Another Part of the City

1

Going to be a cold one tonight, Sadie thought.

She didn’t know what the exact date was, never kept track of such things no more, but she knew it was December, and she knew it had to be getting close to Christmastime because of all the holiday trimmings in the store windows and all up and down the street.

They put up trimmings in the fall, too, down here, same kind of trimmings, hanging colored lights on metal arches that crossed over the streets from building to building. That was when they were celebrating some kind of Italian feast, they did that in October down here. Had to move out of her doorway when they celebrated that feast down here, whatever it was, ’cause there were stands all up and down the street selling food and running games of chance, like wheels of fortune and such, and there were people from all over the city down here. It wasn’t her feast, so she didn’t much care about it except that she couldn’t use her regular doorway when all the stands were up and all the streets were crowded with people.

The decorations were the same when it got to be Christmastime, except for the lampposts twined with ropes of spruce or something, and the wreaths hanging everywhere, still it was almost the same, one feast was pretty much like another. Christmas wasn’t her feast, neither, not no more it wasn’t. Christmas was you bought things for people and people bought things for you. Sadie didn’t have nobody to buy for no more, and nobody to buy her nothing.

The doorway she used all the time, winter and summer except when there was a feast down here, was a doorway used to be the front door of an olive oil company, but the man went out of business, oh, this must’ve been two, three years ago, and nobody took over the store, and now it was all boarded up, and nobody used it but her. She came back to the doorway every night along about this time, finished with her rounds by then, had her shopping bags full of scraps to eat and things to pick over, see if they was worth anything. Used to take the subway uptown before the fares went up so high, but now she mostly made her rounds along Canal Street before it got to be Chinatown; the Chinks never threw out nothing, cheap bastards. And sometimes she wandered over to Centre Street where all the big buildings were with the courthouses in them and all. You could sometimes find some good things in the garbage cans down there, lawyers threw away a lot of good stuff.

She was glad she’d picked up a lot of newspapers today, because tonight was going to be a real cold one, she could tell, and newspapers were good for wrapping around you, better than blankets, in fact, especially the New York Times. She never read the newspapers, didn’t give a damn about what was happening here in New York or anyplace else for that matter, just picked up the papers to wrap around her later if it got cold, like it was going to be tonight.

She made her nest with care, laying down the corrugated cardboard first, and then spreading the scraps of rags over that, and then putting her newspapers aside in a neat pile for when she’d use them later to wrap herself in. She put the heaviest of the shopping bags down on the pile of newspapers, case a wind blew up or something, she didn’t want to lose what she was going to wrap herself in, have the papers blowing all over the street. She dug into the other shopping bag for something to eat, and then made herself comfortable in the doorway, knees pulled up against her chest, long cotton skirt and black coat tucked between her legs, going to be a cold one tonight, she thought, and shivered in anticipation. Her gray woolen gloves were cut off at the fingers. In her right hand, she held a stale crust of bread she had found in a garbage can on Lafayette Street. Nibbling toothlessly at the bread, she sat huddled in her doorway, peering out at the street, at the lights, at the decorations for a holiday she never celebrated anymore.

Sure hope it don’t snow, she thought.

Snow was dangerous.

Made you feel warm, but actually you could freeze to death you got covered with snow in your sleep.

She kept nibbling at the hard crust of bread.

The automobile came cruising slowly up the street, big brown car, nosing into the curb some dozen feet from where Sadie sat with her back against the boarded door to the old olive oil company. She watched the car. Mercedes, she thought. Years ago in Vegas, when she was young and beautiful, she had ridden in a Mercedes convertible, her long blonde hair blowing in the desert wind. This one wasn’t no convertible. Big sedan, it was. brown and sleek, the three-pointed star sticking up on the hood, nice car, Mercedes, blonde hair blowing in the wind, Paul’s hand under her skirt.

Two men got out of the car, one on each side of it.

A third man sat behind the wheel, his face obscured in shadow.

The car doors slammed, one on each side of it.

The two men who’d got out of the car were wearing ski masks over their faces.

They know it’s gonna be cold tonight, Sadie thought.

Nibbling at her bread, she watched them.

The two men walked diagonally across the street to the Italian restaurant there. One of them kept checking the street over his shoulder, his head moving back and forth. At the door to the restaurant, both men reached inside their coats.

Sadie saw guns.

The mandolin is too loud, he’s playing too loud, Ralph thought. He always plays too loud when they’re here. Trying to impress them, maybe they’ll invite him to one of their big gangster weddings, ask him to play for them. I wish they wouldn’t come in here, he thought. I don’t need them in here.

At seven P.M. the restaurant was full and Ralph was worried that the loud mandolin playing might upset some of his customers. But everyone seemed oblivious to the steady plinking coming from the corner of the room where Ralph’s son had set up a small Christmas tree on a table covered with a white cloth. Ralph shrugged; maybe everybody here tonight was deaf. Everybody but the mafiosi, who sat at a table in the corner of the room, facing the entrance door, backs to the wall, they always sat where they could see the front door. One of the two goons with Fortunato was snapping his fingers in time to the mandolin music. The mandolin player gave him a smile of acknowledgment. Near the door to the kitchen, one of Ralph’s waiters was nodding his head in time to the music, his attention on the mandolin player instead of on the customer who was trying to catch his eye. Ralph went to him at once. In Italian, he said, “See what they want at table three.”

He walked briskly through the restaurant then, stopping at one table or another, asking in English whether everything was all right, beaming as he approached the bar just inside the entrance door, where his son was busy mixing drinks, and his wife sat at the cash register, tallying a check. He was about to ask her if she didn’t think the mandolin was too loud, when the front door opened.

Two men holding guns were standing in the doorframe.

Mandolin music spilled out into the street.

Both of the men had ski masks pulled over their faces. One of them closed the door behind him.

At the cash register, Ralph’s wife whispered, “Madonna mia!”

The entryway was small and tight and cramped. Overcoats hung on a rack to the left of the doorway, where the two men stood with the guns in their hands.

The one standing closest to the bar said, “Be quiet, no one gets hurt.”

He spoke with an accent. Ralph couldn’t place the accent. Spanish? No, it didn’t sound...

“No!” the second man said.

He had whirled toward Ralph’s son, who was reaching under the bar. Ralph knew there was a gun under the bar.

“Hands up!” the man said, and then, louder, “Hands up!”

His voice registered. Until now, the customers in the dining room were unaware of what was happening near the front door. But the gunman’s voice cut through the steady hum of polite conversation, the click of silverware against plates, the tinkle of ice in cocktail glasses. Everything stopped. Even the mandolin stopped.

The first man moved toward the dining room, his gun extended.

“Everybody stay where you are,” he said. “No noise.”

The same peculiar accent again. Not Spanish, but something else, something Ralph still couldn’t identify. The second man turned from the bar, where Ralph’s son now stood with his hands over his head, backed up against the mirror and the whiskey bottles.

There was a moment of hesitation, of seeming uncertainty.

At the rear of the restaurant, the three men who sat at a corner table with their backs to the wall watched silently. One of the men reached into his jacket. The man sitting on his right gently placed his hand on his arm and shook his head almost imperceptibly.

In the small archway that led from the dining room to the front entry, one of the gunmen still stood with the pistol in his hand. The other gunman looked from Ralph to his son. “You,” he said. “Who are you? Your name?”

“Mark. Mark D’Annunzio.”

The man turned to where Ralph stood with his hands over his head.

“And you?” he said.

“Ralph D’Annunzio.”

“Go there,” he said, gesturing with the gun.

Ralph turned toward the bar.

The gunman standing in the arch turned at precisely the same moment.

Sadie winced when she heard the shots.

Four of them.

Four quick explosions shattering the brittle night.

She blinked and looked across the street at the restaurant.

The front door flew open, and the two men wearing the ski masks came running out onto the sidewalk and then across the street to where the Mercedes was parked, its engine idling. From inside the restaurant, Sadie heard someone scream. The car doors slammed. There were loud voices from inside the restaurant now. The Mercedes pulled away from the curb, tires squealing. People were running out of the restaurant now, shouting.

Sadie picked up both her shopping bags. She left her stacked newspapers, and her rags, and her corrugated cardboard bed where they were.

She did not even glance at the restaurant across the street as she moved swiftly out of her doorway.

The moment she turned the corner, she began running.

In Chinatown, not two blocks from the restaurant, Santa Claus was coming out of a souvenir shop on Mott Street. The front window of the shop displayed fans and sculpted figurines and little brass ornaments and beads and abacuses and a large poster of a Chinese girl standing beside a willow tree. Santa Claus’s sack was brimming. He carried the sack over his shoulder, and he carried a bell in his left hand, and the moment he came out of the shop, he began shaking the bell and singing. The street outside was ablaze with neon and thronged with tourists and shoppers on this Monday night, ten days before Christmas. Santa Claus was fat and jolly-looking, dressed in the traditional red suit and hat, the black belt and boots, the white mustache and beard. Santa Claus was singing merrily.

“Jingle bells,” he sang, “jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh what fun it is to ride...”

“Hold it right there, Santa.”

The voice came from behind and slightly to the left of Santa. He turned at once to see a man holding a pistol in his right hand. The man was perhaps thirty-seven, thirty-eight years old, and he was wearing dark corduroy slacks and a black leather jacket and a seaman’s woolen watch cap. The man had red hair and blue eyes, and he was holding a police detective’s shield in his left hand. Santa turned to run, and came smack up against another man holding a gun.

“What’s your hurry, Santa?” the other man said.

He was maybe fifty years old, wearing blue jeans, a blue plaid mackinaw and a peaked baseball cap. His hair was gray, and his eyes were the darkest brown Santa had ever seen. Santa stood between the two men, wondering which of them would be more reasonable.

“Hey... uh... what is it?” he asked. “What’s the beef?”

“Your reindeer’s overparked,” the man with the gray hair said. “Let’s see what you got in the sack.”

“The sack?” Santa said, as if discovering it in his hand for the first time. He grinned a sickly grin. “What’s with you guys?” he said. “I’m with the Salvation Army.”

“Put the sack down, Santa,” the one with the red hair said.

Santa put the sack on the sidewalk.

“Now open it for us,” the redhead said pleasantly.

Santa opened the sack. The redhead holstered his gun, and put the leather fob containing his shield back into his pocket. He took his time doing this. The gray-haired one watched him as if this was something of enormous interest. Then the redheaded one reached into the sack. The first thing he pulled out of the sack was a radio.

“Well, hello,” he said.

Santa smiled.

The redhead reached into the sack again and pulled out a toaster.

“Nice,” the one with the gray hair said.

A crowd was gathering on the sidewalk.

The redhead reached into the sack again and pulled out a pair of Chinese fans, and a camera, and a woman’s sequined cocktail jacket, and a wristwatch, and a fountain pen, and a silver tray and a silver sugar bowl and a silver creamer.

“Little early to be flying over the rooftops, ain’t it, Santa?” the gray-haired one said. “This is still only the fifteenth.”

“Hey, come on,” Santa said, “what’s with you guys? I was doing my Christmas shopping.”

“You hear that, Bry?” the gray-haired one said. “He was doing his Christmas shopping.”

“I heard it, Chick,” the redhead said, and reached for the handcuffs at his bell. “Mister,” he said, “you were shopping for a Class-E felony.”

“They’re busting Santa Claus!” an eight-year-old kid said.

A radio voice said, “Five P.D., auto Four-Oh-Three,” and Santa turned to where an unmarked car was parked at the curb, the door open.

“Hands,” the redhead said, and Santa automatically put his hands behind his back.

“Five P.D., auto Four-Oh-Three,” the radio voice said again.

“I’ll get it,” the gray-haired one said, and walked toward the car.

“You guys are making a terrible mistake,” Santa said.

The redhead was already leading him toward the car. The gray-haired one was picking up the walkie-talkie on the front seat.

“Four-Oh-Three,” he said.

“Hoffman,” the radio voice said, “you’ve got a Ten-Twenty on Mulberry and Hester, the Luna Mare restaurant. Gunshot victim. D.O.A.”

“A terrible mistake,” Santa said again.

The auction at Sotheby’s on Seventy-second Street and York Avenue was scheduled to start at seven-fifteen P.M. The movable walls of the main salesroom on the second floor had been rolled back to accommodate what was expected to be a larger than usual crowd, but even so there were hundreds of people standing in what normally served as a sort of reception area. A television crew had finally set up its equipment at the top of the stairs leading from the main entrance below, and Julio Garcia — the station’s roving reporter — was waiting impatiently to do an interview with a man who, at the moment, was surrounded by newspaper reporters. Garcia thought of himself as an investigative journalist, and he was miffed first that he was covering an art auction, and second that the newspaper reporters had managed to collar Robert Sargent Kidd before he had. There wasn’t any pressing deadline or anything, that wasn’t the point, this wasn’t a hot newsbreak, and the interview would be taped. It was just that he considered television newsmen superior in every way to newspaper reporters, and it irked him that they were maybe getting stuff from Kidd that would later sound rehearsed instead of spontaneous and on-the-spot.

He looked over to the knot of reporters around Kidd, and noticed that his a.d. had finally managed to grab hold of Kidd’s elbow, and was gently urging him toward the steps where the camera crew was waiting. Kidd was perhaps six feet two inches tall. Garcia guessed, weighing in at about two and a quarter, a huge, burly man in his early thirties, wearing Western gear and a white Stetson hat. The a.d. was practically shoving reporters aside now as he led Kidd toward Garcia.

“Roll it,” Garcia said to his cameraman, and began his lead-in. As the a.d. brought Kidd within camera range, Garcia was saying, “... perhaps the finest and most extensive collection of Impressionist art in the world. The owner, Robert Sargent Kidd, is here with us at Sotheby’s...”

He nodded to his cameraman who panned slightly to where Kidd was standing and waiting. Garcia joined the shot.

“Mr. Kidd,” he said, “can you tell us why you’ve decided to sell your collection at this time?”

Kidd grinned into the camera. In a drawl that sounded more Southern than it did Western, he said, “Oh, just tired of it, I guess.” The word tired came out as “tahd.”

“I’ve been told it’s worth something like twenty million dollars,” Garcia said. “What do you plan...?”

“Well, I couldn’t say just what it’s worth, actually,” Kidd said. “That’s for the bidders to determine, isn’t it?”

“What do you plan to do with all that money?” Garcia asked.

Kidd grinned. “Spend it, I reckon,” he said.

Garcia smiled and — mindful that his television audience liked a little joke now and then — said, “Well, Mr. Kidd, try not to spend it all in one place.” He looked directly at the camera and said, “This is Julio Garcia at Sotheby’s...” and suddenly broke off mid-sentence, his eyes flashing off-camera. “Miss Kidd?” he called. “Excuse me. Miss Kidd!”

He almost moved out of frame, but the cameraman was swift and sure and he managed to follow him as he moved through the crowd to where a tall blonde woman was just leaving the lobby to enter the main room. The woman was wearing a mink coat over a dark blue Chanel suit. The blouse under the suit was a paler blue, with a stock tie. Her long blonde hair was swept back from an exquisitely beautiful face, her revealed sapphire earrings echoing the blue of the blouse and the deeper blue of her eyes. She was, Garcia knew from all he’d read about her, somewhere in her late thirties — thirty-six, maybe thirty-seven — but she looked a great deal younger, her complexion flawless, her face free of any makeup but lipstick and eye shadow. She turned as he approached.

“Miss Kidd, excuse me,” he said, “Julio Garcia, Channel Five News. Could I have a moment of your time, please?”

Olivia Kidd arched one eyebrow and looked down her nose, as though something unspeakably vile had crawled up onto the lapel of her mink coat.

“Miss Kidd,” Garcia said, unfazed, “how do you feel about your brother selling all these valuable paintings?”

Outside the Luna Mare restaurant, two Fifth Precinct radio motor patrol cars were angled into the curb alongside an ambulance from Beekman Hospital and a police Mobile Lab van. The cardboard crime scene signs were already up on the striped barricades as Reardon and Hoffman pulled up m their unmarked, black Plymouth sedan. Hoffman had wanted to take Santa Claus along with them, give him a taste of something bigger than shoplifting. Reardon had turned the collar over to one of the blues on Mott Street. They were both pinning on their shields as they approached the patrolman outside the door of the restaurant, Reardon to the ribbed bottom of his black leather jacket, Hoffman to the flap pocket on his mackinaw. Reardon had taken off the blue watch cap and left it on the front seat of the car. A sharp wind was tossing his red hair. Hoffman was still wearing the peaked baseball cap.

“Medical Examiner here yet?” Reardon asked the patrolman.

“A few minutes ago,” the patrolman said, nodding. He was thinking it was going to be a long, cold, fucking night standing outside the door here, and he hadn’t put on his long johns.

“Who’s the victim, do you know?” Hoffman asked.

“Owner of the place, guy named Ralph D’Annunzio. His wife and son are inside there. The son’s name is Mark, I didn’t catch the lady’s.”

Reardon nodded and shoved open the door.

The body was lying in a pool of blood near the bar. The body seemed incongruous. Minus the body, the restaurant would have looked and felt cozy and warm. A gray homburg and a pair of gray suede gloves were on the bartop. A man wearing a gray overcoat was crouched over the body. He looked up when Reardon and Hoffman came in.

“Reardon, Fifth P.D.U.,” Reardon said.

“Dr. Norris,” the man said, and went back to the body. A lab technician and a man with a Polaroid camera were waiting for Norris to get through with the body. They were talking about girls. Reardon looked into the dining room. Christmas decorations all over the place, Christmas tree in one corner of the dining room on a table with a white tablecloth. A couple of uniformed cops were standing around looking bewildered, the way they always did at a homicide. A woman in her early fifties was sitting at one of the tables, weeping. A young man stood beside her, trying to comfort her, a stunned look on his face. Reardon figured this was the wife and the son. He nodded to Hoffman, who nodded back, and both men stepped around the body and went into the dining room.

“Mrs. D’Annunzio?” Reardon said.

She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears.

“I’m Detective Reardon, Fifth P.D.U., this is my partner, Detective Hoffman.”

She nodded and then dabbed at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief.

“I’m sorry we have to ask you questions at a time like this,” Reardon said, “but if you can tell us what happened...”

Mrs. D’Annunzio burst into tears. Her son — they assumed he was the son — patted her hand and murmured sounds of comfort, no words, only sounds. He, too. seemed as if he would burst into tears at any moment.

“Are you Mark D’Annunzio?” Reardon asked.

D’Annunzio nodded. He was in his late twenties, Reardon guessed, a tall, dark man with curly black hair and dark brown eyes. Thin, with a longish nose. Reardon was willing to bet he’d taken a lot of ribbing about that nose.

“Mr. D’Annunzio,” he said, “can you tell us what happened?”

“They came in here with guns,” D’Annunzio said.

“How many of them?” Hoffman asked.

“Two.”

“When was this?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“What’d they look like? White, black...?”

“They were wearing ski masks.”

“How about their hands?” Hoffman asked.

“Hands?”

“Were they white or black?”

“I didn’t notice,” D’Annunzio said. “Everything happened all at once. One minute everything was normal, and the next it... it...”

“Did they say anything?” Reardon asked.

“They said to be quiet and no one would get hurt. They asked me what my... no, wait. First they told us to put our hands up, and then they asked me what my name...”

“Excuse me,” a voice behind Reardon said.

He turned. Norris, the Medical Examiner, was standing there with the gray suede gloves clutched in his right hand, and a small black satchel in his left.

“Talk to you a minute?” he said.

Reardon followed him through the arch and into the entryway. The photographer was already snapping his Polaroid pictures. The lab technician was looking at the corpse’s hands.

“We’re backed up at the morgue just now,” Norris said. “All the bedbugs coming out of the woodwork for Christmas. You may not get your autopsy report for a few days. Meanwhile, the cause of death is obvious. You can put it down as gunshot wounds.”

“Right, thanks,” Reardon said.

Norris nodded, seemed about to say something else, and then simply drew on his gloves and went out. A sharp wind blew into the room before he closed the door behind him. Reardon walked back into the dining room again. Mrs. D’Annunzio was sobbing into her handkerchief. Mark D’Annunzio still had the stunned look on his face.

“What was that all about?” Hoffman asked.

“The autopsy report,” Reardon said. “It may take a little longer than...”

“What do you mean autopsy?” D’Annunzio said. “Who said you could...?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. D’Annunzio,” Reardon said, “but it’s mandatory in any trauma death.”

“I don’t want them cutting up my father,” D’Annunzio said. He looked first at Reardon and then at Hoffman. “Who do I talk to about this?”

“I know how you feel,” Reardon said, “but...”

“You know what killed him, why do you have to cut him up?”

“I’m sorry,” Reardon said.

Their eyes met. D’Annunzio was holding back tears. Reardon put his hand on D’Annunzio’s shoulder, gently, briefly. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Believe me.”

D’Annunzio nodded, and then turned away to hide his tears. There was a brief, awkward silence. Hoffman cleared his throat.

“Mr. D’Annunzio,” he said, “can you tell us what these men sounded like?”

“Sounded?”

“Yes. Were they speaking English?”

“Yes, they were. Yes.” D’Annunzio said.

“Any regional accent or dialect?”

“Yes, but... I’m not sure what it was.”

“Was it Hispanic?”

“No, I don’t think so. No, it wasn’t a Spanish accent.”

“How about Chinese?”

“I... I don’t know. It all happened so fast.”

“Could it have been Chinese?”

“Maybe. No. I don’t think so. I really don’t know. You see, they...”

“What are you doing?” Mrs. D’Annunzio shrieked.

Her eyes were wide, fastened on the archway behind Reardon. He turned at once. The lab technician was still crouched over the body. In one hand he held a spoon-shaped piece of wood. In the other, he held an ink roller.

“Leave him alone!” Mrs. D’Annunzio shouted, and came out of her chair at once, rushing past Reardon and into the entryway. “Get away from him!” she screamed, grabbing for the technician’s shoulder, almost knocking him off balance.

The technician, still crouching, flailed his arms to keep from toppling over backwards. Reardon was coming into the bar area now\ immediately behind Mrs. D’Annunzio. The technician turned to him as the officer in charge.

“I’m only...” he started to say.

“Let it go,” Reardon said.

“I gotta take his prints,” the technician said. “This is a homicide.”

“But let it go,” Reardon said gently.

The technician shrugged. “Okay, pal,” he said, “you explain it later, okay?”

“I’ll explain it,” Reardon said.

Mrs. D’Annunzio burst into tears again, and turned away from her husband’s corpse. Reardon awkwardly put his arm around her. Hoffman was standing in the archway to the dining room now. Reardon glanced at him. Hoffman nodded.

“Signora,” Reardon said, “we’ll come back another time, okay? Why don’t you go home now? Mr. D’Annunzio, could you take your mother home, please? We’ll talk to you later, all right?”

D’Annunzio stared at him, as if wondering whether he could trust his father’s body alone with him.

“All right?” Reardon said.

D’Annunzio nodded.