Lawrence Block - Manhattan Noir

They walked up the street and followed Danny’s running route. As they entered the park, Danny’s body tightened. He looked everywhere and anywhere.

The woods were empty and dark and Danny needed the flashlight to find the trail he took. He held Rosa’s hand as they headed up the hill.

“There. He was standing right there.”

Rosa walked into the thicket carefully and shined the light on the ground.

“What are you looking for?” Danny asked as he looked around. Who knows what’s in here at night.

“I don’t know. Anything.”

Rosa took another step and hissed, “Oh my God.”

Danny went over to her side and saw a body under a bush. Then he heard a low moan. Rosa shined the light into the bush and Danny reached in. He felt an arm and gently pulled it toward him.

“That’s the jogger. That’s her. Sara Miller,” Rosa said, as they looked down on the young girl. She lay on the ground unconscious and barely breathing, but it was her. Her blond hair was a dirty mess and her face had cuts and bruises.

“We got to get her to a hospital,” Danny said, as he bent down and picked her up by the torso and put her over his back.

“Careful, Danny.”

Rosa lit the way as he tried to gently carry Sara Miller. He could feel her body moving on his back like she was trying to get away. They got back on the path and Danny picked up his pace.

“Memorial is like ten blocks. Call an ambulance. Have them meet us by the park entrance on 207th Street.”

Rosa took out her cell phone and tried to keep pace with Danny’s long strides. As Danny walked down the path, he sensed something coming at him from his left side. He turned and saw Yuri charging out of the trees with a huge limb.

“That is mine!” Yuri screamed, and swung the branch at Danny’s leg. Danny’s knees fell from under him. He was in a kneeling position and was able to lay Sara Miller down, when the branch hit his back, knocking him to the ground. His mouth tasted dirt. He saw Rosa swinging her purse at Yuri.

“Get off him, you friggin’ psycho!”

Yuri grabbed Rosa’s purse and punched her. She fell onto a park bench. Danny was on his feet now. Woozy. Unsteady.

But ready for a round.

“Hey. Fight me. Fight a man.”

Yuri turned and came at Danny. Jesus, Danny thought, this guy is big and moves like a boxer. A heavyweight. He hit Danny a glancing blow, and Danny came up inside of him and landed a body shot. Yuri gasped and punched Danny’s ribs.

The punch hurt. Worse than anything he had felt in years. Like something went inside of him. Then he saw the knife in Yuri’s hand. Yuri lunged at Danny and missed.

Danny pivoted, and with everything he had, he hit Yuri with a left hook to the temple. It was a career punch. Maybe the best one he ever threw.

The Russian fell to the ground. Out. Danny jumped on top of him, beating Yuri’s face. He punched until his hands were a bloody mess and he felt Rosa tugging on his shoulders.

“Danny, come on. Stop. He’s done. You’re hurt.”

She helped Danny to his feet and he limped over to the bench. He put his hand on his ribs and felt the thick blood.

It was like something was leaking out of him. Hate. Strength.

Sadness. He felt like he could float away.

Rosa wept as she looked at his white shirt stained with blood.

“Just hold on, Danny. Just hold on.”

“I’m cold, Rosa.”

She embraced him, and in the distance an ambulance siren wailed. He leaned into her neck and smelled her. Then he kissed her neck and moaned.

“You’re bleeding, Rosa. He hit you. Your lip,” Danny whispered.

Rosa licked the blood off. “I’m okay. Just a fat lip. You just hold on, Danny. Hold on! That ambulance is for you and Sara. You saved her, baby. You saved her.”

Danny looked up and smiled at Rosa. He felt lighter than he had ever been. All the weight he carried for years was leaving.

“I won, Rosa. I knocked him out.”

“You did, Champ. You did.”

Danny’s eyes shut as Rosa held him and cried.

Times Square

for William Warren

Y eah, the ring’s for real. Why would I pretend about that?

So what is it you want to know, kid? That I wouldn’t be “dancing” if not for Ron? That things might be different if he hadn’t pulled his vanishing act? Ron never introduced me to his family. Said they didn’t give two shits about him after his mom remarried, so why stay in touch? Guess I can’t blame him.

Of course, I’m hardly one to talk.

Still, though. Might have been nice to have some American in-laws, even if they’d never come to Manhattan.

Okay, kid, write this down.

Mother cried over Audrey Hepburn movies…

“She’s so elegant,” she sniffed, “and helpless. No wonder men look after her.”

On television, Sabrina was approaching its illogical conclusion. It was Saturday, February 29, 1964, the night of my father’s fifty-ninth birthday. I was fourteen. A-Ba was at a dinner hosted by my three older brothers. We didn’t go because of Audrey, but also because Mother said fifty-nine wasn’t a big deal, and that my brothers and their wives were wasting time sucking up to A-Ba, hoping to get his money.

“I don’t know what you’re crying about,” I said. “It’s just a movie. It isn’t real.”

My mother dried her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “It wouldn’t hurt you to soften up a bit and be a little more elegant.”

Mother was Eurasian, but if you looked at her face front, she passed for Chinese. Exotic perhaps, but Chinese. Her mother was an American missionary’s daughter who married a wealthy Cantonese trader against her parents’ wishes. My father was a Cantonese businessman who made and sold soy sauce-“Yangtze Soy”-when he wasn’t boozing. Whenever his commercial aired, the one where sauce cascades down cleavage to the opening of Grieg’s piano concerto, Mother switched off the television in disgust.

“Here,” she said, handing me her crochet work. “Put this away, please.”

I complied and escaped to my bedroom, grateful to surface above the vale of tears.

Elegance. Facing the mirror in third position, I studied my feet. Six and a half and still growing; already, it was hard finding shoes my size. Mother would die if she knew I danced all the boys’ parts. “Ballet will help you be more graceful,” she insisted when she started me up nine years earlier. “It’s important for young ladies to be graceful because gentlemen like that.” Mother’s graceful. She had jet-black hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, and a figure like Audrey’s. I could imagine her in Humphrey Bogart’s arms, dancing to “Isn’t It Romantic.” Mother loved to dance, but A-Ba couldn’t foxtrot to save his life.

Sabrina is such a silly story. Bogart and Holden are these unlikely brothers of a wealthy Long Island family. Audrey’s the chauffeur’s daughter who has a crush on Holden. She dis-appears off to cooking school in Paris, returns grown up and sophisticated, which is when he finally notices her. But the family doesn’t want her marrying Holden, so Bogart turns on the charm, intending to pay Audrey off. Instead, Bogart falls for her, and they end up getting married. The End.

My hair’s limp and a faded mousy brown. I have Mother’s height and A-Ba’s frazzled eyebrows, beady eyes, and ugly mouth. I look pathetically Eurasian. My brothers inherited the best of my parents; they pass for Chinese and all made it over 5'8", a real asset among Hong Kong men. Leftover blood coursed through me, the accident, seventeen years after the last boy. Good thing I was a girl. That way, Mother fussed over me in her old age and didn’t even mind the way I looked.