Lawrence Block: Manhattan Noir

At the curb, a uniformed officer, the one who had found Sladek’s body, was coordinating getting the covered corpse into the EMS van. He had radioed for EMS instead of the morgue because he had thought Sladek was still alive.

“… four, five, six magazines, a pullover, a comb, half a… a… I don’t know, I guess it’s a baguette,” the partner said. “A French bread. Whatever.” The detective took notes. “A couple napkins. Bag of Doritos. A WKXW-FM baseball cap.”

“He must have got that at the Turtle Bay street fair,” the detective said. “They were giving them away on Saturday. I got one.”

The partner looked up.

“Never mind,” the detective said. “Go on.”

“One sneaker, no laces. One copy of The Dark Half by Stephen King, paperback, no cover. One plastic cup. A roll of toilet paper. A disposable razor. Three, four, five soda cans, empty. One pocket Bible.” He stopped, glanced around. “That’s it.” The partner noticed the issue of Cosmopolitan that was lying in the corner. He picked it up, shook off a cigarette butt, and held it out to the detective. “One more magazine.”

The detective added it to the list, then flipped his notebook closed and dropped the wet magazine back where it had been lying. He slipped the photos and the business card back into the wallet. “Poor bastard. Guy had a good job once. Had a place to live. Had a family.”

“Once upon a time. What he had now was a baseball cap and six copies of Cosmopolitan magazine. Seven, excuse me.”

“What the hell’s wrong with this city? An old man like this lying dead in a doorway, nobody even calls it in.”

“It’s New York, what do you want?”

“The man’s lying there, dead. An old man, dead on the street, and people just walk past him.”

“This is news to you?”

The detective walked back to the prowl car waiting at the curb. “You know, my father’s name was Harold.”

“Lots of people’s name is Harold, man. Snap out of it. This guy’s not your father. It’s a homeless man was out in the rain too long. Sad story. Unhappy ending. Life goes on.”

“Not for him,” the detective said.

Angela’s finger hovered over the cigarettes, lined up in three neat rows. Finally, her hand darted out and came back with one clamped between thumb and forefinger.

The man closed the pack, returned it to his pocket, and took out his lighter. Angela cupped her hand around the flame and carefully lit the cigarette. “Thanks,” she said. “Man, what a night.”

The rain had started again. But behind the huge umbrella they were both dry.

“Hey,” she said, “you want to have a little fun…?” She picked up the hem of her dress, pulled it above her knees. She had a purple mark on the inside of one thigh. For the first time, the man stopped smiling. Angela said, “It’s just a bruise.”

“Thank you, no,” the man said.

Angela shrugged. She drew on the cigarette. Pushed her dress down over her legs again.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, Angela,” the man said, standing up. “Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah.” She watched him back away. “Thanks for the smoke. Come back if you change your mind.”

The man nodded.

“I don’t have any diseases. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No,” the man said. “I’m not worried about your having diseases.”

Something in his voice put her off. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean it in the best way. You’re a young woman, Angela. You look very healthy. I’m sure you have no diseases.”

Angela smiled, a fixed, frozen smile that was part arrogance, part fear, and no part happiness. “That’s right. I’m so clean you could eat off me.”

“I’m sure,” the man said. “Good night, Angela.”

The headline the story carried in the Daily News was only slightly inaccurate: “Runaway Poisoned Behind Penn Station.” Angela Nicholas had not run away. She had been thrown out of her home. Her mother emphasized that point, stabbing it into her husband’s shoulder with her index finger while the man looked down at his hands in his lap and mumbled apologies to her, to himself, to God.

The detective took notes. There had been a fight. There had been many fights. A boy had been the subject of one of the fights. Other boys had been the subject of other fights, or maybe the same boy had. It wasn’t clear. What was clear was that the father had delivered an ultimatum: That boy doesn’t enter this house again or you don’t enter it again.

Angela had brought the boy back. The next day, her clothes were on the sidewalk. She had beaten on the door, crying, and the mother had wanted to let her back in. But her husband had held her back. When they finally opened the door, Angela was gone. When they phoned around to all her friends-even, finally, to the boy, who hung up on them-they couldn’t find her.

Three years later, they found her. No, that wasn’t quite accurate, either: The police had found her. The point was, she had been found. But she had been dead.

Did the police have any idea who had done it? The detective shook his head. He could have told the mother that it had probably been one of Angela’s tricks, but contrary to popular belief in the precinct house, he actually did have a heart. “We currently have no information, Mrs. Nicholas.” Which wasn’t entirely true, since that man, Sladek, had turned out to have been poisoned, too, and with the same poison, so that was-maybe-a starting point. But it was close enough to true. Anyway, he said it.

“How did it happen? How could this happen?”

“We aren’t certain. Our lab is working on it.”

The father finally stirred to life, raising his head, his eyes burning. “You find the man who did this and I’ll kill him.”

“Haven’t you done enough?” Mrs. Nicholas said.

“Do you have a daughter, sergeant?”

“A son,” the detective said.

“Well, if somebody did to your son what somebody did to my daughter,” Mr. Nicholas said, “what would you do?”

I’d kill the son of a bitch, the detective said. To himself. “I’d let the proper authorities handle it.”

Mr. Nicholas shook his head. “With a daughter it’s different.”

For the first night in a week, it wasn’t raining. The detective looked at the map he’d made, showing the streets from 32nd to 45th on the West Side. The locations where the bodies had been found were marked with red circles. They were spread around-enough so that it didn’t look like there was a pattern. But five homeless people dead in the course of seven weeks? All poisoned? It wasn’t obvious that this was the work of just one person, but that the deaths were connected the detective had no doubt.

He started at the uptown end, the theater district. As you left the streets dominated by Disney marquees, you found the remnants of the old Times Square: novelty shops, import/export storefronts, peep shows, For Rent signs. Plenty of homeless people to talk to.

The detective took his time, walking slowly, keeping his eyes open-for what, he wasn’t sure. He stopped whenever he saw someone sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a street lamp, lying under a filthy quilt in a cardboard box. He introduced himself, asked whether the person had seen anything unusual lately.

Mostly they said no.

One man said, “You not going to get anyone to tell you anything. They too scared.”

“You scared?” the detective asked.

“Bet your ass I’m scared.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t want to end up dead.”

“We all end up dead,” the detective said.

“Not me, man. I’m not ready yet.”

“So why don’t you tell me, who is it that people are scared of?”