But none of it affected her memory.
“Nice couple. Nice couple.” She got a far away look in her violet contact lenses. “He was a roughly handsome boy, German, Irish maybe. She was a looker, a Jewish girl. She spoke the language.” I took that to mean Yiddish. “Had a figure to die for and the features of a goddess. They were a funny pair.”
I described Johnny and Jane Doe to Sylvia.
“Could be them. Got a picture?” she asked.
“Sorry.”
“Got a girlfriend? she winked at me with black lashes as long as butterfly wings.
“Sure do,” I lied.
“Now I’m the one who’s sorry. What’s this all about?” Rejected, she suddenly got curious.
I showed her Larry’s card.
“Why didn’t you say so?” We were friends again. “Anything else I can do for you? Anything at all?”
“No thanks, Sylvia. Here,” I gave her one of my old business cards with the office number scratched out and my home number scribbled in. “If there’s something else that you recall about the couple or the piece, even if it seems trivial or insignificant, call me.”
“Maybe,” she read my card, “Dylan Klein, I’ll just call you.” If nothing else, Sylvia was persistent.
I kissed the back of her right hand, nearly slicing a lip open in the process, took one of her cards and was gone. On the way out onto West 47th Street, I bumped into the security guard I’d met on the way in.
“Did you find Mojo, all right?” he laughed and slapped my shoulder playfully. “Don’t look much like a Mojo, does he?”
“No, I had to admit that. “How did-”
“-he get that nickname?” the jolly guard finished my question. “Some big gambler give it to him. Said he had to get his Mojo workin’ and bought a big piece from Mr. Minkowitz. Gambler went to Vegas and practically shut down three casinos. Gamblers been comin’ ever since. You know, to get their Mojo workin’. Moshe. Mojo. It just kinda stuck.”
“Not a very kosher name for a Hasidic Jew,” I mused.
“I wouldn’t know about that. Excuse me,” the guard turned his attention to a group of five kids coming through the door. “Can I help you?”
An inch of gray snow came between my feet and the concrete on 6th Avenue. More of it fell onto my nearly defenseless scalp, melting quickly and cascading down my neck as a dirty stream of water. Running-shoed women with newspaper umbrellas elbowed themselves into other people’s taxis. Buses threw slushy gutter puddles up onto tailored pant legs and nyloned ankles. No one took much notice. They could take it. They were New Yorkers. They could take anything. The problem was, they often did.
The Cursing Millions
Time wasn’t quite standing still.
I was laughing, listening to the radio telling me how bad the traffic was. Oh, New Yorkers could deal with almost any adversity, but driving in a steady snow wasn’t one of them. Four inches of packed powder could bring mighty Gotham to its knees. Just ask the driver in front of me or the one in front of her or the driver behind me or the one behind him. Maybe you should just take my word for it. By now, no one in a car in Manhattan was in any mood to answer questions.
I was laughing because this oil and water mixture of New Yorkers and snow is what had helped to kill a nuclear power plant on Long Island. In order to fire up a nuclear reactor you need to have an evacuation plan. Unfortunately, since Long Island is an island, the only viable means of mass evacuation is over the road through New York City. Even on a holiday in perfect weather, driving to and from New York is a nightmare worthy of a movie. As you might anticipate, it was rather an arduous task for the utility to put a positive spin on an over-the-road evacuation thru the city. But never underestimate the stupidity of bureaucrats. Never!
They were about to pass the plan. I guess the geniuses in Washington thought New York City residents were so tough, they wouldn’t try to save themselves. No, they’d just clear the roads and let their Long Island brethren pass right on through. Oh sure they would. And when they were done waving good-bye to the Long Islanders, the New Yorkers would all climb onto their rooftops, face due east toward the impending meltdown and collectively shout: “Fuck you, radiation. We can take it.”
Just when this ridiculous scheme was ready to sail, some stick-in-the-mud, liberal, left-wing radical, environmentally active, pinko, oddball kook asked this question: What if it snows? Troublemakers! God, don’t ya just hate ‘em? Well, eventually the state bought the plant and shut it down. So I guess we’ll never know what will happen if it snows.
My sputtering Volkswagen was about twenty feet closer to the Queens Midtown Tunnel than it had been just forty minutes ago. The hands on my watch moved even more slowly. But like I said, time wasn’t quite standing still. I had an eternity of seconds to laugh and ponder there in the snow and fumes and hardening dark slush. I shut my eyes and saw the cursing millions on their rooftops. I saw angry black children leaping from car roof to car roof trying to fly. I saw the jaws of the earth open, swallowing all the foolish men. I saw myself getting home sometime in early April. I opened my eyes and found the nearest hotel.
The Hindenburg
The Hotel St. Lawrence was a nondescript soot-faced building buried somewhere on Lexington Avenue below 34th Street. Its heritage could not be described as proud nor even once-proud. It’d never been a poets’ or musicians’ haunt like The Chelsea. Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe hadn’t slept there, so The Waldorf was safe. And at last check, the rat pack, brat pack, jet set and royalty still preferred The Plaza, Pierre and St. Moritz. What the Hotel St. Lawrence offered was rooms, plenty of them and, unlike the aforementioned establishments, at prices a little less inflated than the Hindenburg.
Actually, business at the front desk was pretty brisk, but not brisk enough for management to break out the “No Vacancy” sign. I had my pick of rooms. Wow! I could face brick, steel, or the street. I picked a room with the view, surrendered my credit card and got my key. How novel; a hotel that still used keys. It was real metal and everything, not some encoded piece of plastic. I hurried through the slip cover and green velveteen lobby and into the Seaway Lounge.
Just outside the cocktail quarters, an entire wall was covered in black and white publicity photos of mostly dead and totally forgotten comics. I went in anyway. I’d been in worse bars. I’d sat on less comfortable stools. I’d gotten slower, ruder service from nastier barmen and sipped flatter beer from dirtier glasses. I’d even seen uglier wallpaper in an acid flashback once. But, having noted all this, I wouldn’t bet that I’d be back at the Seaway Lounge anytime soon.
The room was an improvement. Not a quantum leap, mind you, but a step up. Its last facelift had been done when younger men wore acetate shirts and platform shoes. There were starving artist prints on the walls, but mercifully, no dead comics. The TV reception looked more like a blizzard than my view onto Lexington Avenue. Maybe I’d be headed back to the bar sooner than expected.
I dialed Kate Barnum’s number at The Whaler. I was ready to deal. Being indebted to Larry Feld made bargaining with Barnum seem like a minor detail. She wasn’t in. I tried her shack in Dugan’s Dump and listened to the phone ring endlessly. I stopped listening and lay back on the bed.
Somebody drummed their knuckles against the door. I let them drum for a bit before answering. And like some witless schmuck, I just flung the door open without inquiry.
“Queen-sized bed,” Kate Barnum commented, looking beyond my shoulder. “That’s good.” She sounded as if she’d made a short detour at the Seaway Lounge before coming my way. “Take this,” the reporter shoved a brown paper bag into my hands and removed her coat. The bag contained some bags of bar nuts, barbecue chips, a full bottle of Grand Marnier and a six pack of Diet Coke.