“When?”
“No more than two weeks ago.”
He could not, however, identify the mare’s owner.
“Never look at them,” he said plainly.
Business on Wall Street closed at noon on Saturdays, marking the customary half-holiday. By 1 o’clock, thousands after thousands arrived in the district to see the site of the carnage, jamming the streets, their solemnity in stark contrast to the panic and horror of those who had been subject to the terrorizing demonstration two days ago. Women dabbed away tears as men removed their hats in silent tribute to the dead. Other visitors pointed to the hole in the surface of Wall Street and the chips in the Morgan Building façade, even as workers replaced the cathedral windows.
From the crowd emerged a panic-stricken Italian woman, her olive visage an expression of unadulterated agony, her eyes ringed red and swollen. Dressed in black from head to heel, she clawed at passersby and pleaded for help in finding her
At her side was Mr. Piatti, the vice principal of the boy’s school. Sobbing, he was too aggrieved for purpose.
The woman cried, “My son... My hope. Please.”
A candle peddler was retrieved and pressed into service as a translator. He was nudged amid the crowd surrounding the wailing woman.
“He is a boy. Simple,” she said in Italian. “He is confused, and he is lost. You cannot tell me he is — You cannot!”
The peddler said, “Please. We wish to help you, but... First, did you visit the hospitals?”
“It is possible he has forgotten his name,” she said, her voice a song of desperation. “He is frightened. He is just a small boy.”
Mr. Piatti intervened, and it was finally understood by the crowd that the boy was ten years old and he had been treated to a day-visit to the district by a neighbor.
When her son and the nameless man had not returned by late Thursday evening, the woman reported to a nearby police station. There she had learned of the bomb attack.
The peddler tilted his head in sympathy.
After contacting the New York City police, Mr. Piatti explained, Paterson officials had come to Essex Street to examine the apartment on the third floor.
“Ah,” said the peddler, nodding to the crowd.
They found it empty, save for the furniture that had been left by a previous tenant and a few discarded pages from the latest edition of La Questione Sociale
Town car
by David Noonan
85 Exchange Place
It was waiting for him in front of the building, as always, eight quick steps across the sidewalk. Black, tinted windows, minimal chrome, a little bulgy in the haunches, like a 140-pound woman in a tight dress. One of a million, utterly anonymous. But special, too, his alone, for twenty minutes anyway. This one was freshly washed; he noticed droplets of water glistening on the bumper, catching the sparkle of the traffic light on the corner. He liked that. One night the car was so dirty he sent it away and threatened to take the firm’s business elsewhere. It wasn’t his call to make — Hackett handled all the vendors — but the frazzled dispatcher didn’t know that. He only knew he had a seriously unhappy customer screaming in his ear and a big account suddenly in play. They sent a limo to calm him down, no charge. It worked. The limo was superior to the Town Car, no question. He knew a lot of the big earners stayed with the Town Car after they made it, that whole low-profile thing. Not him. When he broke through he was getting a limo, and a retired NYPD detective to drive it and handle his personal security, one of those tough Irish guys with the blank expressions, the ones he saw in the Daily News all the time, escorting murder suspects out of their dreary apartment buildings in the Bronx. The car was as clean on the inside as it was on the outside, odor-free except for a hint of the driver’s cheap aftershave. He could live with that. It was a lot easier to take than the greasy stench of curried goat or whatever aromatic delicacies the Middle Eastern drivers wolfed down between calls. This guy looked American, an increasingly rare thing, and he was even listening to the Yankees game.
“Eighty-third and Third, right?” said the driver, in perfect Jersey, as they slid away from the curb.
He had planned to head straight home, but now he thought he might swing over to the West Side and see Heather. Maybe pick up some Chinese on the way from that joint she liked on Amsterdam, Hunan whatever. He checked his watch. It was 10:30 already. If his wife wasn’t asleep yet, she would be soon. Taking care of the twins wiped her out, with the full-time nanny. He didn’t really get that. His mother raised five kids on her own and did the old man’s books every night, too. She had more energy than ten of these hot-house flowers on the Upper East Side. And she was still going strong at seventy-eight, playing tennis every morning in the jungle heat of Miami, volunteering at Jackson Memorial in the afternoon, knocking off a bottle of cabernet every night with one or another of her widow buddies. Heather would be up, of course, studying for the LSAT or doing situps or making pies or writing one of her wacky poems or meditating or organizing her rock climbing equipment or IMing with one of her eight million close personal friends. She was a jammer, and that was fine with him. The last thing he needed was a girlfriend with nothing to do, calling him six times a day, sitting in front of the TV all night wondering why he couldn’t spend more time with her, carefully watering her boredom until it bloomed into glorious hysteria. Heather was too busy for that shit. He saw her three times a week, max. And forget about spending the night. She was in it for the sex, just like he was. Fucking her was like going to the gym for two hours, and that’s usually where he told his wife he was.
“Change in plans,” he said to the driver. “Let’s head for the Upper West Side.”
“Upper West Side. You got it.”
Then he remembered that Heather was having her period. Or was it his wife? One of them was, he was pretty sure. Could it be both? Was that possible? He hadn’t seen Heather since the Chicago trip. Or had he? Somebody had mentioned cramps recently, he knew that much. He should probably keep track of stuff like that, but then he’d have to start writing things down and that would put the whole arrangement at risk. He didn’t know anyone who had a setup as sweet as his — exhausted wife on the East Side, inexhaustible mistress on the West Side, the two of them separated by the great green expanse of Central Park. And there was no chance of a random encounter because he never took Heather to the East Side and Callie, his wife, hated the West Side. When she was thirteen, some old creep in a doorway waved his dick at her and her friends as they were leaving a movie theater on Broadway. Talk about making an impression. Twenty years later, the dominant image she had of the neighborhood that included Lincoln Center, the Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, hundreds of good restaurants, and at least a dozen great ones was of a droopy penis winking at her from the shadows. He knew it was droopy because he had questioned her once in great detail about the incident. Now, it was all he could do to get her to cross the park in a limo once a year for the charity benefit the Old Man threw every fall at the Metropolitan Opera.
He sensed a change in the world and suddenly the Hudson River was on his left, wide and flat and undeniable. New Jersey loomed across the dark water, a mile away at least. A hulking tanker pushed north against the current, the white streak of its bow wave pointing the way. Manhattan was an island. He liked that. Manhattan was an island, and he lived on it. It was a great castle, surrounded by a great moat, with many kings and many more princes. It was a kingdom, full of riches and treachery, where the game was played as well as it was played anywhere in the world. And he was one of the players. And he was winning. It wasn’t always pretty, it wasn’t always fair, but how could anyone expect it to be? When two people wanted the same thing, one of them was bound to be disappointed. The weak would always lose to the strong, that was nature’s way. If he beat someone on a deal, that was their problem, not his.