Read Manhattan Nocturne Online
Authors: Colin Harrison
Manhattan Nocturne (22 page)
“You were telling me about Ernesto.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “No!” He frowned. “I was describing my interest in the newspaper columnists. As a group, very weak, very poor, hmmm, I think. And you, too. Choppy sentences, written for a short attention span. Purposefully simple. Dull verbs. Hmmm. Not Dr. Samuel Johnson, hmmm-mmm! But I was interested to read your column from about five days ago, in which you described the scene on the Brooklyn promenade. As you remember, a woman looking out her apartment window saw a figureâyou called him a âhomeless man'âpossibly remove the gun from the hand of our bleeding would-be suicide, Mr. Lancaster. As it turns out, this was Ernesto. He was in Brooklyn because he, like the great American poets, loves the Brooklyn Bridge. Ernesto also picked up the man's briefcase, which he brought back to me.”
“What happened to the gun?” I asked.
“He sold it.”
“To?”
“To whom, exactly, I don't know.” Ralph frowned. “He did not have the sense to leave the gun where it was or to bring it to me. He got scared carrying it around, and so he went into a bar and sold it. He is slow, as I said, but he knows how to do certain things. He is not a criminal, but he can find criminality. A strange trait, hmm, there he was, walking toward the murderer himself. So, yes, he sold the gun, to whom I don't know, and if I did I would not tell you. I want to keep Ernesto out of this completely, you see. He is innocent but he has a record of petty offenses. There is, in fact, a very old warrant out for him, based, I think, hmmm, on a property crime. I can't be sure. He has a memory problem, relating to the abuse he took from his father. If he committed a crime in the past, he no longer remembers it. Anyway, I want to keep him out of this. He is on the straight and narrow now, and to throw him in Rikers Island on an old car-theft charge
would not be, in my mind, just. Society has taken from Ernesto far more than he has taken from it.” He looked at me, glasses low on his nose, making the point. “Now then, Ernesto opened the briefcase and found a laptop computer inside it. He does not understand what a computer is, except that it should not be dropped and that it is related to literacy. My wife and I are the only genuinely literate people he knows, and so he brought the computer to us. I was once a hi-fi buff, as they used to call it, back in the seventies, when ⦠hmm ⦠everyone put on bell-bottoms and ate cheese fondue and pretended they had group sexâand so I was able to figure out how to use what I was looking at once I turned it on.”
would not be, in my mind, just. Society has taken from Ernesto far more than he has taken from it.” He looked at me, glasses low on his nose, making the point. “Now then, Ernesto opened the briefcase and found a laptop computer inside it. He does not understand what a computer is, except that it should not be dropped and that it is related to literacy. My wife and I are the only genuinely literate people he knows, and so he brought the computer to us. I was once a hi-fi buff, as they used to call it, back in the seventies, when ⦠hmm ⦠everyone put on bell-bottoms and ate cheese fondue and pretended they had group sexâand so I was able to figure out how to use what I was looking at once I turned it on.”
“The battery was still good?”
“Yes. I opened up some of the filesâand it quickly became clear what I was looking at. Not one of the great texts, I'm afraid, but, rhetorically, hmmm, convincing. Here, let me show you.” From within the mess of papers and books he pulled out a laptop computer and started it up. “See, here we have files that are labeled by date ⦠these were Lancaster's notes. I'll open this one, which is a week before he killed Iris Pell.”
I called my love three times at work today and she did not return my calls. Sent roses at noon. Flower company called back at five to say roses had been rejected. Distraught, could not concentrate in late afternoon meeting. Called my love when I got home. Perhaps we could see a movie. No answer. Went over to her building. Cold outside. Doorman would not let me in. Said it was his instructions. I offered him a hundred dollars, but he would not let me in. Most upset now. Very upset. Don't want to go home. Went to coffeeshop outside her apartment building. Perhaps Iris will come home. Maybe she went out to movies.
“You get the idea,” Ralph Benson noted. “It's his record as he stalked her. We could call it
Memoirs of the Beast
and sell it for a million dollars. You can have the movie rights,
hmm. It gets quite detailed. It also has the account of him shooting her.”
Memoirs of the Beast
and sell it for a million dollars. You can have the movie rights,
hmm. It gets quite detailed. It also has the account of him shooting her.”
“Can I see that?”
“Sure. You'll see that his thinking was deteriorating.”
Found her. Laundry. Inside with athe blue dress that she wore had the gun knew she was there A cross the street, watching thinking and couldnt just not tell her how much I loved her forever ands that no one else could have herr. No other man, never!!! I walked in to the estyablishment and I shot at her. She saw me and I shot to tell hereverything about it. The bullets hit and everyone screamed and I ran out. Now am in a taxi, medallion #3N82, speeding over Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan.
I nodded. It was definitely a column. “Pretty conclusive.”
“Yes.”
“Are you giving this to me?” I asked.
“After a certain negotiated point.”
“You want me to publicize the coward's entries and thereby warn innocent young women of the murderous nature of men.”
Ralph blinked. “That is an admirable motivation, but it is not mine.”
“What
do
you want?”
do
you want?”
“I want all good things, Mr. Wren, but I can't have them. I can't even have a millionth of all good things. A bottle of claret would be nice, hmm. âWine removes the sensation of hunger.' So said Hippocrates. But what I would like, more than anything, is a pair of decent shoes for my wife, for me, and for Ernesto. People do not discard or give away good, unworn shoes. My wife mostly wears men's shoes that are too large for her. I have nothing to give but my own ruined smile, my witâha!âand, last, whatever little I can pry out of the Babylon above me.” He looked at me, eyes desperate. “I was thinking of a thousand dollars.”
“I don't buy information.”
“Five hundredâsurely you're good for that.”
“Look, I wish things were different for you.”
He picked up the computer and held it above his head, as if to toss it like a volleyball. “I'll just throw it away like this, words into the void.”
“No you won't.”
“No?” This seemed to interest him, and he lowered the computer.
“You'd rather try to sell it to someone else.”
“I hear
negotiation
in your voice, Mr. Wren. A tone of possibility! Five hundred. That must be close to your price.”
negotiation
in your voice, Mr. Wren. A tone of possibility! Five hundred. That must be close to your price.”
“There is no price.”
“That's quite noble of you!” Ralph Benson spat.
“Quite noble, hmmm! Your journalistic integrity is unsullied and, yes, like a well-turned-out gentleman, may strut itself on the boulevard of good intentions, admiring the cleanliness of its heels, the smoothness of its coat.” He swept his arms upward, and now in his articulate anger I glimpsed who he had once been. “Very noble! Now then, Mr. Wren, let us put all this in context, shall we? I am a penniless man unable to make a living. I am so
unable
to function in the world above that I am reduced to living in the netherworld below and having a half-wit colossus scavenge for my food! The addition of five hundred dollars to my holdings would raise those holdings to five hundred dollars. You, sir, are a worldly, successful man, far more powerful than I, a holder of position and reputation and capital. I have no doubt that you are rather well-compensated for your work. The subtraction of five hundred dollars from your holdings would go unnoticed by you. It is a sum that is now beneath your scrutiny. Five hundred dollars! Nothing to you. So I ask you, what is more equitable, down here in the world below? The maintenance of your priggish journalistic ethics, which are being violated every day by many of your colleagues, or the transfer of a small sum to a homeless, penniless fellow, in return for which he will hand over to you a useful trove of information?”
unable
to function in the world above that I am reduced to living in the netherworld below and having a half-wit colossus scavenge for my food! The addition of five hundred dollars to my holdings would raise those holdings to five hundred dollars. You, sir, are a worldly, successful man, far more powerful than I, a holder of position and reputation and capital. I have no doubt that you are rather well-compensated for your work. The subtraction of five hundred dollars from your holdings would go unnoticed by you. It is a sum that is now beneath your scrutiny. Five hundred dollars! Nothing to you. So I ask you, what is more equitable, down here in the world below? The maintenance of your priggish journalistic ethics, which are being violated every day by many of your colleagues, or the transfer of a small sum to a homeless, penniless fellow, in return for which he will hand over to you a useful trove of information?”
I looked at him and then at my watch. I wanted to see Simon's videotapes.
“How much are three pairs of boots?”
“Hmmm, the sale price per pair at Urban Outfitters is fifty-nine ninety-five.”
“That's about a hundred and eighty dollars.” I looked in my wallet, checked my front pocket. I had one hundred and thirty-two dollars, and I held it out to him. “That's all I've got, assuming you don't take American Express.”
“Sold.”
I nodded, somewhat miserably.
“Ernesto!” called Ralph Benson.
In a moment, Ernesto had scampered up the rope and, seemingly using only one arm, taken the computer down for me.
“How can I contact you if I need to?” I asked. “Without coming all the way down here, I mean.”
“Hmm, yes, simple,” Ralph Benson said. “Every weekday, I have Ernesto stand at the corner of Eighty-sixth and Broadway at eight P.M. and midnight. He stands there for ten minutes. Anyone who wishes to contact me or send me somethingâand there are a few, as a matter of factâsimply hands Ernesto a note. The next day, Ernesto will bring the response. If you want an immediate response, you need to mark the note accordingly, and then wait at the corner there. Ernesto will usually be back in twenty minutes or so.”
I looked him in the eye and shook his hand. He was an odd fellow, and he hadn't wanted to badger me for the money, but in the end I didn't mind giving it to him. He was a man with a philosophy, which, I'm afraid, I am not. I rather liked Ralph Benson, and I suppose he felt that I wasn't so bad. This was fortuitous for me, for later I would need his help.
Â
Â
I drove east across Central Park, through the leafless trees, found the Malaysian bank, and dropped the car in a parking garage. On the street, with my breath smoking in front of me,
I paused to examine the stark rise of steel and glass. Rarely had the city's physical stratification been so apparent; it is literally another city the higher you go, a world of penthouses and expensive restaurants and corporate offices. In Manhattan you are never far from the brutal verticalities of class. And then, inside, beyond the sitting Buddha, I found that Caroline had indeed called and arranged my access to her private vault. I repeated the ritual of the previous week, taking the elevator to the fourteenth floor, signing in, and being led down the long white hallway. The attendant opened the door for me and departed. The room was as I had left it.
I paused to examine the stark rise of steel and glass. Rarely had the city's physical stratification been so apparent; it is literally another city the higher you go, a world of penthouses and expensive restaurants and corporate offices. In Manhattan you are never far from the brutal verticalities of class. And then, inside, beyond the sitting Buddha, I found that Caroline had indeed called and arranged my access to her private vault. I repeated the ritual of the previous week, taking the elevator to the fourteenth floor, signing in, and being led down the long white hallway. The attendant opened the door for me and departed. The room was as I had left it.
I decided that if the tape Hobbs wanted was here, then I would take it with me in my coat, make a copy at home, and then contact him. But first I had to find it. I lifted a stack of tapes from the steel trunk, ordered them by number, and shoved each into the machine one after another, fast forwarding with the play button depressed, so that the figures moved jerkily across the screen like psychotic crack smokers, the picture ripped with two bands of static. I was looking for Hobbs to flash into view. I wish I could say that I found him among the strange pile of sweepings from the human tragedy Simon Crowley had collected. How much easier it would have been. But there was another discovery awaiting me, and at the risk of belaboring Simon Crowley's voyeuristic sensibility, I will briefly reprise the sequence leading up to it:
1: Car accident with delirious drunk man, trapped in wreck, calling for his wife, dead of head injuries in the seat next to him. He is inebriated and in shock. Blood all over his suit. Perhaps his legs are crushed, but he seems not to know it. Gloved hand of fireman on door frame. Man discovers his wife slumped next to him. Weeps and kisses her passionately, his hands on her cheeks, touching her bloody mouth with his. Suddenly believes she is alive, seems to be insisting she is alive. More kissing, lifts up eyelid, talking to corpse. Man is cut out of his car by firemen.
2: Retarded boy of about twelve learning to tie shoelaces; fails several dozen times; is not frustrated.
3: Open prison yard, seen from atop a tower. Blue sky,
haze of fences with triple coil of razor wire. Normal activities of exercise period. Then a fight on the perimeter. Guards become active, draw guns. Inmates, all black, lie down. Guards move about looking for something. Search unsuccessful. Guards move about with guns. Inmates undress, drop clothes to one side. Blue sky. Field of naked black men. Haze of fences.
haze of fences with triple coil of razor wire. Normal activities of exercise period. Then a fight on the perimeter. Guards become active, draw guns. Inmates, all black, lie down. Guards move about looking for something. Search unsuccessful. Guards move about with guns. Inmates undress, drop clothes to one side. Blue sky. Field of naked black men. Haze of fences.
4: Man of about sixty in green uniform marked FRANK on front and QUEENS ELEVATOR CO. on back. He crouches in the bottom of an elevator shaft. Toolbox and flashlight. He fixes something.
5: Asian women working in a Nike shoe factory in the Far East; piles of shoe parts around them, sewing machines and hot-glue pump-guns; a girl, perhaps exhausted, sews her finger to a shoe part and is helped by another woman; the women continue to work.
6: Southern California. Palms swaying in back. A large shed filled with lawn mowers and lawn tractors, at least a hundred, most of them painted red, parked tightly next to one another. Mexicans are fixing the lawn mowers. A blonde woman pulls up in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Sunglasses. Thin belt. Children in back of car. A tagged lawn mower is produced and loaded in back. The woman drives off. Mexicans move slowly among the lawn mowers. None have sunglasses.
7: Sand-level shot, perhaps taken by a remote video device, of bombs dropping on Iraqi soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. Confused running, explosions, sand falling like rain. Image is not color but an odd, cool green, disturbed from time to time by adjacent, offscreen detonations. Iraqi soldiers screaming silently.
8: An old man in hospital bed, his wife sitting in a chair. Man considers her with his eyes, looks away. Plays with control of hospital bed, trying to get comfortable. Back hurts him. Minute after minute of this. Wife sighs, etc.
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