The Forty-Two

by Ed Kurtz

  The gray-white smoke from the burning cardboard mixed with the black, chemical smoke of the thousands of burning cigarette filters. It stung in Charley’s nose and made his eyes water so much his vision was badly blurred. He reached over the sofa and snatched the threadbare blanket that was spread across the back. Leaping up, he stretched the blanket out in front of him like Dracula’s cape as he bustled toward Price to tackle him. Price struggled against the rescue attempt, but Charley fell on top of him as he wrapped the blanket around the burning smackhead and forced him into a steamroll that doused the flames. Price shrieked and babbled the whole time, practically foaming at the mouth in his rage at Charley’s impudence. The crazy bastard actually wanted to burn.

  Charley’s arms ached and he wondered how badly he was burned, but the apartment was still blazing and he was having trouble breathing and there were two or three cops already fighting the spreading flames at the front door. Satisfied that Price would live, Charley bolted for the window, opened it, and climbed out onto the fire escape. The iron grating groaned and sagged beneath Charley’s weight when he stepped down on it, but there was no turning back now. Sirens wailed nearby—the unmistakable peal of approaching fire trucks. Charley moved as quickly and cautiously as he could, taking two steps at a time as he tumbled zigzag down each flight of steps. When he reached the landing atop the first story, he kicked the latch and sent the ladder shuttling down to the ground beneath. It was only when he safely reached the sidewalk that Charley realized how shockingly cold it was compared to the inferno he’d just escaped. He couldn’t tell if the white wisps emanating from his mouth were all steam or if there was any smoke in it.

  Two uniformed policeman came running up to Charley, one of them holding up an emergency blanket to swaddle him in. Charley backed away from it, presenting the palms of his hands in a gesture of his well being.

  “I’m all right,” he assured them. He was just relieved to be mistaken for a random resident of the building.

  “There’s an ambulance on the way, sir,” one of the cops said. “You’ll want to have the paramedics check you out.”

  “No really, I’m all right. I just got frightened, that’s all.”

  The cops were prepared to step up the argument, but their attention was rapidly rerouted when the front doors to the building’s vestibule burst open and three men emerged carrying the prostrate form of Chester Price. His body was smoking like a campfire marshmallow, but he was still very much alive. The ambulance came screaming up to the curb just in time for them to begin loading him into the back. The two officers with the blanket raced over to assist the others in the process, all of them amazed that the wild-eyed junkie was still breathing. Charley seized the opportunity and stole into the adjacent alleyway before anyone could detain him further.

  All in all the evening had not gone particularly well.

  Charley got off the subway near Bleecker and ducked into an all night greasy spoon for a cup of coffee to settle his jangled nerves. The guy at the counter wore an obnoxious van dyke and wrinkled his nose at Charley’s smoky smell. The place was full of Greenwich Village bohemian types, all of them conducting terribly important conversations as they sipped their coffees and smoked pungent cloves and imported Silk Cuts. Charley downed his second cup in one swallow and headed back to Fourth Street for the Six to Union Station.

  The subway was loaded to capacity with New Year’s revelers in various states of inebriation, many of them wearing stupid paper hats and nearly all of them shouting at the tops of their lungs. Charley had forgotten all about the impending decade change, not that he much cared about it in the first place. Tomorrow was just going to be another day. Elizabeth would still be dead and whoever killed her was still going to be on the loose due to the police’s insouciance about the whole thing and Charley’s own total inefficacy at amateur sleuthing. It was nearly midnight when he climbed out onto First and began his trek back home. There were no noisy merrymakers on his street; no sign at all that exactly four fifths of the century had now passed. Somewhere a ghetto blaster was blaring the Fatback Band, but nobody in earshot was singing Auld Lang Syne. Still, it beat almost getting strangled by a whacked out pyromaniac on H. Charley was still so keyed up from his misadventure in Skid Row that he almost wished someone would try to hassle him when he got back to Alphabet City. He was ready to tear somebody’s head off, anything if it would satisfy the animal demands of the adrenaline surging through his brain. He would have liked to see Stanley try to threaten him now. He was ready for him this time around.

  If there were any predators lurking in the shadows, however, they chose to leave him be. Perhaps they could smell the epinephrine squirting in his brain and knew this was not going to make for easy prey tonight. Whatever the case, he made it inside his building without incident for once and crawled up the stairs to his floor. Incredibly, the door was actually locked. If Charley had thought that the muscles in his face would comply, he would have smiled.

  The place was cold and dark, the television providing the only light in the room. Franz was sprawled out on the couch per usual, his face a flickering receptor for whatever images the idiot box chose to transmit to his zombie mind. A squeaky female voice was chirping about how exciting it all was as the Times Square Ball commenced its slow descent and the crowd chanted the annual countdown. Big deal, Charley thought as he dropped his keys on the card table and shut the door behind him.

  “I thought you were going to see some punk group,” Charley grumbled. Franz did not respond.

  Charley slipped out of his shoes and switched on the light in the kitchenette. All he wanted now was a glass of water, a searing hot bath and about forty hours of sleep. The girl was now babbling about the stupid ball itself—how heavy it was and how many lights were screwed into it and what a marvelous thing it was. The crowd in Times Square was roaring. Charley was relieved he wasn’t there.

  “My goodness, I can’t believe it!” she purled. What was so incredible about it? Was there really a chance the calendar wouldn’t switch over? Charley shook his head and ambled over to join Franz on the couch. He had to physically relocate Franz’s legs in order to make room. The digital clock on TV reached 11:59:55 just in time for Paul Anka to pop up in a little square in the corner to join the countdown.

  “Eight! Seven! Six!” The crooner was way off.

  “You missed your show for this?” Charley groused between gulps of water.

  “Five! Four!”

  Anka got cut off momentarily and the New Year flashed in blue block letters across the screen: 1980. Everyone was screaming their heads off as though it was something they never expected to see in a million years.

  “Everybody sing!” Anka commanded the masses.

  Charley snorted and turned to face Franz.

  “What? You’re not going to sing?”

  Charley gasped.

  Franz was not going to sing.

  There was so much blood on him, on his clothes, and all over the back of the couch that he was never going to sing again.

  His eyes were glassy and staring, his lips slightly parted and flecked with bloody saliva.

  Franz was dead.

  Charley shouted and tumbled over the arm of the couch. On the television Paul Anka was leading a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne and a pulsing sign screamed SING as the crowd’s uproar drowned everything else out completely. Charley’s eyes were running with tears as he backed up against the door, his hands trembling over his gaping mouth.

  “Oh, God,” he rasped. “Oh, my God. Franz.”

  “Happeeeeee New Year!” the blonde cried from Times Square.

  “He killed you,” Charley sobbed. “Christ. That crazy motherfucker killed him.”

  And as the crowd cheered louder and louder in tandem with a thousand noisemakers and a lone trumpeter, Charley bent over and wept.

  Chapter 11

  Charley lingered in front of the back entrance to the Hotel Carver, between the Selwyn and Flame Steaks at the corne
r of Eighth and the Deuce. He had somehow floated down there; it felt like a dream. There weren’t many New Year’s carousers left at a quarter past two in the morning, but there were still a few adventurous souls who probably had no idea what they were getting into. The street was littered with discarded noisemakers—paper ratchets and thundersticks and colorful foil horns. It was littered with human refuge, too. The bums, hustlers, and junkies had reemerged from wherever the cops had shuttled them off to in their half-assed effort to appease the straights. Most of them only ever saw Times Square once a year, anyway. But only a couple of hours into the New Year, Forty-Two was back to business as usual.

  The Carver shared its portico with one of the many adult video shops that were springing up all over the place; comfortable rooms and leisurely four PM checkouts on one side and ninety minute Oriental triple X videotapes on the other. Only about half of the round white bulbs that bordered the arcade were lit, making the dim, semi-hidden rear entrance even less inviting than it already was. Charley wandered into the lobby, a brightly lit circus of stimuli that flashed neon and screeched from multiple television sets and smelled like bug spray and Chinese food. He could hear the middle-aged Vietnamese woman at the front desk bickering with someone from the street, and she was much louder once he was inside.

  “TV fine,” she blustered. “TV work.”

  A bewildered tourist with wide eyes beat his fist on the desk.

  “But it’s got the sound for one channel coming through the picture of another!”

  “Sound, yes. Picture. Works fine.”

  There were mirrors everywhere, and the narrow lobby was crowded with mismatched third-hand furniture. Where there weren’t mirrors the walls were covered with the same musty multicolored carpet that was stapled to the floor. An old man on one of the four payphones bolted into the far wall argued in Russian and stomped on an insect without stumbling over a single raging syllable. Astonished that there did not appear to be an elevator for the twenty-four story building, Charley was glad he was only going up to the third floor.

  325. Charley was somewhat amazed that his memory had successfully stored the number for easy retrieval. He strode down the humid hallway, listening to the blaring televisions and screaming matches and unabashed lovemaking sessions that none of the doors or walls concealed at all. The hotel made him uncomfortable at best, but this was where his feet had taken him whether he liked it or not. Besides, it had been over two hours since he discovered Franz’s bloody corpse, and he had not yet notified the police. He’d had the presence of mind to take Walker’s card along with him; he aimed to call him up as soon as he was in the room.

  Ursula looked haggard and confused when she opened the door, her brow squashed into an exaggerated frown as she blinked rapidly at him. She was dressed, so he did not think he had woken her up, but she was a wreck. He tried to smile but it didn’t work. Instead he started to cry.

  “Ch—Charley?”

  He nodded and tried to hold back the tears. He felt foolish.

  “Did you get fired?” she asked, gently laying a hand on his shoulder.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  She smiled sweetly and stepped aside to let Charley in. The room was small and fusty, though the tiny window on the far wall was cracked to allow some cool, fresh air in. Most of the ceiling was subsumed by an enormous yellow mystery stain that Charley skirted, afraid that it might drip on him. Ursula pointed to the white rotary telephone on the bedside table. He sat down on the edge of the bed and marveled at the section of puke-green carpet nailed to the wall behind it, guessing that it was supposed to be the headboard.

  He said, “Thanks.” Then he dug out Walker’s number and dialed.

  The line at the station was answered in the usual manner, but not by Walker.

  “Midtown South.”

  “I need to talk to Walker.”

  “Detective Walker’s off duty,” the accented voice curtly replied. “This is Ramirez. What can I do for you?”

  “I really need to talk to Walker.”

  “What, you don’t un’nerstand American? I told you, Walker’s not here. Now what’s the problem?”

  “I’ll try later.”

  Charley rang off. Reporting the murder to that guy would surely have been just as good as telling Walker, but he was feeling leery of just about everybody, cops included. Walker already knew the score, and probably more than Charley had managed to figure out. Plus, they already had Chester Price in custody after his psychotic attempt to burn his building down and himself with it. The crime could sit a little longer. Poor Franz wasn’t going anywhere.

  Ursula lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out seductively as she sat down on the bed beside Charley. He had managed to kill the waterworks but his eyes were still puffy and pink. She gestured to him with her pack of cigarettes.

  “Want one?”

  “No, thanks,” he said meekly. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Do you drink?”

  “Do I ever.”

  She gave a little laugh and stood up.

  “Okay then, a drink. I’ve got rum and rum. What’ll you have?”

  “Looks like rum.”

  She grinned earnestly and pulled open the top drawer in the miniature bureau. She produced a half empty bottle of Coruba and a matching pair of toothbrush glasses, clinking them together.

  “I’ve been at this bottle all night, honey,” Ursula said as she poured three fingers in each glass. “I was going to finish it off all by lonesome ’til you came along.” She passed one of the glasses to him and they each took a sip. “You must have been reading my mind, Charley.”

  She was prettier than Charley remembered from the other night. Her hair was different now, long and straight and pinned back at the top. He wondered vaguely if his grief made her seem more desirable, if the crushing loneliness of so much death was merely hurtling him into the nearest pair of welcoming arms. He felt like a heel thinking about it and downed the remainder of his Coruba in one gulp. He shuddered.

  “Another?” Ursula asked, preemptively reaching for his glass.

  Charley said, “Mm,” and nodded affirmatively.

  They nursed their second round for a few minutes in silence before she set her glass on top of the bureau and sighed with overblown exasperation.

  “I hope you don’t mind, honey, but I’ve just got to get out of this dress.”

  Charley shook his head and shrugged like it was no big deal, but inside he was hoping to God he wasn’t about to ball a near stranger with the image of Franz’s corpse still burned into his retinas.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and slid off her stockings before standing up again to shimmy out of her dress. Then the brassiere came off, revealing small, round breasts with pert nipples and long white scars underlining both of them. Charley tried not to stare, catching himself looking at them and then quickly averting his gaze to a poster of some Italian movie crudely tacked up on the wall behind the ancient Bakelite television set. Le Dolce Signore. A painting of four women in the center, all looking to their right, and Ursula Andress in the middle of them.

  Figures, he mused.

  When he looked back, she’d just pushed her lacey red panties down to her knees and Charley just couldn’t resist a little peek, no matter how skeezy he knew he was being. And there, between her lean, muscular legs, hung a long, uncircumcised penis.

  Charley threw his finger into a point at the dangling organ and asked the dumbest question of his life.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Ursula’s face registered the same amount of shock as Charley’s. She planted her fists on her naked hips and pursed her lips with incredulity.

  “That’s my cock, you dumbshit.”

  All at once the picture became clear to him. Ursula was not a woman at all, not really. She was a man in the process of becoming a woman. Surgically. A transsexual. A she-male, just like in that unsettling Doris Wishman sickie Let Me Die a Woman. Charley had seen it over a year ago
at the Liberty and recalled it freaking him out, if only a little.

  Enough.

  All that cutting made his stomach flip, and just after a half-dozen greasy rib tips at China Gate, too. He became aware of the twisted grimace on his face thinking about it now and shook it out. Ursula had donned her lacey pink bathrobe by then and sat on the opposite side of the bed smoking a cigarette and giving him the evil eye. He did not know whether he should feel guilty or not.

  “I’m sorry,” she crowed dramatically. “I thought it was fucking obvious.”

  Charley stammered. He wanted another drink, so he poured himself one without asking.

  “Where are you from, honey?” she asked at length.

  “Gardner,” Charley said in a gasp between gulps of rum. “Mass.”

  “Ooh, a bona fide Yankee boy?” She was putting on an obnoxious Scarlet O’Hara accent. “Tell me, Yankee boy—you don’t got no trannies in Massachusetts?”

  Charley almost sprayed rum out of his nose, but he managed to maintain some degree of composure.

  “Not that I ever noticed.”

  “I suppose you’re going to leave now.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. She did not look sad. She just looked disappointed, as though this was an episode she had experienced many times before. Used to it, in her way, but always unpleasant.

  He set the glass down on the bureau, a shallow brown pool still at the bottom of it.

  “This has been the most demented week of my life. I saw a girl get murdered. Stabbed to death, and I held her hand while she died. I’ve been followed. I’ve been beaten up. I almost got killed by a junkie in the Bowery tonight who set himself on fire, and all that after he broke into my apartment and killed my roommate.”