Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

“It’s the most beautiful apartment in New York.”

“I used to say that about my wife. The most beautiful woman in New York. She still is, I’ll give her that. Opens up that big smile of hers, she lights the whole street.”

“I didn’t realize you were still seeing her.”

“From a distance. You have to get right in her face to see the evil.”

Tommy waved his glass for a third drink.

I stood up. I’d heard enough evil-ex for one night. From a distance almost sounded like he was stalking her. “I’m out of here. We’ll go up again tomorrow, right?”

“Seven p.m.”

“Why so late?”

“He wants you to see the sun changing colors on the Empire State Building.”

“He’s enjoying jerking me around.”

Tommy put down his glass and said, seriously, “Two things you want to keep in mind, Joe. He can only jerk you around if you show him he’s getting to you. And, he knows what he’s got.”

“What’s that?”

“What you just said, man. The most beautiful apartment in New York.”

It was a walk-up. And the kitchen was a bad joke.

It ran the full length and breadth of the parlor floor of a Greek Revival town house built in 1840. It had two fireplaces and nine-foot ceilings. Listed as a one-bedroom, it had the extra nooks and crannies you find in an old house. One would hold a desk. Another, the upright piano I’d had in storage since I came to New York. It had a view in the back of narrow gardens and a view out front, across the street, of a gigantic plane tree in a green field beside a gothic stone seminary whose church, gardens, and dormitories occupied the entire block from Ninth to Tenth Avenues.

The plane tree spread its branches in a hundred-foot circle that screened the only ugly thing in view, the seminary’s 1960s-modern three-story office complex that had all the charm of a suburban elementary school. When I asked how the church had skated it past the Landmark Commission-which maintained strict architectural control of historic blocks like this one-Tommy had answered, “This city was built on loopholes.” The tree blocked most of it. Above the tree the Empire State Building sailed into the sky like a vertical ocean liner.

“Hard to believe you’re in the city,” said Richard, the owner. Richard had renovated the building forty years ago when-he told me every time I went back for another look-brave pioneers could buy crumbling property on a dangerous street for what today would buy a time-share in a parking garage. He had knocked down rooming house partitions and opened it up into floor-throughs, occupying the ground floor himself and renting the rest. Now, old and Florida-bound in a booming market, he had emptied the rentals by the simple expedient of jacking the rent to Park Avenue penthouse rates and had sold the third, fourth, and attic floors. “Mine” was the last and most expensive, since, Richard assured me, it was the best.

His negotiating strategy was effective, and downright intimidating. I had instructed Tommy to offer forty thousand less than his exorbitant asking price, then Richard raised his asking price by forty, making it insanely exorbitant. I should have walked away. Instead, I walked in at 7 o’clock, agreed that it was hard to believe we were in the city, and admired the light on the Empire State Building shift color from a metallic tan to red to blue-gray as the sun crept past the city.

It took a while, but Richard was in no rush. He was a non-stop talker who loved a captive audience. He told me that the reason the staircase sagged was some idiot had cut a main beam in the basement while running a new sewer line when they converted the original town house into a rooming house for the dockworkers back in World War II. He told me he put a new roof on the building. He told me that a disused air shaft could be converted to a kitchen exhaust fan in “your apartment.”

He told me a bunch of gossip about people on the block who fell into two categories: amusing eccentrics who owned buildings and apartments, and gypsy peasants who rented.

He cackled that the house of a neighbor he was feuding with was haunted. “Really is. You could buy an apartment in his building for half what it’s worth.”

I had checked that out already. It was going cheap all right. I didn’t see any ghosts. But it was completely ordinary and the only view was of a housing project on 18th.

“Having the seminary across the street is like having a country house outside your window. Except you don’t have to drive there and mow the grass. You want to get outdoors, you walk two minutes to the river.”

Then he made my blood run cold by telling me that a couple had looked at the apartment this afternoon and seemed to like it a lot. Money was no problem. The guy’s parents were rich. And if they wouldn’t help, the Swiss bank that employed the woman would front the down payment. He watched me react and seemed to like what he saw.

“You really should live here,” Richard said. “You’ll never find another place like this. Chelsea Piers, best gym in New York, is right down the street. I’m selling paradise.”

I turned my face to the window. The Empire State Building had almost disappeared in the dark. Just then, they switched on a thousand floodlights, painting it white as an iceberg.

“Look at that,” Richard crowed. “I just have a feeling in my gut you belong here. I don’t know if I ever told you, but this apartment has a track record when it comes to romance. Everyone who ever rented it met somebody and had a love affair. Right here in these rooms.”

I should not have told Tommy King that I wanted the kind of home that a woman would like to share.

“You’re asking a killer price,” I said.

“It will only get more valuable,” he countered. “Nothing will bring it down. It didn’t go when the Towers went down. I was watching on CNN thinking, Oh, God, the Empire State Building’s next, I’ll never get my price without the view. Then I realized the terrorists don’t know from shit about the Empire State Building. You gotta be a New Yorker to love the Empire State Building-sure enough, they went for the Pentagon.”

He was right. It would not be the most beautiful apartment in New York without that spire changing colors by the hour.

Richard said, “Nothing but a haunting will ever bring it down, Joe. And don’t get any ideas, because this building is not haunted and never has been. No scary ghosts, no evil spirits. It’s a great investment. Turn around and sell it in a flash. For profit.”

“I’m looking for a home, not a stepping stone.”

“Everyone wants to move up.”

“Not me. This is up.” Another mistake I realized as soon as I said it. I had told him exactly how much I wanted it and he didn’t bother to conceal a smile.

Tommy King stepped in, too late to repair the damage, saying, “Listen, Richard, thanks. We gotta split. We’ll come back tomorrow. Seven o’clock?”

Richard touched my arm, exuding fatherly concern.

“You might want to think about if you really belong in New York.”

“Beg pardon?”

“A lot of people your age who can’t afford New York are buying in Brooklyn. Manhattan may not be your town.”

On the street Tommy said, “I thought you were going to slug him.”

I turned on him. “Next time you see a class of high school tourists from the boonies? Look for the straggler staring at the skyscrapers. That’s the kid who’s coming back. Manhattan’s been my ‘town’ since I came here on my senior trip. I don’t care who’s moving to fucking Brooklyn, I’m not.”

“Whoa. I believe you, man. You turned red as brake lights. First time I’ve seen fire in your eyes.”

“I’ve settled for second best too many times.” I couldn’t believe I had just admitted that out loud, but I was so upset I dropped every defense and proceeded to spill my guts to Tommy King. “I didn’t hold out for an Ivy League college. I didn’t fight to get into a first-rank law school. I didn’t hold out for the job that really would have gone someplace.”