I followed him down more aisles to the back of the store, where his copier, phone, and fax were, in a little kiosk near the refrigerator section. There was a swinging door to a back room beside it. He pushed it open and reached in and rolled out a metal bucket and a mop. He started mopping the floor.
“I’m not interested in all the business you do in a week,” I said. “I’m interested in somebody who sent a fax from here eight days ago. It was a twelve-page fax, to a local number. Is that longer than what your customers usually send? Do a lot of them send faxes locally? Do you remember who sent faxes eight days ago? Do you keep any records?” He stopped mopping and looked at me for the first time since I’d walked in.
“You’re not a cop,” he said, as if he hadn’t already said it a half-dozen times.
“I’m not,” I affirmed yet again. He mopped in silence for a while, and then stopped.
“Pay me,” he said.
“Why should I pay you? You keep telling me you don’t know anything,” I pointed out. He chuckled a little at that.
“Yeah, yeah, but since you’re not a cop, you can charge in some expenses, so you can pay me. Besides, maybe I know something.” He went back to his mopping.
“Tell me something, and I’ll pay you what it’s worth,” I suggested. I was smiling too.
“Okay, okay,” he said, laughing, “but no less than a hundred.”
“No less than fifty,” I offered. He stopped working and leaned on the mop.
“Okay. First off, you’d be surprised what people send from here. Long letters, big documents, local numbers, long distance. They do all kinds of things. I don’t keep records. But I remember about a week ago
… maybe the day you’re interested in… this bag lady comes in. She stinks to high heaven, got maybe fifty sweaters on, and these high-top sneakers that are five sizes too big. I’m thinking, she wants to sell me cans or something, and I’m about to ask her to leave. But she didn’t have cans. She had a long fax to send. I’m pretty sure it was to a local number. See, that’s different. I don’t usually get street people in here sending faxes.”
“You know who she is?” I asked. He wrinkled his brow elaborately, like I was crazy.
“You ever see her before? In the neighborhood?” I asked.
He thought about this. “Maybe yes,” he said. “Maybe in the park, across from the hospital, over by the playground. I walk by there most every day. I could’ve seen her around there, or maybe it was a different bag lady.”
“Besides the sweaters and the sneakers, what did she look like?”
He thought some more. “She was white. She was old. I mean, they all look old, but she really was old. Maybe sixty, older maybe. With a lot of frizzy gray hair sticking out.” He gestured with his hands out by the sides of his head. “She was pretty short, five foot one or two, but round. I don’t know how much of that was sweaters. What else? Her high-tops, they were blue… really dirty, but like electric blue.”
I was impressed, and I told him so. I gave him two fifties, plus seventy-five cents for a cup of the strong coffee he had just brewed, and left him to his cleaning.
Finding the bodega on Madison and 98th Street had been easy. One of the reverse directories on the Internet had taken the phone number on Pierro’s fax and given me an address on Madison. At nine a.m. I’d taken the Lexington Avenue subway up to 96th and walked west. It was a beautiful fall morning, clear and cold, yesterday’s rain not even a memory. I saw the corner storefront, and the English and Spanish signs in the window, advertising phone, fax, and copying services, and figured that was the place. I hadn’t expected much, really. Blackmailers don’t typically give their phone numbers out too freely. On the other hand, I try never to overestimate anyone’s intelligence, and it was a lead I had to follow.
Coffee in hand, I went around the corner to Fifth Avenue, walked north a couple of blocks to Mt. Sinai Hospital, crossed the street, and went into Central Park. I entered just above the East Meadow and near a small playground tucked up against Fifth. I was in a rectangle of the park that was bounded to the west by the Park Drive, to the north by the 102nd Street entrance to the drive, to the east by Fifth Avenue, and to the south by the 97th Street transverse. There were only a few miles of footpaths running through the area, but I was hoping not to have to cover them all. Based on what my friend at the bodega had said, I decided to work my way out from the playground.
Finding someone living on the streets is either pretty easy or nearly impossible. It’s a question of habit. There are some street people who, regardless of how disturbed or detached from reality, follow routines. They travel in defined territories, along consistent routes. They sleep in the same places and eat in the same places; they go to the same spots to bathe, to find clothes, to find money, and to get medication. If you know one of the stations along their route, and you have enough time to wait, they will often come to you. There are others, though, who follow no discernible pattern. They roam widely, sleeping and eating wherever and whenever opportunity presents itself. These people are almost impossible for one person to find without some luck or divine intervention. I hoped that the blue-sneaker lady was a creature of habit.
At this hour, the playground was almost empty, just a few moms bundled against the morning chill, watching their preschool kids, who were oblivious to it. No street people in the playground or on the benches nearby. I walked north. On the path that wound its way to 102nd Street, I met some runners, many dog walkers, and some more mothers with strollers, but no blue-sneaker lady. I walked west along the Park Drive access road, and picked up another path headed south. This one was quieter and less traveled. The traffic sounds from Fifth and from the transverse were muted to a background susurrus. I could hear the bare tree limbs rubbing in the small breeze, and the mangy gray squirrels were loud as they bounded through the fallen leaves. A few tough sparrows hopped around on the path just ahead of me, looking to mug me for breadcrumbs, and even the sound of their tiny talons on the pavement was distinct. Beneath the soot and the exhaust fumes, I could even make out, faintly, the loamy smell of autumn. I finished my coffee and wished I had another.
I rounded a bend and came upon two men picking carefully through a trash can. They each wore many layers of wrinkled clothes, in shades of dust. One was tall, with a graying beard; the other wore a brown knit watch cap. They were sifting through the garbage for cans, bottles, and other recyclables that could be exchanged for cash. They worked efficiently, without talking. When they realized that I wasn’t passing by, they paused and straightened up, looking me over warily. I was wearing jeans, a pair of beat-up paddock boots, and a leather jacket over a black turtleneck. I didn’t think I looked particularly threatening, but they might’ve taken me for a cop, or somebody who wanted to take something from them. I stopped while I was still about ten feet away, so as not to make them more nervous.
“I don’t want to bother you guys, but maybe you can help me. I’m looking for somebody. A woman who hangs out in the park around here. She might live on the street. Around sixty, short, kind of round. Has bright blue sneakers. You guys seen her around?” I asked.
The shorter guy stopped looking at me and bent to his work again. The taller one answered in a clipped, midwestern voice.
“We’re up here working is all. Don’t know anybody up here. Saw some people down that way. They might know.” He pointed down the path, to where it forked off to the west, and went back to work also. I thanked them and headed west.
I followed the footpath as it curved through a wooded area and led up a rise. I heard whoops and shrieks as I neared the top. I looked down toward the East Meadow and the source of the noise.
“Shit,” I said to myself.
About fifty yards down the path, near a curving row of benches, four teenage boys were hassling a group of street people. The street people were huddled together on a bench. There were five of them, and they all looked older. The boys circled and swooped around them, yelling, posturing, gestur
ing obscenely, and punctuating all this with kicks and tugs at the plastic bags and paper sacks that the older folks clung to desperately. A shopping cart was tipped on its side nearby, its cargo of canfilled plastic bags strewn around the benches. The largest of the boys was taking experimental jabs at the head of one of the old men, working himself up to something more serious. One of the old women wore dirty, electric blue high-tops.
“Shit.” As a rule, I dislike teenage boys. It’s a mean-spirited view, I know, and probably an artifact of being a cop. But too often they seem to come in only a few varieties: combinations of sullen, whiny, hostile, self-destructive, and whacked-out, or the ever-popular “all of the above.” And too many of them are armed. Unfortunately, I was not.
It was best to do it quickly. I headed down the path. As I approached, I could see that all four of the kids were white. Two were blond, two were dark. The two blond kids were younger, sixteen or so; the other two might have been eighteen. But they were all good-sized. Three of them were just under six feet and meaty, though still a little gawky, as if not quite full grown. The fourth one had gotten there. He was about an inch taller than me and outweighed me by maybe twenty pounds. He looked heavy in the arms, shoulders, and chest.
They were an interesting brand of urban outlaw. Beneath their ’hood affectations-the baggy pants and skewed ball caps, the hand signals and the heavy street dialect-they were preppies. They were well scrubbed and well groomed, and their clothes were expensive and clean. They all wore button-down shirts. I caught a glimpse of a crested blazer under one parka, a school uniform, though I couldn’t make out which school. One of them had a plaited fabric Nantucket bracelet on his wrist; two others wore rep ties and expensive watches. They were ridiculous wannabes, but I was still wary of weapons.
They paused when they saw me coming. They expected me either to turn back or hurry by, pretending not to notice. I did neither. I came down the path at a slow walk, looking directly at them. They were puzzled, and the three smaller ones looked to the big kid for a lead they could follow. He was closest to me, on my right, as I walked along. The others were arrayed behind him near the benches.
“Hey, ese, what the fuck you looking at, motherfucker?” the big one said. I stopped and stared at him. He was pumped up from beating on old people, so he didn’t pause to think. He stepped toward me and started to raise his hands, maybe to push me, maybe just to get in my face. Whatever. I backhanded him across the mouth with my right hand, then pivoted and drove my left fist into his kidney as he staggered off the path. He went down on his knees, and I kicked him in the balls from behind. He went forward on his face with a hard thud. He made little rasping sounds and clawed at the dirt, but otherwise didn’t move much. It happened so quickly that the other three kids just stood there. But I didn’t. I stepped over the big one and came at them.
The two younger ones were smarter than they looked. They ran. It was the right move for them, and they were good at it-fast out of the blocks. The other one, a ferrety-looking kid with pale blue eyes, was stupid. He had a hunting knife with a six-inch blade in his hand, held low against his thigh, and though he had no idea what to do with it, he wanted to do something. I caught his wrist in my hand just as he began to raise the knife, and held it tight. Then I stepped in very close and put my thumb over his eye and pressed. Hard. He started to struggle and twist away and tried to hit me with his free hand, but I was too close and he didn’t know how to do it. I pressed harder still. He screamed and dropped the knife. I pushed him away, and as he staggered back I slapped him openhanded on the face and head a half-dozen times. Then I grabbed him by the collar and threw him down next to his pal.
“Nice and quiet, ladies, while I see some ID,” I said. The big one showed no ability to move much, but I kicked the ferrety kid lightly in his side and head to reinforce the message. I patted them down. I took wallets from both of them, and another knife from the ferrety kid. Nice. I stuck the weapons in my jacket.
I went through the wallets and between the two of them came up with five fake IDs, nearly three hundred dollars in cash, three condoms, four credit cards, and two cash cards. I also found a nickel bag of pot, two joints, and what might have been two tabs of blotter acid. Finally, I found some real ID-a driver’s license and a learner’s permit. I held on to the cash, the dope, the weapons, and the real IDs, and tossed the rest on the ground. Then I spoke to them.
“Let’s see, we’ve got Cross, age eighteen, and Simms, age seventeen. You must be the baddest boys on the Upper East Side.” Simms, the little ferrety one, tensed up like he was going to bolt, so I put my boot on the back of his head and pressed his face into the dirt a little. As much as I enjoyed terrorizing violent brats, I needed to end this before anyone else came down the path.
“You ladies know what a deep pocket is? Never heard the phrase? Well, it’s a technical term lawyers use for the parents of assholes like you. And it’s the place I’m going to take a big fucking pile of cash from, if you or your buddies come near these people again. On top of which, I’ll personally hold you down so these folks can take a straight razor to your balls-assuming you’ve got any. You hearing me, girls?” I got something that was halfway between a sob and a sullen grunt from Cross; from Simms I got nothing.
“Off to school, now,” I said, and gave each of them a sharp kick in the rear. They yelped and scrambled up, gathering their stuff. The older kid ran off, and when he’d gotten about twenty yards away, started shouting obscenities. Simms backed away from me slowly and spoke.
“Give me my money and the rest of my shit,” he said, sullenly.
“I don’t think so, homeboy. Now run along before you get hurt,” I said. His eye was red and bleary, and he looked at me with a seething hatred that he had trouble putting into words. Finally he settled for “Fuck your mother,” and turned and ran up the path. Such fine boys; their parents must be very proud.
During this time the street people had said not a word, and when I turned back to the benches, I saw why. They were gone. Or nearly gone. One woman remained. She’d righted the shopping cart and was collecting the cans scattered on the grass. Her blue high-tops flapped with every step she took. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“I’m not pressing charges against those bastards. I don’t want anything to do with ’em. I just hope they don’t come around again next week looking for payback.” She paused as she hoisted a large bag into the wagon. “I guess I should say thanks; so thanks. But you should’ve just shot ’em, the little pricks.” She was round, indeed-built like a beer keg, in fact, and it wasn’t all sweaters. Her crumpled, gnomish face was barely visible beneath a wild bush of gray hair. Her voice sounded much younger than she looked. She had some sort of accent, but I couldn’t place it.
“I don’t have a gun on me today,” I said. “Maybe next time.” She gave a little snort at this.
“Don’t cops always have guns?” she asked.
“Yeah, but I’m not a cop.”
“Just a good citizen, huh? We’re just lucky you came by? You look like a cop to me.” Everything she said was steeped in a deep cynicism. I liked her.
“I used to be a cop. And I didn’t just come by. I was actually looking for you.” She didn’t like this. She stopped working, but did not look up at me. When she started again she was tense, ready to flee at any moment.
“Look, I’m not here to give you trouble, and I’ll pay you for your time. I just want to ask you a couple of questions,” I explained in my best sincere, nonthreatening manner. She was having none of it. She laughed derisively.
“ ‘I just want to ask you a couple of questions.’ Nothing good ever started with that phrase, mister,” she said.
“Here’s almost three hundred bucks, for nothing-whether you talk to me or not.” I held out the wad of cash I’d taken from the kids.
“Yeah, I see how much that cost you,” she said, but she was looking at the money.
&nbs
p; “I’ll throw in a hundred more, for five minutes.” She squinted at me and at the money, still suspicious.
“I hope they’re easy questions. My mind’s not what it used to be,” she said, and took the cash.
“There’s a bodega on Ninety-eighth and Madison, where you can make phone calls and send faxes. Did you send a fax from there eight days ago?” She knew what I was talking about, but she hesitated. Not nervous, just cautious.
“I know the place. And, yeah, I was in there with some stuff to send last week. Guy paid me fifty bucks to do it. Twenty-five up front, twentyfive when I brought him back the little slip that says it went through.”
“Did you know the guy, ever see him before?” I asked.
“Nope. Just came up to me in the park. I was sitting over near the playground. He walks up and asks if I want to make some money,” she answered.
“What did he look like?”
“He was like you,” she said, as if that told me all I needed to know.
“What do you mean he was like me? He was my height? My age? My hair color? His face looked like mine?”
“No, no. He was taller than you, and older, maybe forty-five or fifty. Built like you, though, kind of lean and wiry, but bigger in the shoulders. And not so pretty,” she said, and laughed a little.
“That’s very nice, thank you. Then what did you mean when you said he was like me?”
“I mean he acted like you-he acted like a cop,” she explained, as if I was a little slow.
I thought about this for a while. “What makes you say that? Did he say something? Did you see something?”
“You can just tell. Like with you and those shitheads. You smacked them around good, but you weren’t mad or anything. It’s like you didn’t care one way or another about them, like they were just things. And the way you talked to them-you needled them, but mostly to show them you could. The fax guy, he acted the same way to this old juicer who was lying on the bench next to mine. The old wino hears this guy talking to me, so he shuffles on over, looking to make a buck. This guy just stares at him for a while, all cold and scary. Then he puts his hand on the wino’s shoulder and does something that makes the old guy go white as a sheet, practically drops to his knees. Then he tells the old guy, real matter-of-fact, to get the fuck out of his sight before he gets his arm torn off. Like you with those kids, see?” I saw. It’s always nice to hear that you come across like a psychopath.
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