Invisible Streets

by Toby Ball

  7

  ART BOUTIQUES HAD BEEN SPRINGING UP AROUND THE CITY LATELY, FILLING the gap between the high-end galleries, which made their millions off of the glossy works of big-name artists, and the run-down store-front operations, which charged artists fees to hang their work and collected a healthy commission on anything sold. In a neighborhood that was both newly fashionable and still occasionally dangerous, one of the new breed, a small renovated bank building, was opening an exhibition of three young artists.

  Frings sipped a gin and tonic in a room that had once been a bank vault, but which now displayed a series of doctored photographs taken by a young artist named Wendy Otis. The room was maybe three-quarters full, mostly younger people—college-aged or a little older—as well as some heemies wearing clothes that had once been expensive, but were now threadbare or just tired.

  Frings was standing with Al Rappaport, who had been with the paper when Panos was still editor. When the merger was arranged, Rappaport, like a number of others, had retired rather than toil under Littbarski and the rest of the new regime.

  “I’ve been seeing a lot of that little shit, Art Deyna, on the front page recently.”

  “Littbarski’s decided that he’s his golden boy,” Frings said, mildly.

  “Right. Like you were with Panos.”

  Frings let that go. Rappaport had never been able to hold his drink.

  “And you,” Rappaport continued, “I read your column every week. You’re staying on the Crosstown and the New City Project and I admire that. A voice in the wilderness—but you were never too caught up with having to win.”

  “No,” Frings said, looking for a way to escape. He saw his friend Ben Linsky, a poet, deep in conversation with Wendy Otis. Linsky was as close to a celebrity as existed in this scene. He was mostly known as a poet, but he also edited Prometheus, the Tech’s official literary magazine, whose content and criticism set the tone for the City’s art scene. His approval or disapproval would be crucial to Wendy’s success—or failure.

  Frings tried to catch Linsky’s eye, without success.

  “I don’t know how you stomach it, Frank, with little Art Deyna getting the headlines and you …” It seemed, then, to dawn on Rappaport that he might be making an ass of himself and, to Frings’s alarm, he plucked another drink from a passing tray.

  “Enough about work,” Rappaport continued. “How have you been, Frank? Who’s gracing your arm these days? You always seem to have a bird. I was never sure how you did it, to be honest. The actresses, the singers, the socialites. But I guess I don’t need to tell you. At our age, though,” he paused and gave Frings what might have been a sly smile, “it must be difficult keeping up with the younger women of today.”

  “There’s no one at the moment, Al,” Frings said, becoming exasperated. “What brings you here tonight? I’d have thought this was a little too … cutting-edge for your taste. It’s not as if you have to file a review.

  Rappaport smiled. “Yes, that’s right. But Wendy there, she’s been friends with my Elizabeth—the overseas one—since grade school. Another daughter, almost. I’m very proud of her. I wouldn’t miss her first show for anything. Sometimes you have to be a proud parent—or what have you—and leave the critic’s lens at home, for once. What do you think of her work?”

  Wendy’s photographs were of urban and rural scenes blown up to poster size. She’d taken white paint and carefully traced over all of the man-made items in the various photos, leaving negative space anywhere humans had altered the visual landscape. In a photograph shot from a city rooftop, for instance, the antennae and power lines had been painted out, drawing attention to the shapes that people never noticed in the course of their lives. In a photo of a ranch, somewhere in the Southwest, Otis had whited out a split-rail fence, creating a strange, depthless, ladder-like space in the foreground of the photo.

  “They’re provocative,” Frings said, hoping to leave it at that. He saw, to his relief, that Linsky and Wendy Otis had finished their conversation. Wendy was headed in their direction, clearly distressed, her eyes on Rappaport.

  “I WAS PROBABLY TOO BLUNT WITH HER,” LINSKY SAID, AND INHALED deeply from a joint he was sharing with Frings in the alley behind the gallery. It was dark, the only light from a bare bulb above the gallery’s back door. Jazz music and the sound of voices leaked through the crack in the door where they’d propped it open.

  “She was near tears, Ben.” Linsky was a little older than most of the gallery crowd, in his late twenties. He was actually a very kind man, but Frings didn’t like the spirit of his critiques. Linsky shared his opinion without giving a second thought to the effect his words would have. This had been one of those times.

  “I need to learn to be more circumspect.”

  “They look up to you.”

  Linsky grimaced. “I know. And you know me Frank, I want everyone to be happy. But, as I told her, what she’s got up on those walls, that’s not art. It’s pointing out something on a photograph. There’s no art there. It’s an essay. Art needs to comment on its own medium. Without that, it’s nothing.”

  “I’m not sure everyone agrees with that assessment.”

  Linsky exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke and smiled. “Those people, they would be wrong.”

  “Ben, listen, I’ve got a question.”

  Linsky raised his eyebrows.

  “You heard anything from Kollectiv 61 recently?”

  Prometheus had run what purported to be Kollectiv 61’s manifesto two years before, and there was a general feeling that Linsky was in occasional contact with members of the group.

  “Rumors of my interaction with them are greatly exaggerated,” he said, grinning broadly.

  “Is that your way of saying you haven’t?”

  “It is, indeed,” Linsky said, and took another drag.

  8

  FRINGS HADN’T BEEN ON THE TECH CAMPUS FOR YEARS AND FOUND, ON this cold, clear afternoon, that his memory of it as an anachronism still held. In the midst of the no-man’s-land between Praeger’s Hill and the Hollows—a dense patch marked by grinding poverty and routine violence—there was the Tech: a gated patch of sixteenth-century England, dropped intact into the City. Inside the walls, the setting was nearly rural: wide, green quads; perfectly manicured trees; handsome stone buildings meant to evoke Cambridge; well-groomed kids in sweaters, slacks, skirts, and penny loafers—all of this in a place where the City could be forgotten, if not for the car noise and, at night, the gunshots (infrequent) and police sirens (far more frequent).

  But there was something else here, too, something new: a threat to the ideal picture that the Tech tried to present to the outside world. Frings thought he could see it in the faces of some of the students he passed: a look whose nature he couldn’t quite glean, but which seemed to hint at a knowledge, an understanding, that had caused them to fall into cynicism, anger, even despair.

  He passed the admissions building, where a group of students—unshaven men, women wearing wool caps—stood outside holding signs and passing out papers. Frings took one as he walked past. It was a call to admit more Negro students and hire more Negro professors. The signs were blunter: TECH ADMINISTRATION = JIM CROW, TRUE INTEGRATION TODAY. The Tech had always been very white—Negro and immigrant kids went to City College. Frings agreed with the kids’ sentiments, but wondered what results, if any, these efforts would bring.

  Frings walked stiffly, the temperature binding his knee in a dull ache. He asked a group of well-bundled co-eds where he could find the film department, and was pointed to a newer building, its unweathered bricks just visible above the dorms surrounding the quad.

  • • •

  THE DEPARTMENT WAS TUCKED INTO A SMALL SUITE OF OFFICES ON THE fourth floor of the Truffant Liberal Arts Building. A male student with thick glasses sat behind a desk in the middle of the foyer, reading a pamphlet of some kind.

  “Anyone in?” Frings asked.

  The kid glanced up from his tract, face pinched
dramatically in annoyance at the interruption. “Ballard,” the kid said, nodding to the only open door and returning quickly to his reading.

  Frings poked his head into the open office. A skinny gink, probably Frings’s age—on the good side of sixty—balding hair cut very short above a narrow face, was bent over his desk, reading something he held very close to his eyes.

  “Doctor Ballard?”

  The man looked up, startled.

  “Sorry to interrupt your reading. I’m Frank Frings. I was wondering if you had a moment.”

  Ballard sat up in his seat. “Frings …” He thought about the name for a moment. “The reporter?”

  Frings nodded.

  Ballard frowned, gestured to a chair on the opposite side of his desk. His cramped office had room for little more than his desk, a couple of chairs, and shelves full of books. Frings had to lift a pile of books off the chair and place them on the floor. The top one was titled, The Reflective Lens: Civilization and the New French Cinema.

  Ballard had wire-framed glasses on now, rubbing his hand along his scalp as if slicking back the hair that he’d once had.

  “Dr. Ballard—”

  “Eben.”

  “Okay. I’m Frank. Eben, I’m trying to track down a guy named Andy Macheda, might have been a student here.”

  Ballard leaned his head back and made a low humming sound, smacking his lips manically. Embarrassed by the odd tic, Frings glanced past him and out the window, which looked onto a parking lot. Ballard returned his attention to Frings. “Macheda, right, I remember him. Only here for a year or so—at least in this department. Brash fellow, as I remember him. Macheda, yes, it didn’t work out for him here. Film is funny, Mr…. Frank, film is funny because it is new, there isn’t a history dating back centuries like painting or sculpture or even literature. Anyone of any ambition who comes into this department feels they are going to change the way films are made or the way they are experienced. Some are naive, some are genuinely exciting, some, like Andrew, find themselves on an unpromising tangent.

  “He wrote a paper—this is why I remember him now—a paper to explain a film project that he had done: terribly disorganized, meaningless—the film, that is. The paper reflected some sort of formula that he’d come up with—that technical proficiency was somehow equivalent to science and science was equated with the creation of the Bomb and therefore technique was immoral. He dressed it up, but that is the essential argument.” Ballard paused to let the audacity of the notion set in. “I showed it around the department. It had decidedly few admirers. The paper, though, was more memorable than those terrible films, or Andrew himself, for that matter.”

  “So he must have considered himself a radical.”

  “Oh god, yes. Him. Others. Craft is not immoral, Frank. Narrative does not inherently pervert truth. Telling a coherent story is not the moral equivalent of the Bomb. It’s preposterous.”

  Frings got the point, trying to bring Ballard back to Macheda. “Andy Macheda, Eben, he was here when?”

  “Three, four years ago. Something like that. He didn’t stay long. I don’t know if the other faculty might have some other memories of him beyond that paper. I’m sure he felt constrained here, that he was being judged to a standard he didn’t agree with, but just because it’s film doesn’t mean that there are no rules, that anything goes.”

  “I saw a film of his.”

  Ballard’s eyebrows rose.

  “It was called Film 12. I was told that he comes into the cinema every once in a while and makes changes, taking out parts, adding others. After he makes the edits, he changes the title to, say, Film 13.”

  Ballard shook his head. “Foolishness.”

  Frings opened his briefcase and took out the five photos taken from the film still. He handed them to Ballard. “Do you know any of these people?”

  Ballard removed his glasses and brought the photos close, so that they were almost touching his nose. He studied each in turn, concentrating.

  “They’re not very clear.”

  “I apologize for that.”

  “I can’t say that I recognize any of them, though it could just be the poor quality of the images. Are these from a film still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said priggishly, “I can’t make out enough to say anything about them.”

  Frings put the photos away.

  “I’m trying to run down Andy Macheda. Do you have any thoughts about where I might find him?”

  “I can’t imagine he’s still in school—he was here years ago—but I think I may have heard that he’s sometimes with Will Ebanks at that house of his. In fact, that doesn’t surprise me. I can see a certain affinity between them. Ebanks has something of a following here,” Ballard said with undisguised distaste. “Have you heard of him?”

  Ebanks was, in fact, a friend of Frings’s.

  Ballard began to shuffle papers around on his desk, so Frings thanked him for his help and made his way back to the campus gates, where he could hail a cab. At the curb he looked across the street at the narrow stretch of housing associated with the Tech; maybe three blocks in length, it provided a buffer between the campus and the City beyond. Will Ebanks’s house was in this neighborhood.

  Frings was thinking about the strange scene that Ebanks had created at the house, when a cab finally pulled to the curb.

  9

  THE STREET WHERE THE THREE GUARDS FROM THE CROSSTOWN LIVED was unusually narrow, more like an alley. Grip wondered who the hell had designed this stretch; figured it must have predated automobiles because, although it had a center line, there was no way two cars could pass. As if it weren’t cramped enough, parked cars and vending stalls straddled the curbs on both sides. But there wasn’t any road traffic moving through anyway, just a delivery truck parked in the middle of the block, no driver in sight.

  Everything in the neighborhood was close and loud and smelled unusual—not bad, exactly—just foreign. Grip found himself literally pushing through the crowd. Where the hell had all these people come from? The vending stalls seemed to be doing a good business in food, clothing, tattered books, a huge variety of things. Negotiations were carried out in rapid Bulgarian, of which Grip didn’t understand a word.

  He found some room to move on the edge of the sidewalk, brushing up against the faded walls of apartment buildings. Down the block he arrived at the address that he wanted, a narrow brick building, blue door with peeling paint. Looking up, he saw four floors, probably two apartments per floor. One buzzer for the whole building. He pushed it.

  He heard the sound of someone fiddling with the chain, then the slide of a bolt. The door opened the crack that the chain allowed. The woman inside was very young, maybe even in her teens.

  Grip spoke slowly. “I’m looking for George Petrov. Is he here?”

  “Petrov?” She seemed uncertain.

  “Yes. Petrov. Is he here?”

  She shook her head.

  “What about Zanev?”

  She shook her head again. She seemed to be concentrating. Probably trying to decipher his accent.

  He thought about pulling his badge, decided not to—probably spook her. “How about Malakov? Is he here?”

  She shook her head again. “You wait.” The door closed.

  Grip waited. Four children stood in a group just a few feet down the sidewalk from him, checking him out. His suit, he realized, set him apart here. He winked at the kids and they scattered. In the distance he could hear sirens. The door opened against the chain again. This time the woman was older, probably the first one’s mother.

  “You look for Zanev?” Her English was heavily accented, difficult to understand.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  She made a fist, shook it, and then mimed a throw.

  “What? Dice?”

  “Dice,” she said, remembering.

  “Where?”

  “Klimchuk’s.”

  Dorman wasn’t sure he’d heard the name righ
t, but she repeated it—Klimchuk’s. She pointed to her right. “Down street. Klimchuk’s.”

  “Right, Klimchuk’s.”

  Before she could close the door on him, he asked, “Is Zanev’s wife here?”

  “Wife?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Yes,” Grip said a little louder. “Zanev’s wife.”

  “Zanev have no wife.”

  “Petrov?”

  “Petrov also have no wife. Malakov, also. No wifes.”

  Grip was about to thank her when she closed the door and slid the bolt in place.

  GRIP FOUND THE WINDOWLESS BAR TWO BLOCKS AWAY. THE CROWD WAS thinner down here, no stalls, no banter—the vitality gone, replaced with gray drear. The building looked as if it had once been some kind of storage facility, which had been converted fairly recently: the blue painted KLIMCHUK’S above the entrance was still bright. Grip tried the door. Locked. He could hear people inside. He knocked. The door opened to a huge man, fat, several days’ stubble.

  “Can I help you?” The guy blocked the view inside, gun bulge under his jacket.

  “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t know you, chief.”

  Grip flashed his badge, watched the big man take it in, think over his position. He made Grip wait a long moment before stepping aside.

  The place smelled like cigar smoke and boiled meat. Thirty or so tables were spread around the featureless room—craps, cards, half of the tables open and busy. Definitely illegal. Men only, excepting a dozen prostitutes in shabby cocktail dresses hanging around the long bar. Grip headed in that direction, smiling at the girls, giving off a cop vibe that kept them away. The bartender raised his eyebrows at Grip, who ordered a beer. When the bartender returned, Grip dropped a five on the bar.