Geoffrey Bartholomew - Manhattan Noir 2 - The Classics

“I figured you were the Coney Island connection,” Isaac said.

“You figured right. But I’m still short one air raid warden. Stoney’s my butcher. He supplies me with stamps.”

“But I did all the work.”

“You? Your father’s a fucking millionaire.”

“But he’s forgotten about the Sidels.”

“I could break his head... as long as I don’t have to leave Manhattan island. How old are you, Mr. Isaac?”

“Fourteen,” Isaac muttered, adding a year to his personal calendar.

“One of Florsheim’s brats?”

“Yes. But I’ve decided to leave school, Captain. I have a talent for stealing stamps.”

“What do you think of Florsheim?”

“He has egg on his tie. He’ll always be what he is. A smalltime philosopher.”

“Ah, you’re not particularly fond of him.”

“I am. He taught me Euripides. But Euripides can’t put food on the table.”

“And I suppose you’d like to become my new air raid warden.”

“You won’t regret it, Captain,” Isaac said, looking into that bloodless mask. “I could diversify. I don’t have to stick to stamps.”

“And you’d break heads for me, keep whoever I wanted in line.”

“Anything,” Isaac said.

The captain leaped from his chair and pummeled Isaac into the ground. Ribbons fell off his chest. Medals flew everywhere. And Isaac felt the captain’s fists. Knobs of stone. Mendel’s women began to shriek. Diana Moon begged Eric Fish to stop this terrible vocation of slaughtering Isaac Sidel.

The captain breathed on Isaac. “Go to school. If I catch you in Mendel’s, I’ll kill you to death.”

Diana Moon washed his swollen face with a wet rag, and Isaac crawled out of Mendel’s. He returned to school, convinced that Florsheim was the captain’s favorite cousin. The world belonged to Euripides. And Isaac was left with the grief of having to become a student again. He envied the clarity of other people’s lives. The button men had their malt and cream soda. Sophie Sidel had her rags. Joel had the Salmagundi Club. Leo Sidel had the piss in his pants. Isaac looked in the mirror. There were lines of bitterness. The boy was beginning to grow some kind of mask.

He went to Euripides. The assistant principal had been avoiding Isaac in the halls of P.S. 88. But Isaac sneaked into Euripides’s office. “How did you do it?”

Euripides wouldn’t look at Isaac’s wounds. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“How did you do it?”

“I went to school with Eric Fish. I coached him in geometry. He wouldn’t have graduated. He does me favors from time to time. We talk on the phone. I told him about the stamps. But I never dreamed he would hurt you, Isaac. I thought...”

“I could have had a brilliant career. Now I’m Euripides…like you.”

Isaac walked out of P.S. 88. He passed the copper dome of police headquarters, with its four clocks, its stone figures representing the five boroughs, its porches, its balustrades, its two lions out front with their big teeth, and he wondered about his fall from grace. The policemen had their own palace. But it wasn’t Mendel’s.

He took the subway up to the Polo Grounds, crawled under a gate, sat in the bleachers while the wind howled in that empty shell. He wasn’t lying to conjure up Harry Lieberman. It felt safe among the empty seats, the green railing, the dead grass. He wasn’t a soldier or a center-fielder. He was a retired thief.

A groundsman saw him in the bleachers. “Hey, you, you son of a bitch.”

Isaac didn’t run. He sat in his green chair. The groundsman arrived with a hoe. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Waiting for the Bomber.”

“Jesus, you from out of town? Harry don’t play in winter. The Giants are asleep... You figuring to sit until April or May?”

“If I have to,” Isaac said.

The groundsman laughed. He tried not to stare at Isaac’s face.

“Sit, but don’t pee on the benches.”

He abandoned Isaac, shoved across the stadium, and started to dig along some imaginary line between second base and the Bomber’s own big country of center field.

Wall Street

(Originally published in 1992)

Charles Dickens knew his stuff, you know. Listen to this: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Right on. You adjust the numbers for inflation and what you’ve got right there is the history of Wall Street. At least, so much of the history of Wall Street as includes me: seven years. We had the good times and we lived high on that extra jolly sixpence, and now we live day by day the long decline of shortfall. Result misery.

Where did they all go, the sixpences of yesteryear? Oh, pshaw, we know where they went. You in Gstaad, him in Aruba, her in Paris and me in the men’s room with a sanitary straw in my nose. We know where it went, all right.

My name’s Kimball, by the way, here’s my card. Bruce Kimball, with Rendall/LeBeau. Account exec. May I say I’m still making money for my clients? There’s a lot of good stuff undervalued out there, my friend. You can still make money on the Street. Of course you can. I admit it’s harder now, it’s much harder when I have only thruppence and it’s sixpence I need to keep my nose filled, build up that confidence, face the world with that winner’s smile. Man, I’m only hitting on one nostril, you know? I’m hurtin’ .

Nearly three years a widow; time to remarry. I need a true heart to share my penthouse apartment (unfurnished terrace, unfortunately) with its grand view of the city, my cottage (fourteen rooms) in Amagansett, the income of my portfolio of stocks.

An income — ah, me — which is less than it once was. One or two iffy margin calls, a few dividends undistributed, bad news can mount up, somehow. Or dismount and move right in. Income could become a worry.

But first, romance. Where is there a husband for my middle years? I am Stephanie Morwell, forty-two, the end product of good breeding, good nutrition, a fine workout program and amazingly skilled cosmetic surgeons. Since my parents died as my graduation present from Bryn Mawr, I’ve more or less taken care of myself, though of course, at times, one does need a man around the house. To insert lightbulbs and such-like. The point is, except for a slight flabbiness in my stock portfolio, I am a fine catch for just the right fellow.

I don’t blame my broker, please let me make that clear. Bruce Kimball is his name and he’s unfailingly optimistic and cheerful. A bit of a blade, I suspect. (One can’t say gay blade anymore, not without the risk of being misunderstood.) In any event, Bruce did very well for me when everybody’s stock was going up, and now that there’s a — oh, what are the pornographic euphemisms of finance? A shakeout, a mid-term correction, a market adjustment, all of that — now that times are tougher, Bruce has lost me less than most and has even found a victory or two amid the wreckage. No, I can’t fault Bruce for a general worsening of the climate of money.

In fact, Bruce... hmmm. He flirts with me at times, but only in a professional way, as his employers would expect him to flirt with a moneyed woman. He’s handsome enough, if a bit thin. (Thinner this year than last, in fact.) Still, those wiry fellows….

Three or four years younger than I? Would Bruce Kimball be the answer to my prayers? I do already know him and I’d rather not spend too much time on the project.

Stephanie Kimball . Like a schoolgirl, I write the name on the note pad beside the telephone on the Louis XIV writing table next to my view of the East River. The rest of that page is filled with hastily jotted numbers: income, outgo, estimated expenses, overdue bills. Stephanie Kimball . I gaze upon my view and whisper the name. It’s a blustery, changeable, threatening day. Stephanie Kimball . I like the sound.