid open, and I walked out of the lobby, past the front desk and Napoleon, the uniformed doorman. He was
a tiny, greasy thumb of a man, and his eyes darted sideways as I went by. He gave me a slow, unctuous nod, tipped his finger to his cap, and indicated that a taxi was waiting outside. Only by the merest chance, after I had settled into the cab, after the doorman assumed I was looking elsewhere, did I see him glance at his watch, pull a pen and pad from his pocket, and make note of somethingâmake note, I realized only later, of me.
W
e think we know the city, but we never do. For all brightness there is corollary darkness, for all places known there are others full of unremembered lives and lost music. I always have been drawn to these spots; they are damp and cold and defy hope, they sag and rust and rot, they repel vanity and beckon death: a woman's shoe in a gutter, an empty bottle left on a stone step, a door repainted a dozen times in a hundred years. Early the next morning I stood in one such placeâthe north side of Eleventh Street, just off Avenue Bâfor no useful reason except that I had awoken with an odd desire to see number 537, the fenced building lot where Simon Crowley's body had been found seventeen months earlier. But whereas the corpse had been discovered in a rubble of bricks, the space was now flat and divided into small garden plots, such as single families might use. I could see this even though the snow was still deep in places, the wind having swirled violently around the lot and piled up drifts, even building a three-foot-high ridge that began near one wall, passed through the chain-link fence, and around in front of number 535, the building next door. But it was the garden plots that interested me; the corn husks, dried tomato vines, and rotted flower beds separated by curving paths of scavenged brick and festooned with Christmas lights and chrome hubcaps. A small Puerto Rican flag flew over the garden, and despite the cold, chickens pecked around a shack
at the rear of the lot. To one side was a bench seat from a car. An immense and eyeless stuffed animal, gray from the weatherâa bear or a dogâhung from the wall of the adjacent building, as if blindly guarding the garden or perhaps, more particularly, the statue of Christ standing in a small grotto planted with roses and hollyhocks. All had been blasted by the winter, but come spring it would be a place of lushness and color, of life.
e think we know the city, but we never do. For all brightness there is corollary darkness, for all places known there are others full of unremembered lives and lost music. I always have been drawn to these spots; they are damp and cold and defy hope, they sag and rust and rot, they repel vanity and beckon death: a woman's shoe in a gutter, an empty bottle left on a stone step, a door repainted a dozen times in a hundred years. Early the next morning I stood in one such placeâthe north side of Eleventh Street, just off Avenue Bâfor no useful reason except that I had awoken with an odd desire to see number 537, the fenced building lot where Simon Crowley's body had been found seventeen months earlier. But whereas the corpse had been discovered in a rubble of bricks, the space was now flat and divided into small garden plots, such as single families might use. I could see this even though the snow was still deep in places, the wind having swirled violently around the lot and piled up drifts, even building a three-foot-high ridge that began near one wall, passed through the chain-link fence, and around in front of number 535, the building next door. But it was the garden plots that interested me; the corn husks, dried tomato vines, and rotted flower beds separated by curving paths of scavenged brick and festooned with Christmas lights and chrome hubcaps. A small Puerto Rican flag flew over the garden, and despite the cold, chickens pecked around a shack
at the rear of the lot. To one side was a bench seat from a car. An immense and eyeless stuffed animal, gray from the weatherâa bear or a dogâhung from the wall of the adjacent building, as if blindly guarding the garden or perhaps, more particularly, the statue of Christ standing in a small grotto planted with roses and hollyhocks. All had been blasted by the winter, but come spring it would be a place of lushness and color, of life.
An obese older woman came out of the shack with a rake and started to drag it across one of the small beds. It seemed an odd activity for a winter day, even a warm one, but she seemed content, smoking a cigarette as she worked. Then she noticed me, as I'd hoped, shielding her eyes to see the figure shadowed against the fence. “
¿ Qué quieres?
” she shouted. What did I want? I shrugged theatrically. She came toward me, picking her way past many of the largest pieces of rubble, and I could hear her wheeze as she approached. A remembrance of my mother, dead more than thirty years, ticked somewhere in my brain. My mother had loved me, her only child, with all her heart, but it was a heart choked with fat; she was so immense that she died lifting me out of the bathtub when I was six. I still didn't have a way to explain it to myself.
¿ Qué quieres?
” she shouted. What did I want? I shrugged theatrically. She came toward me, picking her way past many of the largest pieces of rubble, and I could hear her wheeze as she approached. A remembrance of my mother, dead more than thirty years, ticked somewhere in my brain. My mother had loved me, her only child, with all her heart, but it was a heart choked with fat; she was so immense that she died lifting me out of the bathtub when I was six. I still didn't have a way to explain it to myself.
Now the woman neared; in her hand she held a small plastic canister, her finger set on a button. I saw that her face was marked by struggle and ill health and sadness; her eyebrows had the thin, hatched scars of a woman who had been beaten.
“Jes, mister, can I help you?”
“I like gardens, so I stopped to look.”
“Jes?” Her eyes were wary.
“We kept a garden when I was growing up,” I told her. “We grew a lot of vegetables. Corn, tomatoes. You grow that here?”
“Jes.”
“We used to grow lettuce and cabbage and broccoli and all kinds of stuff. Peas early. I bet you could plant them in April here. Get some rows of marigolds in between the rows for the bugs?”
“Marigolds?” she asked. “
¿Las floras?
”
¿Las floras?
”
“Yes, the flowers. Marigolds. Put them in and the bugs hate the smell.”
The thought intrigued her. “I show the garden to you?”
“Yes,” I said, “I'd like that very much.”
I followed her through the chain-link door, and she locked it carefully.
“My name is Estrella Garcia,” she said.
“Porter Wren,” I said.
She didn't seem to recognize the name, which was just as well.
“What is that stuff anyway?” I asked, pointing at the small canister in her hand. “Mace?”
She shook her head solemnly. “You no can use the Mace on the dogs. You have to have tear ducks.” She pointed at her own eyes, which were a greenish-brown, and it occurred to me that once, long ago, they must have been described as beautiful. “This is pepper, 'cause pepper go in the nose, okay? The pepper work on dogs and bad peoples, okay?”
I nodded. “I was worried you were going to give me a shot of that.”
She frowned. “You no be scared now.”
We followed a crude brick path around the lot. I silently located the approximate place where Crowley's body had been found; now it was a patch of dead zinnias set in planters made from sliced car tires. The soil wasn't very good, full of bits of mortar and shards of brick and window glass. The demolition company had left some large fragments of poured concrete and even some steel beams, and I wondered if the discovery of Simon Crowley's body had spooked the workers and made them finish up sloppily.
“In my country we have very many gardens everywhere,” Estrella Garcia was saying. “In the little town people grow a corn, tomato, this place is just someplace for peoples to be happy and grow maybe some flowers, maybe some peppers ⦔
“It's a new garden?” I asked casually.
“Just one summer. Everybody they work very hard last
spring because the peoples, they put, you know, lots of trash and broken things first,
see,
this was planted by my grandsonâ” She pointed to a scraggly row of sunflower husks. “We make it so beautiful for some peoples who live here. Everybody, you know, love this garden.”
spring because the peoples, they put, you know, lots of trash and broken things first,
see,
this was planted by my grandsonâ” She pointed to a scraggly row of sunflower husks. “We make it so beautiful for some peoples who live here. Everybody, you know, love this garden.”
“Everybody who uses it lives on the street?”
She nodded absentmindedly, poking at an errant brick with her puffy foot. “My family, we live next door over there.” She gestured at the adjacent building, 535. “Some peoples they live across the street, you know, everybody they come from right around here.”
“Was the building that was here falling down?” I asked.
She shrugged. “No, not so bad, you know.”
“Not boarded up and falling down?”
“Nobody they live there, but it was okay, you know?”
“How was the roof?”
“I don't know these things. Some peoples they tried to live there, but they got kicked out. Our building is better. My son-in-law is the super. He do a very good job. He always cleaning the hallway, the front steps, everything ⦔
We walked back to the high fence.
“Did they need to tear down this building?”
“No, it was pretty good, I think.”
“Does your son-in-law know about the building?”
“Oh. jes.”
“Would it be a bother if I asked him about it?”
Whether it was a bother or not, she didn't say. We made our way toward the back of the property, and Mrs. Garcia led me down three cement steps blocked with children's bicycles, through another door marked OFFICE, and then down a wooden staircase, where the air suddenly became quite hot, and into an immense, dark room with pipes snaking everywhere and a roaring furnace the size of a truck, a row of hissing hot-water heaters, an empty elevator cage, more bicycles, a far stairway, miscellaneous lumber, and, under a lightbulb with a long chain and a tennis ball at the end of it, a rather fine antique desk, where a graying Latino man in spattered, heavy-lensed glasses sat filing a small piece of oily
equipment with an angry determination that gave me to understand that he knew exactly what he was doing and, on the whole, would rather have been elsewhere.
equipment with an angry determination that gave me to understand that he knew exactly what he was doing and, on the whole, would rather have been elsewhere.
“Luis,” said Estrella Garcia, “this man was asking about the building they tore down.”
He looked up, flicked his eyes at me. “Next door?”
“Right,” she said.
“Yes?” he said to me, taking off his glasses.
“I was wondering about the apartment house next door. Number five-thirty-seven. Why'd they tear it down?”
“It was no good.” He shrugged, wiping his hands on a rag.
“Oh. Your mother-in-law said it was in pretty good shape.”
He shook his head disgustedly. “No, no, she don't know nothing about how these buildings work. It was no good. They didn't replace nothing after, like, 1970. I was in that building a thousand times. The roof was terrible, the second floor had structure failure, it had bad cracking, no good. They didn't replace the roof, and you gotta do that. You gotta fix the roof or else that water gets down in there, see, things start freezing and cracking and rotting. Place was full of rats, too.”
I identified myself, told him I was a reporter. “What about the body they found when they were knocking the building down?”
The superintendent nodded and sighed, as if all human activity was a burden to him, unsurprising in its idiocy. “Thought it was something like that.”
“I suppose the cops asked a lot of questions?”
“They asked a few.”
“They never solved it.”
He shrugged. It was no matter to him. “People keep on getting killed, you know? We had a lady up on the fifth floor. And some kid down the street.”
I nodded. “Did you ever wonder about how the body got onto the lot?”
“Not really,” he said. “Not my business.”
“Well, I mention it because the lot was sealed off by a sidewalk shed with concertina wire on top and the building was sealed up, too.”
“Except for the front door.”
“Right, but that was locked,” I said. “That probably wasn'tâ”
“Hey, hey, wait a minute,” he said, wiping his hands again forgetfully. “You know how many locksmiths there are in this city? I got tenants upstairs changing their locks all the fucking time. They don't want to pay their rent anymore and they change their locks.” He shook his head. “The landlord used to change locks! Now the tenants. Always screaming about a rent strike.” He threw the rag down on the desk. My inquiry did not interest him; rather, he was taking the opportunity to issue a general complaint. “I'm telling you, it gets old trying to fix everybody's sink and shit. I got only one guy helpingâ” He turned toward a dark corridor that ran alongside some large pipes wrapped in insulation. “Adam! Come in here.”
A short, soft-looking young man in a Mets T-shirt emerged. He was chewing his lip.
“Adam,” the superintendent yelled. “Get the box. Show the reporter-man how many keys you got.” He turned toward me. “I got Adam keeping track of the keys.” He turned back. “No, Adam, get the
big
box. Tenants supposed to notify and give me a
new
keyâthat's in every leaseâand then they don't give me a key. I work for the landlord. Fucking shit-dick. Hairplugs on his head. Every time I see him it's more hairplugs. I work for him. I make money for him and he turns it into
hairplugs
. Looks like little bushes in a row, heh!” He smiled bitterly. “But I work for him. Everybody got to work for somebody, right? He gets me to put on these special locks, double-keyed and special hotel locks and all
kinds
of shit like that, and then I come back three days later and the tenant fucking got a locksmith to get it open so maybe she can go get her teakettle, right?
Right
, Adam? You get that box of keys, now, Adam. Hey, stop fucking around back there!” He looked back at me. “I used to know all the locksmiths, and they would check with me first on the way in, but them days isâ” The phone rang, and he lifted a heavy black receiver from a set on the wall. “Yes,
yes
. No! Don't
touch
it, Mrs ⦠. Tell Maria don't
touch
it.
No
, that won't work. I'm coming.”
He hung up and looked at me. “Lady on the second floor got a five-year-old girl. The ball thing fell off the TV antenna. The kid stuck the antenna in the light socket. That kid should be fucking toast right now, but she's okay. Don't ask me why. Maybe the socket is dead. I gotta go get it out” He picked up a toolbox, then walked over to the empty elevator cage and pushed a red button. “So anyway ⦠yeah, about the whole lock thing there, that buildingâmaybe they didn't go in the front door, but they could have, they could have done anything, they could have gone from my roof over to their roof, and then smashed in the roof-access door and had a party up there.”
big
box. Tenants supposed to notify and give me a
new
keyâthat's in every leaseâand then they don't give me a key. I work for the landlord. Fucking shit-dick. Hairplugs on his head. Every time I see him it's more hairplugs. I work for him. I make money for him and he turns it into
hairplugs
. Looks like little bushes in a row, heh!” He smiled bitterly. “But I work for him. Everybody got to work for somebody, right? He gets me to put on these special locks, double-keyed and special hotel locks and all
kinds
of shit like that, and then I come back three days later and the tenant fucking got a locksmith to get it open so maybe she can go get her teakettle, right?
Right
, Adam? You get that box of keys, now, Adam. Hey, stop fucking around back there!” He looked back at me. “I used to know all the locksmiths, and they would check with me first on the way in, but them days isâ” The phone rang, and he lifted a heavy black receiver from a set on the wall. “Yes,
yes
. No! Don't
touch
it, Mrs ⦠. Tell Maria don't
touch
it.
No
, that won't work. I'm coming.”
He hung up and looked at me. “Lady on the second floor got a five-year-old girl. The ball thing fell off the TV antenna. The kid stuck the antenna in the light socket. That kid should be fucking toast right now, but she's okay. Don't ask me why. Maybe the socket is dead. I gotta go get it out” He picked up a toolbox, then walked over to the empty elevator cage and pushed a red button. “So anyway ⦠yeah, about the whole lock thing there, that buildingâmaybe they didn't go in the front door, but they could have, they could have done anything, they could have gone from my roof over to their roof, and then smashed in the roof-access door and had a party up there.”
I was about to remind him that he had told the police that he thought no one had reached 537 from his roof because he kept his own roof door locked. But the phone rang a second time and he picked it up. “Yes, Mrs., yes, I'm coming now.” He hung up and looked at the elevator cage, the side cables of which were moving. “Thing's too slow. Take forever.” He turned back to me, nodded perfunctorily. “Okay, excuse me, I got to go here. Can't let that kid discover electricity.” He headed up the stairs. “Adam! Forget the fucking box! We're taking the stairs. Adam, follow me, I'm going to two-oh-four. Mrs. Salcines. Adam? Adam, stop fucking around!”
And so there I stood, underground, beneath a ganglia of pipes. Estrella Garcia, her neck ringed with a sagging doughnut of flesh, looked at me. “Mrs. Garcia,” I said, “may I come see your garden again?”
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