Invisible Streets

by Toby Ball

  He saw a couple dozen workers up here, mostly Indian, he knew, from up north. For whatever reason, these Indians didn’t seem troubled by the heights, a fact that held endless fascination for Canada. “Fucking redskins, crawl all over those frames like it was nothing. Wonder what it is. Must be something in the genes.” Dorman had asked Insua about this once, Insua saying he didn’t know what it was, but that they worked hard and made much better money than they would on the reservation.

  The wind made enough of a racket that Dorman couldn’t hear Insua walking behind him. He stopped, turned slowly around, rotating his feet ninety degrees twice so that his balance was never in question. He hazarded a glance down. It was so far to the ground that it almost seemed unreal, impossible to imagine actually falling. How long would it take to hit?

  “What are we doing up here, Mr. Dorman?”

  “Anyone ever talked to you about wearing a wire?”

  Insua squinted at him, not getting it.

  “A wire. Like a recording microphone, so that they can tape your conversations.”

  Insua shook his head, genuinely confused. Dorman nodded; he hadn’t thought so.

  He got to the point. “So nothing was missing from the site today, just the damage?”

  Insua nodded.

  “Do you ever … Okay, you have to trust me on this. I just need to know, do you ever know beforehand when your site is going to get hit by thieves? I’m not trying to get you into trouble. I just need to know exactly how these things work.”

  The question seemed to startle Insua. “How would I know?”

  Dorman grimaced in frustration. He couldn’t tell if Insua was being honest or cautious. “Do you ever wonder why we never catch these guys? It seems like we could post guards, right, and catch at least some of them. Doesn’t that make sense?”

  Insua seemed to grow more uncomfortable. “Sure. I guess.”

  “Do you have any thoughts about why that might be the case?”

  Insua looked at Dorman helplessly. Dorman rubbed his face with both hands. Had he really expected Insua to be forthcoming? Did he think Insua trusted him to that degree?

  “Okay. Sorry. Never mind. Let’s go back down.”

  36

  THE POUNDING OF THE PILE DRIVERS WAS RELENTLESS IN THIS BLOCK OF the Hollows, the river only seven or eight blocks to the north. Grip rolled down Pristina Road, the old row houses transformed into makeshift apartments. It wasn’t raining, but the air was saturated and things were still getting wet. The usual sidewalk traffic—winos, prostitutes, and others living on the City’s margins—was nowhere to be found. Grip had an address.

  Not many people who lived here owned cars, and the curbs were mostly empty—the street traffic seemed to consist of delivery trucks and jitneys. The street numbers were not entirely logical: some buildings seemed to be numbered according to whatever numbers had been around to nail above the doors. But Grip could figure out the general direction, at least, and he kept on, passing alleys strewn with garbage, men sleeping under rigged shelters. A thin dog trotted past, wary eyes on Grip. Grip brushed his hand across the lump in his jacket made by the butt of his gun, found some reassurance in its form.

  He found the building he was looking for, and pulled to the curb. The place was a three-story walkup, cigarette butts littering the base of the steps. He pulled his gun and carried it close to his hip. At the top of the stoop he took a look at the door—wood with a frosted glass window at eye level—and gave it a trial push with his shoulder. It didn’t feel too sturdy. He stepped back and rammed his shoulder into the door. It buckled. He stepped back again and the second effort flattened it onto the foyer inside.

  Pistol extended, Grip entered a living room littered with beer bottles and dirty dishes. A balding, unshaven man looked up from where he lay on a couch, his eyes unfocused.

  Grip looked down on him. “Where’s Nicky?”

  “I don’t know, baby. I’m sleeping.”

  Grip could see through an open door into an empty kitchen and more squalor. He walked quietly up the stairs, keeping his footfalls light, not for reasons of stealth, but so that he could hear any motion above him. All that he heard, though, was the metronomic pounding from the river.

  Four doors off the hall, one cracked. Grip looked in to find the shared bathroom. He walked to each door in turn, listening but hearing nothing from inside. Without hesitating, he kicked down the first door and stepped into a room with a bare mattress set in the middle of the floor. Empty. He moved faster now, aware that kicking in doors would arouse anyone in these rooms, no matter what their chemical state.

  He kicked down the next door and recoiled in time to avoid the baseball bat that slammed into the door frame, making a dent in the soft wood. Grip sighted his gun on Nicky Patridis’s forehead.

  “Shit, Detective, I didn’t realize—”

  “Shut up, drop the bat, and sit down on that bed.” Grip nodded to a mattress pushed into a corner. Nicky was wearing boxer shorts and a sleeveless undershirt, exposing his spindly legs and arms. His hair was pushed up on one side, and his eyes were still puffy from sleep. He retreated to his mattress.

  “You know what I found out, Nicky?”

  Nicky stared at Grip, equally dazed and scared. “How the fuck would I know?”

  “I had a guy try to track down your cousin, the security guard. Funny thing: the guy doesn’t exist.”

  Nicky’s voice was up an octave. “He’s on my mother’s side, different last name.”

  Grip shook his head. “They don’t have floaters at Consolidated Industries, Nicky. It was all bullshit.”

  Nicky’s eyes got wide. “Oh, shit.”

  “That’s right, Nicky. Oh shit.” Maybe a dozen cockroaches scuttled around the perimeter of the room. Grip bit down on his anger, pointed the gun at a group of roaches but didn’t pull the trigger.

  “Who put you up to it?”

  “What?” Nicky’s hands were shaking.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Nicky. Who—” Grip was stopped mid-sentence by the sound of footsteps coming in the front door. They stayed frozen like that for a moment. From below, someone called out, “Detective Grip.” Grip recognized Zwieg’s voice.

  He heard footsteps advance up the stairs, and hazarded a peek out the door. Zwieg was in the hallway, walking unhurriedly in Grip’s direction. Grip ducked back into the room, confused.

  Zwieg stepped into the room and took in the situation. Grip kept his gun on Patridis, but understood that his control of the situation had slipped.

  “Put the gun down, detective,” Zwieg said in a tone of disgust.

  Grip lowered his gun. Zwieg’s presence made it unnecessary, anyway.

  “Nicky,” Zwieg said. “Screw.”

  “Hold on a sec—” Grip protested.

  Zwieg turned on him, “Shut up, Tor.” He looked at Patridis, again. “You deaf, Nicky? Get the fuck out of here.”

  Patridis looked nervously from Zwieg to Grip and then hustled out the door. Grip noticed that he didn’t even bother to put on his shoes.

  They waited in silence, giving Nicky time to get down the stairs. Grip tried to keep his anger under control.

  “Detective—” Zwieg started.

  “What the fuck is going on? That little asshole lied to me. He fed me false information.”

  “Don’t take that tone with me, Tor.”

  “I didn’t realize that we were in the practice of letting our snitches get away with lying to us.”

  “Shut up and listen to me. Nicky might have lied to you in the details, but his information is good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you are to proceed as if his information was accurate.”

  “With all due respect, Lieutenant, I’m not sure that makes sense.”

  “Are you being insubordinate, detective?”

  “No, but I don’t see how pursuing a—”

  “No, you don’t see. But that’s what you’ll do.”

  Grip
stared at Zwieg. There was a professional hierarchy between them, but also a personal power relationship, and in that one Grip did not feel inferior. They were already way beyond normal police protocol. He thought they had entered into another realm altogether, one in which he didn’t have to respect Zwieg’s authority.

  “We’ll see.”

  Zwieg snorted a laugh. “Is that right, Tor?” He reached beneath his jacket and Grip flinched. “Don’t get excited. I’m just reaching for an envelope.”

  Grip watched Zwieg pull a white envelope from his pocket.

  “What’s that?”

  “This is my insurance that I can count on you to continue your investigation.”

  Grip laughed. “Is that right?”

  Zwieg handed the envelope to Grip. “Take a look, Tor, then see if you’re still laughing.”

  The envelope wasn’t sealed, and he pulled out three photographs. He stole a glance at Zwieg who smiled smugly.

  The first photo was of a type familiar to Grip, a surveillance shot taken with a telephoto lens. In it, Grip and his former partner Morphy, were approaching a small house on a city block. Grip could see the address. He began to sweat.

  The second photo had been taken just a few moments later, and in it Morphy leaned back against the front of the house next to the door while Grip hunched over the doorknob, picking the lock. The final shot had them leaving the house.

  As Grip stared at Zwieg, he couldn’t conceal his shock. “You knew about this all along? You’ve had these the whole time?”

  “I have, Tor. I kept my mouth shut before, knowing that a day like today might come. We were staking out that house, Tor. We knew that’s where some of the People’s Union people were meeting. When they came to me, during the investigation, to ask if we’d seen anything, I said we hadn’t, that whoever it was that got in must have slipped in the back somehow. I respected the code, Tor. That’s why you and Morphy—god rest his soul—were never caught.”

  “But now …”

  Zwieg mimicked hurt feelings. “Tor, I’ll still respect the code, as long as you do your part.”

  “Continue the investigation?”

  “Continue the investigation,” Zwieg affirmed. “When you’ve completed it, I’ll give you the photos. Don’t worry about Patridis—just because he lied doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the big picture. You’ve done good work. Don’t let one lying snitch get you off track.”

  Grip wasn’t sure that he believed him, but Zwieg wasn’t leaving him a choice.

  37

  THE CAMPUS OF CITY COLLEGE COULD EASILY HAVE BEEN MISTAKEN FOR a working-class neighborhood whose best days were fifty years past. Even on bright days, the buildings were weather-worn and dour. Today, with everything gray and damp, the place radiated gloom. The students here didn’t carry themselves with the confidence of the elect like the kids at the Tech: they were the children of immigrants, working people, Negroes. They walked to class among derelicts, shatteringly loud road work, groups of hoodlums who almost blended in.

  Frings walked from his cab to a twelve-story building. A guard stood by the door, staring down the students as they walked past him into the lobby. Frings nodded as he passed, but received no reply. A queue had formed in front of a bank of four elevators. The one on the far left arrived and disgorged a dozen kids. The queue for the elevator parted to let Frings on first, a deference that he found a little disconcerting, but he stepped into the elevator and leaned in a corner, giving his cane-arm a rest.

  He’d been surprised that morning to receive a call at the office from Ebanks, who had sounded distracted over the phone. Ebanks said that he realized he wasn’t going to be able to talk Frings into trying LSD, but he wondered if Frings might want to see how some people he knew were using it in interesting and—in his words—revolutionary ways. He seemed to think that his friends would be enthusiastic to have Frings present. They were apparently concerned about the New City Project as well, and the LSD experience, Ebanks explained, was some kind of reaction to the transformation of the City. Though it was a strange offer, Frings was intrigued enough to accept.

  First, though, he needed to talk with Leonard Toth.

  PSYCHOLOGY, LIKE MOST OF THE CASH-STRAPPED DEPARTMENTS AT CITY College, was populated mostly by adjunct faculty who taught a class or two a semester, but had offices and practices elsewhere. Closed doors ran along both sides of the empty corridor. Most of the students had stayed in the elevator for higher floors. The echoes of his footsteps preceded him down the hall.

  He found the door with a plate bearing Toth’s name. He knocked.

  The voice from inside was tentative. “Who is it?”

  “My name’s Frank Frings.”

  A moment passed. “Come in.”

  Frings opened the door on a bare office, beige tiled floors, bare off-white walls, a metal desk in front of a dirty window, and behind it a small man with short, curly, brown hair, wearing a white oxford cloth shirt and a blue and yellow diagonally striped tie. The man’s eyes darted behind round glasses—from Frings to past his shoulder and back again.

  “Close the door.”

  Frings stepped in and closed the door behind him. He didn’t see a chair, so he leaned against the wall, taking the weight off his bad leg.

  Toth was looking out his filthy window to the street. “You come here alone?” he asked, his back to Frings.

  Frings was surprised by the question. “Yes, of course.” He looked over the files on Toth’s desk, but everything had been turned face down.

  Toth turned away from the window, sniffed, sat down in his chair. “I recognize you.”

  Frings nodded, not sure what to say.

  “Newspaper man. What brings you here?”

  “Simon Ledley.”

  “Ah, shit.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Toth’s eyes were wide, as if he had spotted something fascinating and potentially dangerous. “It can’t be anything good, can it, you coming to see me about Dr. Ledley all these years later?”

  Frings put his hand out in what he hoped was a calming gesture. “It’s nothing that should trouble you. I’m just trying to track down someone who took part in one of the projects you ran with Ledley at the Tech.”

  This didn’t seem to reassure him. “That I ran with Ledley? I didn’t run anything. I took orders.”

  “Okay,” Frings said. “I get it. But I’m still looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Sol Elia.”

  Toth sighed. “I haven’t been in touch with him since the project ended.”

  “Which project?”

  “You need to ask Dr. Ledley about that.”

  “He’s been … reluctant to talk.”

  Toth laughed without much humor. “I bet he has. I can’t talk either. I signed assurances.”

  Frings nodded, smiling. “I know. This is just between the two of us. I’m just trying to find Sol, that’s all. There’s no reason for anyone to be the wiser.”

  “You’re a newspaper reporter. Your job is to get it out there.”

  “Not on this one. I’m just looking for Sol. A favor for a friend.”

  Toth shook his head. “I can’t tell you about the project, and I have no idea where Sol Elia is.”

  “Listen, I understand your reluctance; I honestly do. But as far as I can tell, you’re the only one who can help me. And I’m not leaving without some information.”

  Toth was breathing deeply. “Or what?”

  Frings sighed. He preferred not to have to resort to coercion, but Toth seemed set on being uncooperative, and Frings thought he’d be susceptible to pressure. “Or I start digging into what you’re doing here, what you did at the Tech. You want that kind of scrutiny, Lenny? Are you clean?”

  “Shit.” Toth stared at his desk. “Fuck. Okay, look, I can’t tell you much, I signed assurances, they’ll find out. But I can tell you who was involved, who the subjects were. But you didn’t get those names from me, right? It didn’t
come from me. Shit.”

  Frings pulled a reporter’s pad and pen from his jacket pocket. Toth was clearly terrified about divulging these names, which didn’t necessarily surprise Frings, though the intensity of Toth’s fear did. Frings wondered if he was prone to this kind of all-consuming panic, or if there really was something to be afraid of.

  Toth had his head in his hands.

  Frings tossed the notebook on the desk.

  “No. No way am I putting this down in my writing. There’s a limit.”

  “Okay. Okay. No problem.” He picked up the pad. “Go ahead, I’ll take notes.

  Toth closed his eyes, exhaled loudly. “Okay, there were twelve of them.”

  38

  DORMAN CARRIED HIS BRIEFCASE DOWN THE STEPS INSIDE CITY HALL, nodding now and then to a face he recognized. The great lobby seemed to encourage hushed conversation, but even the low voices echoed along with footsteps to create a hollow sound.

  He shot a quick smile at a man he thought he recognized, sitting on one of the waiting benches and reading the News-Gazette. He acknowledged the guards at the door with a quick see-you-fellows-later and then walked into the brisk outdoors. He turned to see if he should hold the door, but no one was coming. But he did see that the man with the newspaper had stood up and was now walking in his direction. The man was Dorman’s height, wearing a heavy tweed coat and a wool cap. Dorman let go of the door and descended the granite steps quickly, his eye on a cab that was just now depositing a young man in an Army uniform and a well-dressed young woman. He raised his hand for the hack to wait, but stopped briefly on the sidewalk to look behind him. The man was almost to the bottom step and moving purposefully toward him.

  Dorman waved the hack away and the cab darted out into traffic. Dorman now recognized the man—a guy named Stanley Reuther, another neighborhood leader, this one at the western edge of the Heights, part of the area that had been promised to Gerald Svinblad.

  “Hiya, Phil,” Reuther said. Reuther was a bit older than Dorman, which made him a hell of a lot younger than most of the neighborhood activists that Dorman dealt with. He was aggressive too, though Dorman wasn’t convinced that he was as smart as he was energetic.