Chinatown Angel

by A. E. Roman

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Tell you what. I’m gonna go shoot some photos to use in Doomsday tomorrow. I want you to come along. A walkabout. Like in the old days. You want to see the apartment?”

  Albert went into his coat pocket. “You need anything else? Call me. I’m your friend, not Atlas. Remember that.”

  He tossed me some keys, and said, “See how easy?” The back of the key chain in the shape of a musical note was inscribed:

  There is no war in poetry.

  Love, Irving

  Upstairs in Olga and Tiffany’s apartment, I was as giddy as a diabetic set loose in a candy store. I checked both bedrooms. Olga’s bedroom was neat and tidy. Two bookshelves. One filled with poetry. The other filled with books on law and political science. Tiffany’s bedroom was empty. The walls were a pale pinkish color with white trim. It looked like the inside of a birthday cake. There were angels painted on the ceiling. I went through Tiffany’s empty drawers, searched her empty shelves, her desk, her closets, looking all over for a clue, anything, something mistakenly thrown away, left behind that might tell me something about her or Olga or Irving or their relationship. Something that might help me figure out what happened to Pilar. All I found was some Zoloft prescribed to Olga and an opened book in Olga’s bedroom that was sitting on top of her comforter, Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War.” I flipped it over and read a sentence underlined recently in red ink: Make them mutually suspicious so that they drift apart.

  THIRTEEN

  Sunday afternoon we met in Greenwich Village. Albert shot bars and clubs and pool halls and teenagers in black with vampire teeth and platform shoes and NYU students and drunks in love with liquor. A walkabout. Like in the old days. We went through Stuyvesant Town to Lexington to Broadway. At the Flatiron Building, Albert talked about the one billion gallons of water pumped every day into New York. But I was looking for another kind of information.

  “Fascinating,” I said sarcastically as we passed under steel and glass, culminating in the 1,250 feet of the Empire State Building.

  “No need to get nasty, Chico.”

  “Sorry, bro.”

  I relaxed a bit as we trekked from the concrete lions perched outside the 42nd Street library, to the ever-flashing lights of Times Square and Broadway, to the multileveled Museum of Modern Art, to Central Park.

  Central Park was an endless frigid gray of naked trees and fields and paths. We walked to the Bethesda Fountain and watched the water just like when we were kids.

  Albert lit a joint and inhaled and said, “We should move to Texas!”

  Then he talked about our mutual love of movies and the possibility of my helping him write and shoot a screenplay idea he called Killer’s Way. He talked about replacing “that treacherous Serb of a cinematographer from SVA” with me. Albert would teach me everything he knew about camera setups. I would follow Albert’s directions, point and shoot, point and shoot.

  “How hard could it be?” said Albert, puffing on his joint.

  “How much you paying?” I asked.

  “You would work for free,” said Albert. “You’re an amateur.”

  “Sounds about right,” I said.

  “If you can solve crimes,” Albert said, “why not shoot a crime picture?”

  “I know it’s been a bad week,” I said. “But you’re starting to babble.”

  We walked some more through Central Park and Albert shot photos sitting on rocks and on benches and in empty children’s playgrounds. We walked through hidden woods and streams and curving paths and Albert spread his arms and started running, yelling, “I am Spartacus!”

  I ran, too. Like two fucking kids we were.

  As the sun went down, Albert stopped shooting and we went bowling for a couple of frames at the Port Authority bowling alley and then we doubled back to a Times Square movie theater and caught a crime picture.

  Afterward, outside the theater, Albert hummed Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking” and said, “Kubrick woulda done it better.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You and me, Chico. We’re both guys who’ve been knocked around. Nothing handed to us. Scraping from the bottom. We have to work harder and longer to get what we deserve out of life.”

  “What do you deserve?” I asked.

  “Everything,” Albert said. “Everything.”

  Merrily we went to my favorite old dive bar, Rudy’s, on 8th Avenue. The bar, dark and fairly empty, smelled of beer and hot dogs. Sitting on a wooden stool, before a bowl of shelled peanuts, I finally said, “Pilar and Olga and Irving. They were close friends, huh?”

  “They had a lot in common,” said Albert. “Depression. They talked about it all the time. I ain’t exactly Mr. Shits and Giggles myself. But it was like a little club they had. That’s why Pilar’s jumping is no big shocker.”

  “A suicide club?”

  “No,” Albert said, shelling a peanut. “Not that psycho. Irving and Olga met in a political science class at Columbia. Then they started hanging around with Pilar after Irving recruited her at one of the world-famous Kirk Atlas parties. Poetry. And social justice. After that, Pilar and Olga and Irving got real close. Then we all started hanging out together for a bit. Until Benjamin died and Tiffany ran off and Olga got mad at Pilar who was mad at Irving and everybody went their separate ways.”

  The bartender came over with a pitcher of cold draft beer, two glasses, and two hot dogs, set them down in front of us, and walked away.

  I poured myself a glass and one for Albert. “Why didn’t you tell me about Irving working at HMD when I asked you about him?”

  “Guess I didn’t think of it,” said Albert, biting into his first hot dog.

  “You forgive me, sweetheart?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sure, honey.”

  After too many beers and bad jokes and Johnny Cash songs on the juke, we headed out of the bar.

  “Oh,” said Albert. “One more thing. You’ll be going into HMD and talking to Irving, who is big on conspiracy theories, so better you hear it from me instead of him. Not that I ever liked your being at HMD with my grandfather in the first place but the man with the gold makes the rules and that man ain’t me.”

  “All your grandfather knows,” I said, “is that we knew each other at St. Mary’s.”

  “Don’t get paranoid,” said Albert. “But Benjamin Rivera overdosed two months ago around the same time Tiffany disappeared. Overdosed on heroin. And Irving seemed to think that Benjamin’s overdose was not accidental, that Benjamin Rivera had been murdered for insurance or for property or for stock shares in HMD. That it wasn’t an overdose. That it wasn’t an accident. That’s what he told Olga. That it was murder. The boy is cuckoo.”

  “Do you know anything about some story that Irving may have written about Tiffany?”

  “No,” said Albert. “What story?”

  I studied his face to see if he was bullshitting me. Nothing. His confusion was genuine.

  “What story?” repeated Albert.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Probably nothing.”

  Either way, Hannibal Rivera the Third and Kirk Atlas made for some very interesting employers.

  ________

  HMD Financial. Forty-third Street. Six A.M. Monday morning. At Fifth Avenue, I entered the bank’s Art Deco lobby, nodded at a friendly guard, flashed my I.D., took the elevator to the seventh floor, and opened the door to the brightly lit kitchen.

  “Cancel my account!” Uncle Dee yelled and threw the invoices he was holding on the stainless steel counter. He slammed down the phone and took a slug of rum from his silver flask.

  “In the old days, Chico, at this time, I would be making love on silk sheets with a beautiful woman in some exotic part of the world.”

  “Those were the days, huh?”

  Uncle Dee smiled and nodded, then frowned. “Mr. Samuel Rivera forgot to say good morning again.” />
  “Jerk!” I reached up and removed the basket from the regular coffee machine.

  Uncle Dee pointed at the ceiling, “He comes down here and complains about our running out of trout last week for that Hong Kong meeting. Doesn’t even say good morning or holá or anything. Just complains and goes back out.”

  “You don’t need Samuel Rivera’s holá.”

  “We all need the holá. It’s common human decency, Chico. It’s not much, but it’s minimum.”

  We are all at war, and Uncle Dee thinks a hello across enemy lines is a white flag that says it’s okay, you can rest here.

  “Ah!” Uncle Dee remembered something and made an impolite gesture at the ceiling. “Samuel Rivera complained about my omelet!”

  “No!”

  “Yes!”

  Uncle Dee’s Spanish omelet was made with fresh ingredients only, always the best. He was gifted in the art of cooking, but the omelet was his secret weapon. It was spiced and seasoned just right, with an equal distribution of extra ingredients, white onion, green onion, finely chopped tomato, and some El Salvadorian ingredients he would not name. To question the quality of Uncle Dee’s omelet was to question Uncle Dee’s right to exist.

  There were no words in English or Spanish for this kind of insult. And when there is no consolation in words, men like Uncle Dee do one of four things: they fight, they make love, they drink, or they work. It was time to work, so Uncle Dee began to crack his eggs, chop his vegetables, grease his pans, and start his fires.

  Inspired by Dee’s work antidote, I left the kitchen and entered the executive dining room. I lined the credenza along the oak-wood walls with cereal boxes, milk, sugar, and seven bowls. I counted and placed seven spoons, seven forks, seven butter knives, seven cloth napkins, seven linen mats and seven coffee cups at seven spots on a long mahogany table.

  I almost forgot that I was a private investigator and not a professional waiter. Almost.

  Soon seven executives shuffled into the HMD dining room wearing their plastered-on smiles and business suits. I stood at my place beside the glass door, leaning slightly against the wall, with two coffee pots.

  Samuel Rivera, wearing glasses and a dark pinstriped banker’s suit and tie, said, “Hannibal has to start pulling his weight.”

  Somebody else said, “What do you propose?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rivera. “But he can’t just keep sailing the world on La Nina. A different port every night and when he’s in town he does nothing but drive around the city in his limousine. I mean, if you were President of this company and you did that, what would happen? Just think about it. He’s the eldest. He’s supposed to be the responsible one.”

  Eyebrows were raised around the room, tiny smirks.

  “I don’t know about you,” Rivera said, looking around the room. “But I couldn’t do that. A man needs to work.”

  Another suit said, “I might be able to force myself. Floating around the Mediterranean doesn’t sound so bad.”

  Two suits smiled.

  Mr. Rivera frowned.

  “No. You’re right, Sam,” another executive said. “It would be tedious after a while.”

  Samuel sat at the head of the long mahogany table, then the rest of them sat. At forty-six, Samuel was vice-president of HMD and the youngest man in the room. Add a goatee and a dollop of transparent evil and you’d swear you were looking at Hannibal Rivera the Third. The other men at the table were in their late fifties or early sixties. They sat mostly in silence, under the bright and colorful Picasso prints, as I went around the table with the two coffee pots. It was time to get myself fired.

  I stopped at Mr. Rivera. “Coffee?”

  As usual, Rivera didn’t look up at me. But this time, instead of pouring coffee, I turned his coffee cup over, and walked away.

  “Waiter!” Rivera pointed at his empty cup. “You didn’t give me any coffee.”

  “You didn’t ask for any,” I said.

  Everyone looked at me, shocked. Rivera stared, as though a chupacabra had landed a spaceship in the middle of my forehead.

  “Yes, sir,” I said and made a frustrated sound, blowing air like an angry trumpet. I shook my head, went back, and turned the cup over again.

  Without taking his eyes off my face, Rivera said, “What’s on the menu for lunch?”

  “What?”

  “Fish! What is the fish of the day?”

  I stared at Mr. Rivera, blank and dumb, like somebody else had had to tie my shoes that morning.

  Rivera, arms crossed executioner style, said, “You don’t know what the fish of the day is?”

  “I can check, sir.”

  “Do you at least know where you are?”

  “I can check on that, too, sir.”

  “Never mind.”

  As I poured his coffee, Rivera whispered idiota and shook his head.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  He jumped up out of his leather chair, wiping hot coffee off his hand and trousers.

  I looked at him all sheeplike. “Oops?”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, you are!”

  Rivera stormed out of the dining room and into the kitchen. This was it.

  I went and stood outside the dining room in the bank’s Art Deco hall. I heard angry voices coming from the kitchen.

  Uncle Dee was saying, “If you fired everybody in New York who didn’t do his job without a few mistakes, the city would stop. The mail wouldn’t get delivered. The garbage wouldn’t get picked up. The trains and cabs wouldn’t move. Show me the man who does his job without errors, perfectly!”

  “Nonetheless,” Samuel Rivera said.

  I pressed my ear closer to the wooden door. Rivera talked about my “lack of professionalism.”

  “I don’t want to see his face.”

  “So that’s it,” Uncle Dee said. “You’re going to fire him for having a bad morning?”

  “Please, Daniel!”

  Uncle Dee said, “What? We’re not castrated enough for you? If nothing else, we have a right to work and live and die with our pride. If he goes, I go!”

  “Shhh,” Rivera said. “Uncle. This isn’t about you. Shhh.”

  The voices faded into a whisper and soon they stopped. Footsteps. A slam. I heard someone coming toward the wooden door. I pulled back.

  Uncle Dee stuck his head out and said, “Chico, can I see you in the kitchen?”

  Uncle Dee was sweating as I put my coffee pots down near the sink. He sighed. “Could you sit?”

  “Aw, shit.”

  I dropped my head as if the shame of being fired were killing me.

  “Look, you know how things are now. I’ll probably be next.” “You have almost twenty years,” I said. “They won’t fire a man with almost twenty years on the job.”

  “You think so?”

  “Twenty years is a long time.”

  Uncle Dee made the sign of the cross. “God willing.”

  “I’ll go clean out my locker.”

  I put out my hand for Uncle Dee to shake.

  Uncle Dee screwed up his face. “C’mere!”

  He grabbed me and hugged me, and slapped my back.

  “You’ll be okay,” he said. “You’re from the Bronx. You’re a soldier. I can tell.”

  The phone rang. Uncle Dee excused himself to go answer. I checked my Timex; 7 A.M. I walked real slow along the marble floor toward the locker room.

  “Chico! It’s a miracle!”

  I turned and saw Uncle Dee, beaming. “I just got a call. There’s a position open in the mail room. They wanted to know if I knew somebody. Rivera never goes down there. The job is yours if you want it.”

  FOURTEEN

  Irving Goldberg Jones was sitting on the tattered couch in the HMD mail room, staring at the TV he had just popped a DVD into.

  Irving Goldberg Jones was a romantic kid in glasses, a student at Columbia University, a writer, a poet, a self-descri
bed socialist, half black, half Jewish, tall, beanpole thin. His face was the color of coffee with extra milk. His hair was a long kinky Afro, a cross between Einstein and Buckwheat from the Little Rascals. He was wearing black jeans, black shoes, and a black Che Guevara T-shirt. Nineteen. Just a kid.

  An old couple had appeared on the TV screen. They were in the office of a company with technology that allowed them to transfer the brains of the old into bodies of the young. The old couple was poor and couldn’t afford two operations. Only one could be young again. The other would have to wait and grow old and perhaps die before the younger of the two could work to save up enough money for a second operation. In the end, they left, still old, walking together. They were dying. But they were peaceful, happy, together and holding hands. It was enough. An action which never ceased to make Irving sigh with longing, though he’d played that Twilight Zone episode a million times in the mail room before.

  I turned away from the TV and faced Irving and saw that he had a fresh black eye.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  Irving gripped the messenger bag he was holding on his lap.

  “Some fascist cop clocked me,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Irving explained that he had been punched in the face by a cop outside Macy’s who he was trying to stop from choking a shoplifter.

  “The cop slammed the woman against a wall,” Irving said.

  “And threw her on the ground. For shoplifting a pair of winter gloves.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I hate abusive cops.”

  Irving grunted but said nothing else. All day. Nothing. Not a word. This was gonna be harder than I thought.

  The following day. I was wearing a Pancho Villa T-shirt. On the back of the shirt was a quote: IT IS BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN TO LIVE ON YOUR KNEES.

  Amen.

  Irving and I had not become fast friends after I started my messenger job at HMD like I had planned. Every chance I got I acted like I hated everybody and everything (like I said, he was a poet) but Irving didn’t line up. As far as Irving knew I was just another surly New York messenger with a Kryptonite lock and a bad attitude that got me “transferred” from my job as a waiter in the executive dining room to the mail room. But it wasn’t working. And I needed to seal the deal.