Pardon the Ravens

by Alan Hruska

  “The hell you will! Alec! I don’t care where you grew up. You do not want to be roaming around some building in the Bronx in the middle of the night. Believe me, you do not want to be doing this.”

  “Bye, Harvey.”

  Alec, hanging up, takes one look out the window at the still-busy streets below, and grabs his topcoat from the rack. In a bound, he’s out of the office, stopping only to pick up a stack of small bills from the messengers’ emergency cash kitty.

  Cabs are plentiful at this hour; traffic no problem. In about twenty-five minutes Alex is brought to the Grand Concourse address Harvey supplied. It’s a six-story building with fire escapes down the front. The lobby is war-torn and silent with menace. The mailboxes lack nameplates. There are five fourth-floor apartments; Alec pushes all their bells. One rings back at him.

  Cautiously, Alec makes his way up to the fourth floor on a staircase of broken tiles, which echoes intermittently sounds of grief or violence. A dark hallway looms, redolent of pot, one door slightly ajar. Alec hesitates, then knocks.

  “Come in!” calls a female voice made sultry for effect. “Door’s open.”

  It’s a vestibule stinking of Chinese takeout and drugs. Alec parts the strands of a beaded curtain. On a sofa, among the remains of takeout containers, lies a rangy, young, thin-faced woman. She wears a rayon nightgown that leaves little to the imagination. And Alec is not what she expects. “You a cop?” she asks.

  “That what I look like?”

  “Maybe. Cops come in all shapes and guises. Like the devil.”

  “I’m neither. I’m looking for Carrie Madigan.”

  “Oh, yeah? You her date?”

  “Nope. A lawyer. I want to talk to her. It would be to her benefit.”

  “And yours.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I’m an accountant, myself,” she says, the effort of sitting up completing the exposure, for a moment, of her small breasts. “Also a professional person. I worked with a very distinguished firm downtown.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Hundred Twenty-Fifth Street. I got sick, so they let me go. I’ll go back to it soon, though. Plenty of good jobs for accountants.”

  “You know where Carrie is?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Where’s that, then?” Alec asks casually.

  She throws her head back and laughs.

  “How much?” Alec says.

  “How much you got? I got bills to pay, honey pie.” At Alec’s look of annoyance, she says, “Gonna need twenty for my connect.”

  “The guy you thought I was when I walked in here.”

  “That’s right. Flocko. Down there on the corner with my shit. You give me the money, then go down there. Tell him to come up. Then I’ll tell you where Carrie is. Deal?”

  Alec shakes his head, no. “You tell me where Carrie is. I’ll give you the money. You stick your head out the window and get Flocko or whomever you want.”

  “Whomever?” she mimics in what she thinks of as an upper-class accent.

  Alec laughs.

  “You want a blow job?” she asks, scratching herself, wriggling a bit.

  “No thanks.”

  “You look like you need a blow job.”

  He says, “That’s probably right.”

  “I like you. I’ll do it for fifty. Best you ever had.” She smiles, and her voice lowers suggestively. “By an accountant.”

  “Rain check.”

  “You got twenty?”

  “You got the information?”

  She gives him a look, and he hands over the bill. She holds it up to the light, turning it in different directions.

  “Stop screwing around, Thelma. Where is she?”

  “Man!” she says, turning nasty. “What cause you have…? Who gave you that name?”

  He holds up another bill—ten dollars—and she grabs it.

  “Where?” he says.

  “One Sixteenth and Lex.” She’s pulling some clothes together, preparing to go out.

  “Street number?”

  She’s heading toward the door. “It’s in the projects. Corner building. A shooting gallery. People will know.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Alec hails a gypsy cab, gives the driver the address. The man’s bald head swivels sharply. “That’s the projects,” he says.

  “I’m looking for someone. A woman.”

  The man laughs and propels the car into traffic. It’s a plain car, black, with old, sagging leather seats, probably bought used five years ago, and steeped in the sharp smell of tobacco.

  “Ain’t it wonderful,” he says. “There’s always a woman.”

  “Yeah, well.” Alec rolls the back window down so he can breathe.

  “A woman—a white woman?”

  “Uh-huh.” They’re headed for the Harlem River Drive.

  “A white woman in the projects… you don’t mind me saying… you looking for trouble, boy.”

  “I’m told she’s in a shooting gallery. Which would be where?” Alec decides to play dumb. “Someplace on the ground floor?”

  “Jesus!” says the driver. “Jesus!”

  “I don’t know anything, right?”

  “Right,” he agrees.

  “A shooting gallery has something to do with drugs, and the last place it’s likely to be is on the ground floor?”

  “You got it.”

  “But you don’t know where it is?”

  “Hey! I look like a guy who takes people to shooting galleries?”

  They drive in silence. Alec is deposited on the designated corner.

  The cab pulls away. It’s the middle of Spanish Harlem on a cold night. Alec looks about: rows of dark buildings, ten, maybe twelve stories high; many dark windows—though he’s sure people are looking out from inside; bags and papers littering the paths; garbage uncollected in the entryways. On the street, lots of people go by in heavy outdoor clothing; vehicular headlights glare in his eyes. Alec, suited up for the office, feels conspicuously out of place. Eventually he moves closer to the corner building. Stands there for several minutes. Wonders how he can possibly find, let alone talk to, a woman who might or might not be in any one of the apartments in any of these buildings and would probably run in the opposite direction if she saw him.

  An older man and woman come barreling out the front door. Alec approaches, and they sweep by. They have, unsurprisingly, no interest in talking to someone who is a lunatic or a cop, or both.

  For almost an hour, Alec continues to entreat passers-by with an equal lack of success. He takes some bills out of his wallet and distributes them to various pockets. Why? Instinct. Don’t show a wad. This neighborhood, any neighborhood. At least in New York.

  It’s getting colder by the minute, and his topcoat is thin. The alarming fact is that he has no plan. Calling her name out, up and down the corridors of any of these buildings, would probably get him shot.

  He’s finally rescued by a functioning market, the oldest in the world.

  Appearing out of nowhere, a pretty young woman in a mini-skirt and boots, breasts flopping in a polka-dot halter, open fake-fur coat dangling on her shoulders, beelines toward Alec. He sees two other women swerve off, like cabbies after the first swoops in for a fare.

  “Aye, guapo! Looking for somebody?” She juts a small round face with a button nose.

  “I am, as it happens. Maybe you can help me.”

  “You bet, sweet pea. I’m the girl of your dreams.”

  “Tonight, alas, I really must find this other woman.”

  “Alas? Alas? What have we here? Shakespeare of the fucking projects?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, hon. What we need more of around here is people saying ‘alas.’ But you sure it’s a woman you want?”

  “Particular one, yeah. And she’s here somewhere.” He hesitates. “In a shooting gallery.”

  “Uh, oh!” she says, drawing back. “You either a cop or in deep shit.”

&n
bsp; “Well, I’m certainly not a cop.”

  “You have a wallet, honey?” Her tone now professional and dry.

  “You’d like to see my wallet?”

  “I’d like to have your wallet, baby, but a peek will do. For now.”

  As he takes it out of his pocket, she quickly restrains his arm. “Not here!”

  She leads him to the entry of the corner building, where she inspects the contents of the proffered wallet, pocketing the remaining cash. “Okay. You’re cool. I take you there.”

  “To the shooting gallery?”

  “For another fifty, I take you to heaven.”

  “Heaven will have to wait.”

  “You need the woman in the shooting gallery?”

  “I do.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  “There’s only one here?” he says, pointing upwards.

  “Hell no. But I know the one you want.”

  A guy Alec knew in college once told him about how he and a bunch of other guys had gotten picked up by a con man outside Jimmy Ryan’s jazz club and taken to what they were told would be a bordello of beautiful young women. Outside an apartment, in the Harlem projects, the grifter took their money, ducked into the apartment and disappeared. It occurs to Alec, as he follows the girl’s swaying butt up the stairs, that he’s the mark of a similar scam. When, on the seventh floor, at the end of a long hallway, she holds out her hand, he’s pretty sure of it.

  She says, “This is the place. And I know you got some more money, or you wouldn’t have let me clean out that wallet.”

  He unfolds a five-dollar bill on her palm. “I’m going in with you,” he says.

  She squints disbelief while knocking on the door. “What you come up here for, man, if not to go in?”

  The door cracks open on a small vestibule. Swinging a bit wider, it reveals a mountainous bewigged woman almost too large to be female, draped in a muumuu and dripping with jewelry from Woolworth’s or Grant’s. She looks down at the streetwalker, then at Alec, then back to the girl. Alec inhales the apartment’s sweet chemical fumes as they mix with the hallway smells of boiled vegetables and fried pork.

  “He’s cool,” says the girl.

  The guardian at the gate puts out her hand. Alec lays out another five-dollar bill. She doesn’t move. Alec drops on her hand a ten-dollar bill and takes the five dollars back. With a smile, the woman lets him in.

  It’s a smoky living room with peeling walls. Two grizzled men nod on a sofa, and a woman of indeterminate age curls fetally in an upholstered chair. The proprietress lifts a lit Herbert Tareyton from the ashtray and inhales it as if taking a toke. “So, Daddy, what you want? This woman? This ain’t no ‘ho house.’”

  “I’m looking….” Alec stops. “You know a young woman named Carrie Madigan?”

  “Hmm. Could be. I know lots of young women. Lots of names. Hmm. This one… dunno. What you want her for?”

  “Nothing bad. Good, possibly. To her advantage. Right now, I just want to talk to her.”

  “Dunno, dunno,” the woman says. “Gonna cost.”

  Alec pulls out another five. With a negative wag, her earrings chime. “Not for this one,” she says.

  Alec puts a ten on the five, and she snatches both bills, jerking her head in a gesture to follow while pushing upwards her luxuriant breasts.

  She leads them into the kitchen, where a waste of a man with bleary eyes and dreadlocks nods at a needle and bent spoon on the Formica table in front of him. By the sink, with her back toward Alec, a slim white woman in a sleeveless dress drinks water from a glass, holding onto it with both hands, while peering out the window. She turns, and a current circumnavigates Alec’s spine. Eyes on him, she places the glass down carefully, as if trying to recall the precise location of the countertop, but still grips it with one hand until her knuckles whiten. She seems not simply troubled by her presence in this place, but uncertain of it.

  “We’ve met,” he says. “In court, two weeks ago. You’re Carrie Madigan.”

  She looks at him blankly.

  “My name’s Alec Brno. You’ve probably forgotten.”

  Her hand, thin and white, floats free of the glass, fingers sensing the air like the tendrils of some exotic plant. “What are you,” she says, “doing here?”

  “It’s a bit of a story.”

  “I’ll bet!”

  “Listen,” he blurts out. “I’m a lawyer. But no matter what, I won’t hurt you. I need to talk to you about Aaron Weinfeld and Sal Martini. You can tell me nothing or what you want. I won’t use the information against you. I won’t let anyone else use it against you. In fact, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you’re protected at every turn. Christ! I’m throwing everything at you at once. I’m probably confusing the hell out of you.”

  Her sudden smile sends laugh lines to her cheekbones. “You’re doing just fine.”

  “I am?”

  “You are.”

  “Can we talk, then?”

  “Here?”

  “No. Definitely not here. Let’s absolutely get out of here.”

  Alec takes Carrie’s hand, and the two head out of the kitchen. Carrie stops, jerks her hand free, goes back to the kitchen, returns with her handbag and coat. The proprietress and the streetwalker stand watching in amazement. “No charge,” says the fat woman finally.

  Outside, it evidently had rained. The pavement glistens like bits of glass in black sand. Alec says, “Would you like me to take you home?”

  “Whose?” she asks, unsteady on her feet.

  “Yours?”

  She shakes her head drowsily. “Too far.”

  “My place, then. 67th. Between Madison and 5th.”

  “Posh,” she says. “Suits me.”

  They ride downtown in a rattling fleet cab, the driver’s face, gaunt and criminal, staring at them from the photograph. Carrie turns away, toward the signs and storefronts flying past, her eyes gradually closing. At each halt, the stoplights reflect red, then green in the rivulets of rain still streaking the cab windows. She falls asleep in Alex’s lap. Or passes out.

  At 87th Street and Lexington Avenue, the cab, a big Checker, swerves to a stop. Men are working here, under flashing lights, on some great torn upheaval in the pavement. Carrie doesn’t stir. The commotion, the lights, make no impression on her breathing. When they arrive at Alec’s building, he has to shake her awake. She smiles and says, “Are we there yet?”

  Inside, she makes directly for the bathroom, and, without bothering to close the door fully, has a long, audible pee. Emerging, she says, “I may be high, but I can tell you live in a basement.”

  “Right,” he says, showing her the bedroom. “You’ll take the bed.”

  “Good idea,” she says, climbing right in. Within seconds, she’s again fast asleep. Or passed out.

  Alec takes her shoes off and, after a moment of study, covers her with the blanket rolled up at the end of the bed. He then uses the bathroom himself, gets his own clothes off and stretches out on the sofa in the living room. Where he lays awake for hours listening to her thrash.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The phone ringing at nine surprises him with the realization he’d been sleeping. “I’ve talked to Harvey,” Macalister’s voice says. “You find her?”

  Alec, dully sensing that Carrie’s gone, peeks in his bedroom to confirm it. “And brought her here,” he says, trying to rouse himself to full consciousness. “Only she crashed and has now flown.”

  “You took her to your apartment?” Mac says.

  “I didn’t really have a choice.”

  “Really!”

  “That’s how it was, Mac.”

  “And you learned nothing, except that she’s a junkie, which we already knew.”

  “I’ve practically just met her.”

  “I think we ought to let Harvey take over from here.”

  “Why? I’ll find her again and talk to her.” Alec pauses. “We have a rapport.”

  �
�You have a what?” says Macalister.

  Alec hears the man swallowing what is probably not coffee.

  “Let me put this in context for you, kiddo. What we have here is one of the largest swindles in the history of the world. Fifty thousand people may lose their jobs. Thousands more are gonna get hurt. And there’s a girl out there—a hophead, a junkie—who may damn well hold the answer to the problem.” Mac sucks in his breath. “You fuck this girl, Alec, and you fuck up the case. You know what happens, you fuck up the case?”

  “I got a pretty good idea.”

  “Dog meat, kiddo! You, dog meat! Get it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good!”

  Her house is a three-family with a high stoop, on a tree-lined street of three-families with high stoops. The houses were constructed at different times but all with cheap sidings, a similar narrow upright style and no more than six feet between them. No person’s doings on this block could be a mystery to his neighbor. The town itself, Bayswater, Queens, bounds Jamaica Bay, which is at low tide in the late afternoon, and Alec can smell it. He sits on the top step of her stoop for almost an hour and assesses the daytime activity of the street, which is to say, none. There can be few real families in these three-family houses. The neighborhood must rock at night.

  It’s mid-afternoon of an unseasonably warm day, and Alec dozes off. When he awakes, Carrie is standing at the bottom of the stairs. It’s like having a hallucination. She is squinting up at him behind two bags of groceries. He lopes part way down with a smile he intends to be raffish and befriending. “So it’s you,” she says.

  There is perspiration on her upper lip and forehead, and the late day sun haloes her hair. Her face is more angular than he recalls. Her body is made to seem more frail by the light cotton top and skirt she is wearing.

  She, reasonably enough, breaks free from so much inspection. Passing him on the steps, she calls out from the landing, “Well, come on then, if you’re coming.” As he follows, she thrusts the packages into his arms.

  Carrie’s living room is littered with books, discarded clothes, old magazines, and newspapers. Alec grimaces; the place is a mess. “Yeah,” she says. “Hard to find good help. Want some coffee?”