"The honking of what?"
"Horns. Car horns, taxi horns, truck horns."
"And you say you wish to make what kind of complaint?"
"Nonspecific. I've just been informed it's against the law, and that you would take my complaint."
"I don't know if it's against the law or not. If you want a copy of the Noise Pollution Rules, you can send four dollars and seventy-five cents to this address, have you got a pencil?"
"I don't want a copy of the rules. The Taxi and Limousine Commission just told me the honking of horns is against the Vehicle and Traffic Law."
"Then you want Traffic," the agent said. "Let me give you a number."
She gave him a number and he dialed it. The line was busy for four minutes. Then a voice said, "Customer Service."
"Hello," he said, "I'm calling to complain about the honking of horns..."
"You want Traffic," the woman said. "Isn't this traffic?" "No, this is Transit."
"Well, have you got a number for Traffic?" She gave him a number for traffic. He dialed it.
"Hello," he said, "I'm calling to complain about the honking of horns in the vi. "
"We only take complaints for traffic lights and streetlights."
"Well, to whom do I talk about... ?". "Let me give you Traffic." "I thought this was traffic." "No, I'll switch you." He waited.
"Department of Transportation."
"I'm calling to complain about the honking of homs in the vicinity of..."
"What you want is the DEP."
"I want the what?"
"Department of Environmental Protection. Hold on, I'll give you the number."
"I have the number, thanks."
He called Environmental Protection again. All agents were busy again. After a wait of some six minutes, he got someone on the phone and told her
about his problem all over again. She listened patiently.
Then she said, "We don't take auto horns." "Are you telling me that the Department Environmental Protection can't do anything noise pollution?"
"I'm not saying there's no one here can do about it," she said. "All I'm saying is we don't auto horns."
"Well, isn't the honking of auto horns noise pollution?"
"Not in this department. Day construction, night construction, all that kind of stuff is what we call noise pollution."
"But not horn honking?"
"Not horn honking."
"Even though it's against the law?"
"I don't know if it's against the law or not. You can check that with your local precinct."
"Thank you," he said.
He looked up the number for the precinct closest to the Hamilton Bridge. The 87th Precinct. 41 Grover Avenue. 387-8024. He dialed it.:
A recorded voice said, "If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911. If this is not an emergency, hang on and someone will be with you shortly."
He hung on.
"Eighty-seventh Precinct, Sergeant Murchison." He went straight for the jugular.
"The honking of automobile horns is against the law," he said. "Isn't that true?"
"Except in an emergency situation, yes, sir, that very definitely is true."
Good, he thought.
"But it's a law that's extremely difficult to enforce," Sergeant Murchison said. "Because, sir, we can't pinpoint who's doing the actual honking, do you see, sir? Where the honk is coming from, do you see? If we could find out who was actually leaning on his horn, why, we'd give him a summons, do you see?"
He did not mention that standing on the corner of Silvermine and Sixteenth, listening to the infernal, incessant cacophony of horns, he could without fail and with tremendous ease pinpoint exactly which cabdriver, truck driver or motorist was doing the honking, sometimes for minutes on end.
"What if he gets a summons?" he asked.
"He goes to court. And gets a fine if he's found guilty."
"How much is the fine?"
"Well, I would have to look that up, sir." "Could you do that, please?" "You mean right now?" "Yes."
"No, I can't do that right now, sir. We're very busy here right now."
"Thank you," he said, and hung up.
He sat with his hand on the telephone receiver for a very long time, his head bent. Outside, the noise was merciless. He rose at last, and went to the window, and threw it wide open to the wintry blast and the assault of the horns.
"Shut up," he whispered to the traffic below.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!" he shouted.
Ten minutes later, he shot and killed a guy who was blowing his horn on the approach ramp to Hamilton Bridge.
The car looked as if it had just come out of the showroom. Black Richard had never seen it looking so good. He told the three rich white fucks they should go into the car wash business together. They all laughed.
In an open bodega not far from the car wash, they bought a can of starter fluid and then found a soot-stained oil drum that had already been used for fires a hundred times before. This neighborhood, when it got cold the homeless gathered around these big old cans, started these roaring fires, sometimes roasted potatoes on a grate over them, but mostly used them just to keep warm. It was warmer in the shelters, maybe, but in a shelter the chances were better of getting mugged or raped. Out here, standing around an oil drum fire, toasting your hands and your ass, you felt like a fuckin cowboy on the Great Plains.
They started the fire with scraps of wood they picked up in the lot, old newspapers, picture flames without glass, wooden chairs with broken legs, a dresser missing all of its drawers, curled and yellowing telephone directories, broomstick handles, whatever they could find that was flammable. On many of the streets and roadways in this city, in most of the empty lots, the discarded debris resembled a trail left by war refugees. When the fire was roaring and crackling, they threw in the bloody sheets and rags, and then stirred them into the flames with a
broomstick, Richard the First intoning, "Double double toil and trouble," Richard the Second chiming in with "Fire burn and cauldron bubble," which black Richard thought was some kind of fraternity chant.
They stayed around the oil drum till everything in had burned down to ashes. Well, not everything. some wood in there, turning to charcoal, beginning to smolder. But anything they were worried about was now history. No more bloody sheets, no more bloody rags. Poof. Gone.
"Time to celebrate," Richard the First said.
The man sitting at Meyer Meyer's desk was Randolph Hurd. He was a short slender man, almost bald as Meyer himself, wearing a brown suit and a muted matching tie, brown shoes, brown socks. An altogether drab man who had killed a cabdriver in cold blood and been apprehended by a traffic cop before he'd taken six steps from the taxi, The tagged and bagged murder weapon was on Meyer's desk. Hurd had just told Meyer about all the phone calls he'd made this morning. Brown eyes wet, he now asked, "Isn't horn-blowing against the law?"
There were, in fact, two statutes against the blowing of horns, and Meyer was familiar with both of them. The first was in Title 34 of the Rules of the City, which rules were authorized by the City Charter. Title 34 governed the Department of Transportation. Chapter 4 of Title 34 defined the traffic rules. Chapter 4, Subsection 12(i) read:
Horn for danger only. No person shall sound the horn of a vehicle except when necessary to warn a person or animal of danger.
The penalty for violating this rule was a $45 fine. The second statute was in the City's Administrative Code. Title 24 was called Environmental Protection and Utilities. Section 221 fell within Chapter 2, which was called Noise Control, within Subchapter 4, which was called Prohibited Noise and Unnecessary Noise Standards. It read:
Sound signal devices. No person shall operate or use or cause to be operated or used any sound signal device so as to create an unnecessary noise except as a sound signal of imminent danger.