Dead Man’s Footsteps

48

Ronnie was drunk. He walked unsteadily past low-rise red-brick apartment buildings, pulling his bags behind him along the sidewalk, which was pitch-poling like the deck of a boat. His mouth was dry and his head felt as if it was clamped in a steadily tightening vice. He should have eaten something, he knew. He would get some food later, after he had checked in and stored his luggage.

In his left hand he held a crumpled bar receipt, on the back of which his new best friend – whose name he had already forgotten – had written an address and drawn a map. It was five in the afternoon. A helicopter flew low overhead. There was an unpleasant smell of burning in the air. Was there a fire somewhere?

Then he realized it was the same smell as earlier, when he had been in Manhattan. Dense and cloying, it seeped into his clothes and into the pores of his skin. He was breathing it in, deep lungfuls of it.

At the end of the road he squinted at the map. It appeared to be telling him to turn right at the next crossing. He passed several shops with signs in Cyrillic, then Federal Savings, which had a hole-in-the-wall cash machine. He stopped, tempted for a moment to draw out whatever his cards would allow, but that would not be smart, he realized. The machine would record the time of the transaction. He walked on. Past more storefronts. On the far side of the street a limp banner hung, screen-printed with the words, KEEP BRIGHTON BEACH CLEAN.

It began to dawn on him just how deserted the street was. There were cars parked on either side, but now there were no people. The shops were almost entirely empty too. It was as if the entire suburb was at a party to which he had not been invited.

But he knew they were all at home, glued to their television sets. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, someone in the bar had said.

He passed a dimly lit store with a sign outside, MAIL BOX CITY, and stopped.

Inside, to the left, he could see a long counter. To the right were rows and rows of metal boxes. At the far end of the store a young man with long black hair sat hunched over an internet terminal. At the counter, an elderly, grizzled man in cheap clothes was carrying out some kind of transaction.

Ronnie was starting to sober up, he realized. Thinking more clearly. Thinking that this place might be useful for his plans. He walked on, counting the streets to his left. Then, following his directions, he turned left, into a run-down residential street. The houses here looked as if they had been constructed from broken bits of Lego. They were two- and three-storey, semi-detached, no two halves the same. There were steps up to front doors, awnings and doors where there should have been garages; pantiles, crazy brickwork and shabby plasterwork facings, and mismatching windows that looked as if they had been bought in assorted job lots.

At the first intersection the map told him to turn left into a narrow street called Brighton Path 2. He walked past two white Chevy Suburbans parked outside a double garage with both doors covered in graffiti, and a row of single-storey dwellings, then made a right into an even more run-down street of semis. He reached No. 29. Both halves of the house were the colour of pre-cast concrete. A torn poster was wrapped around a telegraph pole outside. But he barely noticed. He looked up the grimy steps and saw, in red letters on a small white board nailed to the door lintel, SRO.

He climbed the steps, hefting his bags, and rang the bell. Moments later a blurred figure appeared behind the frosted glass and the door opened. A flat-chested waif of a girl, dressed in a grubby smock dress and flip-flops, stared out at him. She had dirty, straggly fair hair like tendrils of seaweed and a wide, doll-like face with large, round, black-rimmed eyes. She said nothing.

‘I’m looking for a room,’ Ronnie said. ‘I was told you have a room.’

He noticed a payphone on the wall beside her and a strong smell of damp and old carpet. Somewhere in the building he could hear the news on television. Today’s events.

She said something that he did not understand. It sounded like Russian but he wasn’t sure.

‘Do you speak English?’

She raised a hand, indicating that he should wait, then disappeared back into the house. After a little while a huge shaven-headed man of about fifty appeared. He was wearing a collarless white shirt, grubby black chinos held up with braces, and trainers, and he stared at Ronnie as if he was a turd blocking a lavatory.

‘Room?’ he said in a guttural accent.

‘Boris,’ Ronnie said, suddenly remembering his new best friend’s name. ‘He told me to come here.’

‘How long?’

Ronnie shrugged. ‘A few days.’

The man stared at him. Assessing him. Maybe checking out that he wasn’t some kind of terrorist.

‘Thirty dollars a day. OK?’

‘Fine. Grim day, today.’

‘Bad day. Most bad day. Whole world crazy. From 12 o’clock to 12 o’clock. OK? Understood. You pay each day in advance. You stay after midday, you pay another day.’

‘Understood.’

‘Cash?’

‘Yep, fine.’

The house was bigger than it had looked from the outside. Ronnie followed the man through the hall and along a corridor, past walls the colour of nicotine with a couple of cheap, framed prints of stark landscapes. The man stopped, disappeared into a room for a moment, then emerged with a key with a wooden tag. He unlocked the door opposite.

Ronnie followed him into a gloomy room which stank of stale cigarette smoke. It had a window looking on to the wall of the next house along. There was a small double bed with a pink candlewick spread that had several stains on it and two cigarette burn holes. In one corner there was a washbasin, next to a shower with a cracked plastic yellow curtain. A beat-up armchair, a chest of drawers, a couple of cheap-looking wooden tables, an old television set with an even older-looking remote and a carpet the colour of pea soup completed the furnishing.

‘Perfect,’ Ronnie said. And at this moment, for him, it was.

The man folded his arms and looked at him expectantly. Ronnie pulled out his wallet and paid for three days in advance. He was handed the key, then the man departed, closing the door behind him.

Ronnie checked the room out. There was a half-used bar of soap in the shower with what looked suspiciously like a brown pubic hair nestling on it. The image on the television was fuzzy. He switched on all the lights, drew the curtain and sat down on the bed, which sagged and clanked. Then he mustered a smile. He could put up with this for a few days. No worries.

Hell, this was the first day of the rest of his life!

Leaning forward, he lifted his briefcase off the top of his overnight bag. He removed all the folders containing the proposal and supporting data he had spent weeks preparing for Donald Hatcook. Finally, he reached the clear plastic wallet, closed with a pop stud, at the very bottom. He extricated the red folder that he had not risked leaving in his room at the W, not even in the safe. And opened it.

His eyes lit up.

‘Hello, my beauties,’ he said.