Downtown

6

It was bitterly cold when he left the Crandall apartment. He had changed out of the Santa Claus suit and back into the clothes he’d been wearing to Bos—oh my God, he still hadn’t called his mother!

She was probably suspecting the worst by now. His plane had crashed over Hartford, Connecticut. He was lying in a heap of wreckage, her Christmas gift smoldering beside him. If he knew his mother at all, and he thought he did, she’d be more concerned about her smoldering gift than his smoldering body. When he’d got back from the war, she’d seemed enormously surprised to see him. As if she’d already chalked him off. Later, when he began having the nightmares, an analyst told him this had probably been his mother’s defense mechanism.

Telling herself he was already dead, so that she’d be prepared for it when she found out he really was dead.

“But I was alive,” Michael told the shrink. “I came home alive.”

“Yes, but she didn’t know you would.”

“But there I was. Hi, Mom, it’s me!”

“She must have been surprised.”

“That’s just what I’ve been telling you.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t have a heart attack.”

“She gave away all my clothes while I was gone. My civilian clothes.”

“Yes, her defense mechanism.”

“My blue jacket,” Michael said.

“What?”

“My best blue jacket.”

“Poor woman,” the analyst said.

Well, maybe so. Poor woman had grieved for years after his father died. Poor woman had sold the hardware store and loaned Michael the money to buy the groves in Florida. A loan, she’d said, stressing the word. Paid her back every nickel, plus interest. He’d asked her to come live down there in Florida with him, she’d said, No, she wanted to keep living right there in Boston, even if the neighborhood was going to the dogs. She meant it was turning black. Michael’s best friend in Vietnam had been black. Andrew. Died in his arms. Blood bubbling up onto his lips. Michael had held him close. First and only time he’d ever cried in Vietnam. He wondered later if Andrew’s mother had given away his clothes while he was gone. He wondered if Andrew’s mother had told herself he was dead in preparation for the Defense Department telegram that would confirm her worst fears. Michael wished he could forgive his mother for looking so surprised to see him alive.

Surprised and perhaps a trifle disappointed. He wished he could forgive the poor woman for giving away his blue jacket.

He turned up the collar on his coat.

He had twenty dollars in his pocket, the money Connie had given him.

“A loan,” she’d said.

Albetha Crandall had given him Jessica Wales’s address, but he did not know this city’s public transportation system and there did not seem to be any taxicabs on the street. It didn’t seem to him that one-thirty was very late for Christmas morning; there were probably taxis on the street even in Sarasota at this hour. He began walking. He knew that the address Albetha had given him was downtown because she’d mentioned that it was. After he’d come only a block, he knew he was headed in the right direction because the streets were still numbered up here and the one following West Tenth was West Ninth. He told himself that after tonight he would never again go downtown in this city, maybe in any city, he would forever after stay uptown, where it was safe and well-lighted and patrolled by conscientious policemen. Meanwhile, he had to get to Jessica Wales’s apartment because there were things he had to find out. Like, for example, why Crandall was now saying that Michael was the person responsible for the murder of the person who wasn’t Crandall.

On television just a little while ago, Crandall had told the blond newscaster, “I can only believe that this Michael J. Barnes person is responsible.”

Exactly what he’d said.

Go check it.

Rerun the tape, Blondie.

Michael J. Barnes.

His dear mother in Boston had given him the middle name Jellicle, after the Jellicle Cats in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, which she’d read long before Andrew Lloyd Webber was even a glimmer in an Englishman’s eye. Michael Jellicle Barnes, a name his schoolmates had found enormously amusing, reciting over and over again as they beat him up, “Yellow Belly Jellicle, Yellow Belly Jellicle,” he could have killed his mother. He had tried unsuccessfully to hide the name from the girls he met in high school and later in college, all of whom naturally found out mysteriously and at once and who dubbed him “Jellybean Barnes,” which was better, but not much, than getting beat up, he supposed. In the army, he had become “Jelly-ass Barnes” because of the slight accident he’d had the first time the squad went into battle, a name everyone had called him—except Andrew.

Dear, dead Andrew.

Easy come, easy go, right?

The moment Michael got out of the army, he’d become plain old Michael J. Barnes, and that was the name he’d used when he’d applied for his driver’s license and his library card in Florida. And later on, his credit cards.

Michael J. Barnes. No middle name, just the initial. And that’s what he’d been ever since, Michael J. Barnes, no Jellicle, just plain old Michael J. Barnes.

This Michael J. Barnes person.

Was what Crandall had said.

This Michael J. Barnes person is responsible.

For murder.

He was suddenly lost.

Lost in thoughts as tangled as the Vietnam underbrush. Lost in time, because the Jellicle was out of his past and the present was an unknown man he had not killed. Lost in space as well, because the streets had run out of numbers and now there were only names and he did not know where in hell he was. Why was he all at once on Bleecker and then Houston and then King and Charlton and … where the hell was he? He looked at the slip of paper upon which Albetha had scribbled the address for him.

He looked up at the street sign on the corner.

He was on Vandam and Avenue of the Americas. So where was St. Luke’s Place?

Downtown, Albetha had told him. Between Hudson and Seventh. But where was Hudson? Or, for that matter, Seventh? He studied the empty avenue ahead as he would have studied a suspect trail, and then he looked to his right and looked to his left and decided it was six of one, half a dozen of the other, and began heading east, never once realizing that St. Luke’s Place was to the north and west.

He walked for what seemed like miles.

Not a numbered street anywhere in this downtown maze. Sullivan and West Broadway and Wooster and Greene and Mercer and now Broadway itself though it did not seem like the Great White Way down here in lower Manhattan except for the snow in the streets. Kept walking east, although he did not have a compass and did not in fact know he was heading east. No sun up there in the sky. Just a cold, dead moon and stars that told him nothing. He turned corners, seemed at times to be doubling back on his own tracks, coming to the same street sign again and again, thoroughly lost now. He studied the sign on the corner.

Mulberry and Grand. He looked up Mulberry. It was festively hung with welcoming arches of Christmas lights. Blinking.

Beckoning. Surely there was a telephone somewhere on this beautifully decorated street.

He began walking.

Italian restaurants, all of them already closed for Christmas. Hand-lettered signs in some of the windows, advising that they would not be open again till the fourth of January, which, come to think of it, was when Michael had planned to head back to Sarasota. If he’d ever made it to Boston.

He decided that if he found an open restaurant or an open anything, he would first call his mother to let her know he wasn’t dead even though she didn’t have any of his clothes she could give away prematurely, and then he would call China Doll Limo to see if Connie Kee was yet free to take him to St. Luke’s Place, wherever the hell that was.

The awning over the restaurant read:

RISTORANTE BLUE MADONNA

The sign in the door read:

CLOSED

But there were lights blazing inside, and the sound of music—the Supremes singing “Stop in the Name of Love.” The early Sixties came back in a rush. Boston before he was drafted. Sixteen-year-old Jenny Aldershot sitting on a wall overlooking the Charles River, her blonde hair blowing in the wind. He tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it a crack. The music was louder now. He opened the door fully and stepped inside, and then he almost ran right out into the street again because the place was full of cops!

Beautiful young women wearing garter belts, panties, seamed silk stockings, and high heels —which was just what Detective O’Brien had been wearing earlier tonight. Dancing with men in business suits. As he started for the door again, someone clapped a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a short-roly-poly man who looked a lot like both Tony the Bear Orso and Charlie Bonano.

“Help ya?” the man said.

“I’m looking for a telephone,” Michael said.

“This is a private party,” the man said.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “I thought this was a restaurant.”

“It is a restaurant, but it’s also a private party. Dinn you see the sign in the door? The sign says `Closed.`”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see it.”

“It says `Closed` whether you seen it or not.”

“All I want to do is make a phone call, it won’t take a …”

“Are you a cop?” the man asked.

“No,” Michael said.

The man looked at him.

“What are you then?”

“An orange-grower.”

“My grandfather grew grapes,” the man said.

“I’m Frankie Zeppelin.” He extended his hand to Michael. “What’s your name?”

“Donald Trump,” Michael said.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Trump,” Frankie said, and shook hands with him. “Come on, I’ll get you a drink. What do you drink, Mr. Trump?”

“You can call me Don,” Michael said.

“Well, that’s very nice of you, Don. And you can call me Mr. Zepparino. What do you drink, Don?”

“If you have a little scotch …”

“We have a little everything,” Frankie said, and grinned as if he’d made a terrific joke. Putting his arm around Michael’s shoulders, he led him toward the bar. “You look familiar,” he said. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you from the neighborhood?”

“I’m from Minnesota,” Michael said at once, just in case Frankie had seen the earlier news broadcast.

“A lot of the girls here come from Minnesota,” Frankie said. “These very dumb blonde girls with blue eyes, they must drink a lot of milk out there in Minnesota.”

“Yes, it’s called the Land of the Lakes,” Michael said.

“I thought it musta been,” Frankie said.

“Kid,” he said to the bartender, “pour Donny here some scotch.”

The bartender picked up a bottle of Dewar’s Black Label, and poured generously into a tall glass.

“Anything with that?” he asked.

“Just a little soda,” Michael said.

“Hello?” a voice said over the loudspeaker system. “Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? One, two, three, testing, can you hear me? Hello, hello, hello, hell …”

“We can hear you already!” Frankie shouted. Michael looked over to where a man wearing brown shoes and what looked like his blue confirmation suit was standing behind a microphone set up near a big copper espresso machine.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I want to wish you first, one and all, a very merry … is this thing on?”

“It’s on already!” Frankie yelled.

“Hello?” the man at the microphone said.

“Can you hear me?” He began tapping the microphone. “Hello? If you can hear me, please raise your hands please. Hello? Can you hear me?” Frankie threw up both his hands. All around the hall, people were putting their hands up.

“Looks like a police raid in here,” the man at the microphone said, which not too many people found funny, including Michael.

A redheaded woman wearing a black negligee over a black teddy and black garters and black silk stockings and black high-heeled patent leather shoes came over to the bar, said, “Hello, Frankie,” and extended her glass to the bartender. “Just vodka,” she said.

“I think I can safely say, at this our annual Christmas party here,” the man at the microphone said, “that this year was a better year than any year preceding it. And I think I can say without fear of contradiction that next year is going to be an even better one!”

There were cries of “Tell us about it, Also!” and “Attaway, Also!” and “Let’s hear the figures, Also!”

“Hi,” the redhead said. “I’m Hannah.”

“How do you do?” Michael said.

“You look familiar,” she said. “Have I ever seen you on television?”

“No,” he said at once.

“Aren’t you the one who used to do the Carvel commercials?”

“Yes,” he said, “come to think of it.”

“No kidding? I love your Cookie Puss cakes.”

“As an example,” Also said, “in hotel encounters in the midtown area of Manhattan alone, revenues were up seven percent from last year for a total of …”

“Who’s this?” a voice at Michael’s elbow said.

He turned. He was looking at a very large man wearing a brown tweed suit, a yellow button-down shirt, a green knit tie, and an angry scowl.

“Jimmy, this is the man used to do the Carvel ice cream commercials,” Hannah said.

“No kidding?” Jimmy said, immediately disarmed. He took Michael’s hand, began pumping it vigorously. “I love your Black Bear cakes,” he said. “I’m Jimmy Fingers.”

“How do you do, Mr. Fingers?” Michael said.

“It’s Finnegan, actually. But that’s okay, everybody knows me as Jimmy Fingers.”

“Especially the cops,” Hannah said.

“Yeah, them,” Jimmy said.

“Mobile encounters,” Also said into the microphone, “by which I’m referring only to passenger automobiles and not vans or pickup trucks—and, mind you, I’m not even including figures for the Holland Tunnel or the George Washington Bridge —were up a full fifteen percent over last year.”

“That’s very good,” Jimmy said appreciatively.

“Good? That’s sensational,” Frankie said.

“But it can give you backaches,” Hannah said.

“Does anyone know where I can find a telephone?” Michael asked.

“Why you need a telephone?” Frankie said.

“I want to call a friend of mine. She may be able to take me to St. Luke’s Place.”

“Why you wanna go to St. Luke’s? What’s the matter with here?”

“Here is very nice, but …”

“… know I speak for all of us,” Also said at the microphone, “when I extend our sincere appreciation and gratitude to our fine mayor, David Dinkins, and our excellent police commissioner, Lee Brown, and also the good Lord above us, thank you one and all!”

“Hear, hear,” Jimmy Fingers said.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to ask you to please enjoy the food and the beverage and the music and to stay as long as you like, although some of us may have made previous arrangements. To one and to all, to those of us in management, and to you—the rank and file in the front lines—I wish you a merry Christmas and a new year even more financially and spiritually rewarding than this one has been. Enjoy!” he shouted, and extended both arms in the V gesture Richard Nixon had made famous.

“You wanna go to St. Luke’s, I’ll take you to St. Luke’s,” Frankie said. “It’s Christmas, I feel like Santa Claus. Anyway, it’s on my way home.”

“Well, thank you, that’s very kind of you,” Michael said.

“I got the car right outside,” Frankie said.

At the microphone, four women began singing, “Deck the whores with boughs of holly, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. Look-in’ for a good-time Charlie, fa-la-la …”

The moment they were seated in Frankie’s red Buick Regal, he turned to Michael and said, “So they want you for murder, huh?”

Michael’s hand shot out for the door handle.

“Relax, relax, maybe I can help you.”

“I think you have the wrong party,” Michael said.

“I seen you on television, I ain’t got the wrong party. Relax.”

“It’s the kind of face I have, I’m often mistaken for …”

“Relax, willya please? I’m only tryin’a help here.”

“Well, thanks, but how can you possibly …?”

“I can hide you out for a coupla days,” Frankie said.

“But I didn’t kill anybody,” Michael said.

“Well, of course you didn’t, nobody ever killed anybody. But this is me you’re talkin’ to.”

“Well …”

“So you want to go under or not?” Frankie asked. “You surface again sometime next week, the cops’ll forget you even existed.”

“Excuse me,” Michael said, “but I don’t think that’s the way to go.”

“Then what is the way to go?” Frankie said, sounding a bit irritated. “I mean, no offense meant, but you’re the fuckin’ guy murdered somebody, not me.”

“I think I’ve got to find out who got killed.”

“Who got killed is this guy Crandall.”

“No, it wasn’t Crandall.”

“On television, they said he was the dead guy. And they said you killed him. Which, by the way, your name ain’t Donald Trump.”

“That’s right, it isn’t.”

“I mean, nobody in this whole fuckin’ world could be named Donald Trump. I mean, if you had to pick a phony name …”

“It’s Michael Barnes,” Michael said.

“Which also sounds phony. I’m tryin’a help you here, and you keep layin’ this bullshit on me. Is it that you don’t trust me? I mean, I spent all my life in this fuckin’ downtown community, tryin’a build a reputation for honesty and trust, so if there’s one thing you can do, it’s trust me.”

“I do trust you,” Michael said.

“Good,” Frankie said, and pulled a gun from a holster under his jacket and stuck it in Michael’s face. “You know what this is?” he asked Michael.

Michael knew what it was. It was a Colt .45 automatic. He had handled many guns exactly like it while he was in the army.

“Yes,” he said, “I know what it is.”

“Good,” Frankie said. “You know how to use it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. ‘Cause I want you to use it.”

Michael looked at him.

“There is a person I would like you to kill,” Frankie said.

Michael kept looking at him.

“Because I understand you’re very good at that,” Frankie said.

Everyone in this city is crazy, Michael thought.

“You already killed this movie guy,” Frankie said, “so it …”

“No, I didn’t kill this movie …”

“Hey,” Frankie said, “listen, okay?” and put the gun to his ear as if it were a finger.

“This is me, okay?” he said, and winked. “Never mind what you tell nobody else, this is me. Now. If you already killed one guy and the cops are lookin’ for you …”

Michael sighed.

“… then it won’t make no difference you kill another guy, ‘cause the cops’ll still be looking for you, am I right?”

“No, you’re wrong,” Michael said. “Because killing two people is a lot more serious than killing one person.”

“Well, you certainly should know,” Frankie said.

“And besides, I didn’t … look, do me a favor, okay? It was nice meeting you, really, and I enjoyed being there at your union meeting …”

“We’re not a union,” Frankie said.

“We’re a social and athletic club.”

“Whatever, it was very nice. I’m glad business was so good, I’m very happy for you. And I appreciate your offer to drive me to St. Luke’s Place …”

“So then take the gun and help me out,” Frankie said. “I mean, that’s the fuckin’ least you can do.”

“You make it sound as if I owe you something,” Michael said.

“I’m not turnin’ you in, am I?”

“Goddamn it, I didn’t kill anybody!”

“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,” Frankie said.

“Mr. Zepparino,” Michael said, “I’m going to get out of this car now.”

“Please take the gun,” Frankie said, “or I’ll blow your fuckin’ brains out.”

“All right, give me the gun,” Michael said.

“Now you’re talkin’ sense,” Frankie said, and handed him the gun.

“Thank you,” Michael said, and pointed the gun at him. “And now I’m going to bid you a fond …”

“That won’t do no good,” Frankie said. Michael looked at him.

“The gun ain’t loaded,” he said.

“What?”

“The clip’s here in my pocket.”

“What? What?”

“Also, if a person asks you nice to kill somebody for him, why don’t you just do it?”

“Because I …”

“Instead of threatening that person with an empty pistol?”

Michael was thinking first Charlie Wong with his fake gun, and now Frankie Zeppelin with an empty one. He was thinking he had to get out of this city. He was thinking that he had to get out of here before he himself went crazy.

“The person I want you to kill is Isadore Onions,” Frankie said.

“I’m not about to kill Mr. Onions or anyone else,” Michael said wearily.

“There’s a deli on Greenwich Avenue,” Frankie said, “which is where he hangs out all the time. He should be there now, this is still very early in the day for Isadore, even if it’s Christmas. What I’m going to do, I’m going to drive to that deli, it’s called the Mazeltov All-Nite Deli. When we get there, Donny, I’ll give you …”

“Michael,” Michael said.

“Michael, sure,” Frankie said, and rolled his eyes. “What I’ll do when we get there, Michael, I’ll give you the clip to put in the gun, and then I want you to go in and blow him away. Does my calling you Michael make you feel better, Michael?”

“I am not going to kill anyone,” Michael said.

“I admire a man who sticks to his guns,” Frankie said, “but you don’t understand. Isadore Onions needs killing.”

“But not by me,” Michael said.

“Then by who?” Frankie said. “Me? And then I’ll get in trouble with the law, right? When you’re already in trouble with the law. Does that make sense? Try to make sense, willya please?”

“Mr. Zepparino, have you ever …?”

“Isadore Onions is a very fat man with a Hitler moustache,” Frankie said. “He usually dresses very conservative except he wears red socks. If you aim for the moustache you will probably kill him.”

“Probably. But …”

“Just don’t let the socks distract you.”

“Look, Mr. Zepparino …”

“You can call me Frankie. Now that we’re doing business together. Did I mention that there is five bills in this for you? If you do a good job? Five big ones, Donny.”

“Mr. Zepparino, have you ever heard of a Mexican standoff?”

“No. What is a Mexican standoff?”

“A Mexican standoff is where I have the empty gun and you have the clip to put in it, and neither one of us can force the other one to do a goddamn thing. That is a Mexican standoff.”

“Have you ever heard of a Russian hard-on?” Frankie asked. “A Russian hard-on is where you have the empty gun and I have the clip to put in it, but I also have this,” he said, and pulled another gun from inside his coat. “This is a .38 caliber Detective Special, and it is loaded. Which means that you are going to get out of this car outside the Mazeltov All-Nite Deli on Greenwich Avenue, and you are going to go inside and shoot Isadore Onions in the moustache or I will have to shoot you instead and throw you out on the sidewalk. On a very cold night.”

The car was suddenly very still.

“Which they will prolly give me a medal for shooting a cold-blooded murderer,” Frankie said.

“Where’s Greenwich Avenue?” Michael asked.