Hipster Death Rattle Page 7

“All very illegal. So what did she do?”

  “She complained and complained, and they did nothing. So she came to us, and we were able to get the heat and water turned back on, and to get them to call an exterminator.”

  “But that wasn’t the end of it.”

  “No,” Magaly said, obviously just warming. “Wait till you hear this. This was the worst thing. There was a fire in her apartment—a very suspicious fire—and she had to leave for a year and live with her sister till they repaired the damage.”

  “Did they repair it?”

  “Ha! No. But she went back anyway. The kitchen ceiling and cabinets were burned, and it stank like smoke. But this lady was like a tiger. She went in there and cleaned it up as best she could. That was her home, dammit.”

  “And that’s when she vanished?”

  “A few weeks after moving back in, she was going to a party to celebrate her birthday. But she never showed up. Can you believe it? Disappeared on her birthday. No one ever heard from her again.”

  “And Patrick did some stories on her. That I know.”

  “Well, she lived in his building. He took it upon himself to try to find out what happened.”

  Tony rolled his eyes. “Trying for a Pulitzer.”

  “Well, at least he tried. But I think after a while he gave up too. The police never found anything, but if you ask me it was the building owners who got rid of her. But there was never any proof. Now the place has been renovated—barely—and it’s being rented at $2,100.”

  “Who owns that building?”

  “It’s co-owned. Tomasello Management is one owner. They manage or own half the buildings in the neighborhood and Greenpoint. Italian. That’s Mafia. You know that has to be Mafia.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Maybe some of these guys have watched The Godfather too much, but that’s it.”

  “And the other owner of the building is Elias Litvinchouk.”

  “That name is familiar,” Tony said, flipping through his memory. “But it couldn’t be the same person.”

  “Are you going to follow up on the story?”

  “Sure. A little anniversary story. I’ll get a couple new quotes. Easy money.”

  “No, no, I mean you have to find out what happened to her?”

  “Why would I do that? How would I do that?”

  “You used to want to do this stuff. Without Patrick around, who is going to bother? The Daily News doesn’t care. The New York Times doesn’t care. The New York Post certainly doesn’t care.”

  “Listen, Magaly, I’m a hack. I write about high school softball games and gallery openings—oh, and I do horoscopes—for a neighborhood rag that exists more to run local real estate ads than anything else.”

  “And you waste your time playing in the park every day.”

  “What more could anyone want out of life?”

  “What the hell, Chino? This is important. This is your community.” Her voice was rising. This was very familiar to Tony.

  “I’m my community,” he said.

  “What happened to you? All you want to do is play with your balls now.”

  “Funny.”

  “I expected to see your byline in the New York Times. I look for it all the time.”

  “Nothing happened. I’ve always been this way.”

  “No, you weren’t. You wanted to make a difference and write about real issues. What happened?”

  “I grew up. Have you not been paying attention to the state of the world? There are no journalists you can trust. There are no causes to champion. There’s no way to win.”

  “So you don’t believe in anything?”

  “I believe that this beer is flat. And I would like another not-flat beer. That’s what I believe.” Tony tried to get the waitress’s attention, but she couldn’t see him behind all the dangling artwork.

  “You’re just cynical.”

  “‘Mordacitas modus iniucundus veritatis dicendae est.’ ‘Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.’”

  She shook her head. “Who is that? Aristotle?”

  “Aristotle? No, Lillian Hellman,” Tony said.

  “Poor baby. Can’t change the world in a day.”

  “The world never changes.”

  “Somebody has to do something,” she said.

  “That somebody is not me.”

  Tony was grateful that the food arrived then.

  After they ate, Magaly paid for the meal. “I invited, so I pay,” she said.

  “If there’s a gene for pride, and there probably is, I don’t have it. I won’t argue.”

  Before they left, Tony took pictures with his phone of the people still crowding the aisles.

  “Pictures?” Magaly said.

  “I’m sentimental.”

  Outside, Magaly pointed out the additional street sign under the Grand Street sign. “Borinquen Plaza,” she said, sighing dramatically. “How long before they change that?”

  They walked slowly to Magaly’s building on Driggs Avenue, a former theater renovated long ago into a tenement—the sole reminder of its history was a baroque sign (“Novelty Court”) carved in stone above the entryway. Twenty-nine units, no washer/dryers allowed.

  Magaly was quiet on the way, so Tony knew she was upset. But he didn’t have the magic words to make her feel better. He had never had them.

  Tony said, “You know this is the same building where Serpico was shot? Right in the kisser.”

  “I told you that years ago.”

  “Yeah, actually you did, didn’t you? Thank you for dinner, by the way.”

  “My pleasure. Well, have a good night, Chino. It was nice to see you again.” She kissed him on the cheek and went in through the gated door of the building.

  Tony watched her walk through the second gated door and down the marble hallway, her hair bouncing in the dim light. She looked twenty-two all over again, and he felt twenty-two all over again. Id est. Clumsy and foolish, that is. It made him want to kick himself in the balls.

  He walked home, hoping there was beer waiting in the fridge. To forget about Magaly. And because he’d been having trouble sleeping. He’d found that lately every time he closed his eyes, he saw Patrick’s shredded face.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Yogi Johnson sat on a plastic milk crate and exhaled slow plumes of wispy ganja smoke out of the back window. Blowing cannabis clouds outside was a habit he’d picked up while living with his second wife, who said she didn’t want their apartment to smell like roadkilled skunk or a seventeen-year-old’s basement cave. Or was that his first wife who’d said that? One was Elaine and the other was Ellen, so he got them confused all the time.

  It was something o’clock in the morning—he was vaguely sure it was still morning—and he was thinking he would head over to McCarren Park in a bit, see if anyone was around for a few games of pétanque.

  The window faced north to the low, flat horizon of Queens. Yogi lived in a one-bedroom railroad apartment in a three-story, pre-war row house covered in chocolate-milk-brown vinyl siding. Large windows! Bright and quiet! Great closet space! And down outside, in the building’s backyard and in the velvety summer heat, was Mr. McShane, the landlord and super, tending to his wilting garden.

  “One can’t grow flowers from a stone, Mr. McShane,” Yogi said to himself, then giggled. “There’s no way you’re going to harvest the joy. Better to let it rot and hope for something better with the next crop.”

  At that moment, the old man turned to look up, and Yogi leaped off the crate and onto the floor.

  “Fuck. Fuck!” he said and then he laughed, looking up at the ceiling, a long series of half-stifled giggles.

  When it passed, Yogi got up and relit his doobie. He ninja-snuck up on his window, crouched and sliding along the wall. He peeked out. The old man was at it again, ripping weeds out with his hands and shoving them into a giant black garbage bag.

  Mr. McShane had to be in his late seventies or early eighties, Yogi figured. The building h
ad been in McShane’s family for at least three or four or five generations, Yogi wasn’t sure, going back to the early 1900s. Yogi was proud of the old man for not going to Florida to die with all the rest of the retirees. Good for you. Hang in there. McShane’s grandpa had been a cop, Yogi remembered, so he came from tough-as-leather stock. That’s right, hold on, Mr. McShane, it’s your neighborhood. Hang on till it bleeds.

  Yogi was wondering if he had already finished all the cheese in the house and was going to go check when he noticed the old man gripping his chest and stomach.

  “Oh no!” Yogi said. “No no no no no. Heart attack? Could it be a heart attack? It has to be a heart attack.”

  The old man didn’t look so good. Not good at all. The sun was blazing, and there was no shade. He fell to his knees.

  “Get inside. Get inside already,” Yogi said, sucking up the last of the joint and getting up wobbily. When he looked back, Mr. McShane was on the ground, clutching his stomach.

  “Oh shit!” Yogi took a few strides toward his door, his legs feeling puffy and boneless, then he stopped with his hand on the knob. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” The old man’s front door downstairs would be locked. Only one way to get to him.

  Fire escape! Down the fire escape!

  Yogi wobbled back to the window and pulled it open all the way and lifted up the screen behind it. He moved his one rubbery leg, then the other onto the fire escape. It was hot under his bare feet, reminding him momentarily of that one time he went firewalking but got badly burned because the two people firewalking in front of him had stopped to take pictures. He was so upset he was ready to—and then he remembered Mr. McShane.

  “Hold on! Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.” He wobbled down one flight, then he lifted himself up and around to the ladder. It didn’t occur to him to unhook it from the top so he could lower it to the ground, so he just started climbing.

  “Don’t die, old man. Don’t die,” he said. But he had run out of ladder and dangled ten feet from the ground. “Fortune favors the foolhardy!” he said and let go, landing hard on his naked feet but then tumbling into an old barbecue grill and knocking it over. “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.”

  He got up and ran to Mr. McShane, who was lying on his back with his eyes open.

  “Oh god, don’t be dead, Mr. McShane. Are you dead?”

  “My stomach,” the old man said.

  “Your stomach? Then it’s not a heart attack. Is it indigestion then?”

  “Hurts all over.”

  Yogi took his old flip phone—the cheap, pay-as-you-go kind, the only kind he could afford—out of his back pocket. The front of it had a new crack in it from the fall. “Shit!” he said, but it still worked and he dialed 9-1-1.

  As he cradled Mr. McShane’s head in his lap, Yogi wondered if the old man would stop nagging him about late rent. Yogi didn’t live a normal, capitalist-consumerist lifestyle, so money was always a little hard to get together. Or maybe, just maybe, if whatever was happening to Mr. McShane was really, really bad and not just some bad calamari that he ate, the old man would even knock off a month or two of Yogi’s rent, just for saving his life.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Steven Pak got off the L train at the Bedford Avenue stop and walked slowly up the steps to the exit. He had worked late and afterward had gone out for a few drinks with the guys. His wife Erin let him go out one night per week, and it was a good arrangement. Good for him, good for their marriage. Still, it was only another six weeks to go before the baby arrived, and he felt guilty about having a good time.

  How many beers had he had? Three? Four? Six? He was supposed to stick to his usual limit of two pints of Guinness. Creamy Guinness. Beyond that, according to Erin, he became what she called an “atomic tomato face.”

  Steven paused at the top of the stairs and blinked. People kept bumping into him to get past, so he moved, swaying on the sidewalk.

  He didn’t want to leave his pregnant wife home alone, and so he hadn’t been out with his guy friends in months. But he had needed it. He did, he really did. He hadn’t been able to get the memory of that crazy night out of his mind: the man with the machete, hacking away—hacking away casually!—at that guy against the wall.

  Every night this week, every time he walked home, he would look down toward where it happened on Kent Avenue. Just a few, couple blocks from his building. He felt so guilty about not calling the police. Maybe the guy would have lived. Maybe an ambulance would have gotten there in time to save him.

  But Erin was right. She was always right. Why get involved? They were both too busy at work, and then the baby was on the way. And if they came forward now, they would get in trouble. They would get on the news. They’d get interviewed on Good Morning America. (Did they pay you to go on Good Morning America? They must, because why would you go on otherwise?) And all their friends would Facebook about it, and they would never stop asking them questions. Did you think about helping? Why didn’t you go over and do something? Not fight the slasher off—although half the people at work still thought he knew kung fu, the assholes—but at least scare him off, so you could have saved that Stoller guy. Why didn’t you do something?

  People would hate them.

  It would follow them for the rest of their lives.

  So they couldn’t say anything, couldn’t go to the police with a description, with details, because everyone would ask why they waited.

  People. Would. Hate. Them.

  Bedford Avenue was a beehive of people, a beehive that had been kicked over, and all the people were buzzing. Buzz buzz buzz. But when he turned onto North 7th, a mostly residential side street, the crowd thinned out. He was halfway down the block when he thought he heard the ticking of bicycle spokes.

  He turned. There were half a dozen bike riders at the corner. It could have been any one of them, although it had sounded closer.

  That was the other thing. Had the killer seen them? But even if he had, he didn’t know who they were. How would he ever find them? He’d had to stalk around the neighborhood every night, searching and searching through swarms of people. So why was he getting so paranoid?

  Steven walked carefully and deliberately down the block, weaving just a little, and heard it again. This time, he could see the bright lights on Bedford Avenue, but the street he was on was poorly lit. He could see nothing on the opposite side. It was draped in darkness.

  He kept walking. A little farther along, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye, a bike rider on the other side of the street, riding on the sidewalk and not the street. He couldn’t see a face, couldn’t see the bike very much either.

  But his heart began beating fast. He saw a bar a few feet ahead on the right and decided, yes, he would duck in there. Who would follow him in there with a bike? He went in and sat down at the bar and stared at the big front window. Some boy band song from the ’90s was playing on the radio.

  The bartender behind him asked what he wanted. Without thinking, he ordered another Guinness.

  He watched the window. His neck began to hurt, so he turned in his seat, but kept creeping his hand back to pick up the beer. Guinness was so creamy. Like a latte, only better and more loving.

  With his eyes on the window—seeing people walking by, one at a time, couples, or groups but no bike riders—he crept his hand behind him to reach for his beer. But instead, he knocked it over with a crash.

  “Whoa!” the bartender said.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry.” Steven blushed. He could feel his face was already flushed from the other beers. Atomic tomato face. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. It’s a bar. Happens all the time, my brother.”

  Steven helped him clean the mess with wads of napkins. He turned back to the window as soon as he could.

  Had he missed something?

  Well, sure, he could have missed a whole parade out there.

  What was he going to do? Stay there till the morning?

  His phone rang. Erin.<
br />
  “Where are you?”

  “I’m at—I don’t know the name of this bar.”

  “How much have you had to drink?”

  “Just, just my two pints.”

  “You’d better! Just kidding! So, when are you coming home, Pancake Panther?”

  “I’m having just one more here.”

  “Uh, one more?”

  “Sorry, it’s the guys, they’re in a partying mood.”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “Oh, you know, the regular group. Phil, Michael, John, Casey.”

  “Well, tell them you have a wife at home who you knocked up and who needs you home ASAP.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  “Tell them now! I want to hear it.”

  “All right.”

  “Hey, fellas,” Steven said to no one. He saw that the bartender was standing right there, polishing a glass. “I have a wife at home who needs me,” Steven said to the bartender.

  “Well, then you better go on home,” the bartender said.

  On the phone, Erin laughed loudly and said, “Who was that? Was that Casey?”

  “No, it was Phil.”

  “It didn’t sound like Phil.”

  “I’m on my way home now, honey. See you soon.”

  “Yay! Hey, could you bring me a cupcake before you get here.”

  “The bakery you like is closed. I mean, it’s probably closed by now.”

  “Oh, any old cupcake will do, as long as it’s good.”

  “Okay. I’ll get it. See you soon.”

  He watched the window for a long time. He left a twenty-dollar bill on the bar and didn’t look back for his change.

  Before he opened the door, he tapped “9-1-1” on his phone and held his thumb over the send button. When a couple walked by, he quickly exited the bar.

  He heard nothing and kept walking quickly up the block, staying close to the couple. They walked most of the way toward his complex.

  When he got to his street, he looked all the way down to the area where it had happened that crazy night. Nobody. No killers were there. No one rushing at him on a bike. Just people walking dogs and pushing strollers. Still, he ran across the street and didn’t stop until he got to the brilliantly illuminated vestibule of his building. He nodded to the doorman, who was not Angel tonight, for which Steven was very grateful. He didn’t need another reminder.