An insistent knock at the door wakes me up. Getting my head off the pillow is like moving a battleship. I check my phone and it indicates I’ve been out for four hours. If this is the cops again, I may punch one of them in the face.
I pull on jeans and a shirt, open the door a crack, and find Aziz. It’s hard to read his eyes behind the coke-bottle glasses, but his face is pointed firmly south.
He says, “You changed the locks.”
“I don’t think I did,” I tell him. “The key sticks sometimes.”
“The police were looking for you.”
“They’re old friends. We straightened all that out.”
Aziz leans around me to look into the apartment. “The woman downstairs says there’s water leaking into her apartment. I need to come in with a plumber and have a look.”
“Nothing in here is leaking. Sometimes I get water in the sink and the toilet, but I figure that’s normal, right?”
Aziz tries to move around me. I hold the door tight to my side and block him with my body. He asks, “Where’s Miss Hudson?”
“Bingo.”
“She’s always out at bingo. Why does the apartment look like such a mess?”
“She had a party last night.”
“You know if she doesn’t live here anymore, then I don’t have to honor your lease.”
“I am fully aware it is not an issue.”
He gives up trying to get around me and takes a step back into the hall. “Tell her she needs to come to my office. I have some paperwork she needs to sign.”
“Have a heart, Aziz. She’s an old lady. She’s not doing great.”
“Good enough to play bingo.”
“Well, you can’t expect her to sit around here all day. I’m not great company.”
He looks into the apartment one more time, then stalks off down the hall. “Tell her to come by later.”
Not an auspicious start to the day.
Rent-controlled apartments are like UFOs. You hear about them but you never actually see them. Lucky for me, I knew a guy who knew a guy. The first guy, the one I knew, owed me a favor.
There was a woman who lived here and she died. She probably moved in sometime around World War II and her rent was locked into place. The only good thing FDR ever did for me was sign the Emergency Price Control Act in the 1940s.
The guy I knew worked at a hospital, and the guy he knew worked in a morgue. They had a little system set up. If I wasn’t owed a favor, I would have paid a finder’s fee.
No one notified the landlord the woman died because it happened off-premises. So I moved in, up the fire escape and through the window in the middle of the night. For as much as Aziz knows, Miss Hudson does nothing but sleep and play bingo, and I’m her live-in caretaker.
The thing is, as soon as he finds out she’s not alive, he’ll junk her lease and charge market rate for the apartment. I can’t afford market rate. And even though it’s really tough to kick out tenants in New York City, what I’m doing is a lot less than legal.
Landlords will neglect repairs to force renters out. They keep champagne on ice so they’re ready to celebrate when rent-controlled tenants die off. Aziz is fixated on me. I don’t know how much longer I’ll last.
I’m sure there are people around here who notice Miss Hudson is gone, but the neighbors don’t give a damn, ultimately, and I don’t give a damn about them. You’d think sticking so many people into such a small place would make them interact more. It just makes them angrier and more territorial. People outside New York think New Yorkers are rude. We’re not. It’s just that personal space is in very short supply, so we treasure every little bit we can get.
The people who live upstairs sound like they’re always wearing high heels and the brick walls hold in the heat even during the winter so it’s always sweltering, and what looks like a broom closet in the kitchen is actually the shower. The purple and blue and pink floral wallpaper makes me nauseous when I take too many prescription drugs, and the toilet never really flushes all the way on the first try.
But it’s my apartment, and I love it and anything I could ever need is right outside my door.
There’s another knock. It’s quieter, and I scream, “What Aziz?” but when I open the door he’s not standing there. Instead, it’s a pretty girl about my age, wearing a purple sweater, her black hair pulled into a tight bun. She’s got the ragged look of someone who’s been traveling.
She says, “Your mom wants to know why you don’t answer your phone.”
I don’t know what to say to that. The girl looks familiar, but my brain is still foggy.
After a moment the girl shrugs. “C’mon cousin, are you going to invite me in or what?”
“Margo?”
“Correct.”
“Fuck.”
“I missed you, too.”
She gives me a hug and I stand aside for her. She comes into the apartment dragging a black roller suitcase behind her. I suddenly remember the conversation I had with my mom a few weeks ago. Margo is from Pennsylvania and looking at NYU. She wanted to visit the city to feel it out, and my mom asked if she could stay with me. That must be why she was calling.
Margo asks, “It’s still cool, right? Staying here?”
“Of course.”
“Did you forget?”
“Yes.”
Margo laughs. “You know, I can go get a hotel room or something if this is inconvenient.”
“No, it’s fine. Hotels around here are too fucking expensive.” I lead her into the living room and put her on the couch, sit on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. She shrugs. “So, how’ve you been?”
“Alive.” I reach for my cigarettes and pull one out, hold the pack up to her. She nods and I hand it to her. “So you might be coming here next year?”
“I hope so. I think I’ve got a really good chance of getting into Tisch.” She pulls out her phone. “I’m going to text my mom and let her know I’m with you. You should do the same. Your mom says she never hears from you.”
As Margo clicks away I send my mom a text: Margo here. Sorry. Then I turn off my phone. I take a long drag on my smoke. “Been a while, right?”
“I haven’t seen you since the funeral. That was so long ago.” She reaches for something in her bag but stops. “I’m sorry I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you. There were so many people…”
“It got crowded.”
“I know I should have called. Or, I don’t know, been there. I’m so sorry about what happened to your dad.”
“Most people are.”
Margo looks away from me, her voice catching a little. “He was a hero. You know that, right?”
“Let’s not talk about this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. The first thing anyone ever wants to do when they come to New York is talk about 9/11. What is there to talk about? It happened. It sucks. Talking about it is not going to bring him back.”
She drops it there. Looks around my apartment, at the French Rococo walnut armoire in the corner, at the green painted Irish hutch. The plastic wrapped around the paisley-print couch creaks underneath her.
“You have an interesting taste in furniture,” she says.
“I’m a fan of the classics. I still listen to vinyl too.”
“Seriously, why does it look like an old lady lives here?”
“Well, that’s sort of the point.”
I explain my living arrangement and her eyes go wide when I tell her how much I pay in rent. She asks, “For this apartment?”
“Fact.”
“That’s insane. Student housing at NYU is nearly three grand a month, and that’s with a roommate.”
“Welcome to New York.”
“It’s a little weird though,” she says, scrunching up her face. “Living in a dead lady’s apartment?”
“New York real estate is a full contact sport. And it’s pretty vanilla, compared to some of the things I’ve done.” I finish off my cigarette and stamp it out in the overflowing ashtray. The scanner buzzes in the kitchen. “10-32, A and 3.” Defective oil burner a few blocks away.
Margo looks toward the kitchen. “What was that?”
“Scanner. Listen, make yourself comfortable. I need to clean up.”
I leave Margo on the couch, which is set back against the wall and behind a folding screen so I can use the shower when people are over without feeling like too much of an exhibitionist. She occupies herself while I manage a quick rinse. Just enough to make me feel human.
I pull on a shirt I feel confident was recently clean and head back to the living room. Margo has emptied the ashtray into the trash, and she’s smoking another one of my cigarettes. She looks up at me. “What now?”
“Fuck if I know. You showed up on my doorstep. Tell me what you want to do.”
“I don’t want to keep you from anything. And I can go, really. I’m sure I can find a place to stay.”
“No, you’re staying here. Let’s go get some food. I need eggs and coffee.”
“Perfect. I saw a Starbucks on the way here.”
“Starbucks?”
“They have breakfast sandwiches.”
This is going to require attention. I tell her, “If you’re going to live here, no Starbucks. The coffee tastes like crap and it’s a chain. Chains are stupid. There are much better food options.”
She arches her eyebrows and nods cautiously, like she thinks I might be scolding her. Maybe I am.
We hit the sidewalk and I stretch, breathe the crisp air. I turn in a circle, contemplate where we should go, and I catch Margo twisting a sterling ring off her right index finger. She places it in her purse.
I ask, “What are you doing?”
“I don’t want anyone to take it.”
And it’s right here that I laugh so hard I pull a muscle in my rib cage.
Margo asks, “What?”
Here’s the thing about living in New York City: People from the outside are stuck on how things used to be in the seventies, when riding the subway meant you ran a 60/40 chance of getting stabbed.
The murder rate peaked in 1990 with twenty-two-hundred deaths. Last year, it was a drop over five hundred. We’re down in every major crime category, to the point where this is now the safest big city in America. We’ve gone from the urban hellscape of Death Wish to the whitewashed utopia of Friends.
And yet we just can’t shake our rep.
Everyone has their own theories about what made things change. Gentrification, the Clinton economy. And they were factors, sure. But the big catalyst was Mayor Giuliani, a supreme asshole of titanic proportions. A craven, selfish fuck who stomped on civil liberty and, contrary to popular belief, didn’t do jack shit after 9/11 besides trip over the first responders on his way to the television cameras.
Among his many “accomplishments” was appointing a commissioner for the NYPD who instituted a broken windows policy. The idea is that if you walk by an abandoned factory with broken windows, and there’s a pile of rocks at your feet, you may be tempted to break more windows. But if none of the windows are broken, you might not think to do it.
In this instance, the idea was that clearing out lesser crimes would reduce major crimes. The NYPD went after the little things, like public drinking, fare beating, squeegee men. And it helped, a little.
The problem is Giuliani also turned the NYPD into a military-style unit of enforcement that could stop and frisk you for no reason, other than they feel like it. There were arrest quotas to make and CompStat reports to fill out, which were supposed to be about tracking crime, but turned into goals. Haven’t written enough summonses this month? Then go out and snag someone for something. Doesn’t matter if they’re guilty of anything—as long as the numbers look good.
And crime did drop. The tourists flocked here in droves. Kids with stars in their eyes moved to once-uninhabitable neighborhoods like Bushwick and the Lower East Side. Park Slope and Tribeca became suburbs tucked away between tall buildings.
Today’s New York City is a luxury product to package and sell to tourists. In a hundred years, this entire city will be set behind glass and you’ll only be allowed to live here if you earn a salary in the high six figures. Everyone else will be turfed to Jersey.
I explain this all to Margo and she listens very intently. When I’m done she asks, “Isn’t being safe a good thing?”
“I know plenty of people who would take the bad old days back in a heartbeat.”
“That’s a little ridiculous.”
“Maybe. But you live here your whole life, you understand a little better.”
We settle on a trattoria nearby that does good eggs and coffee. I don’t like not working, but maybe some food will get the wheels spinning. Right now my head feels full of cotton.
The restaurant is empty and a bored waiter with neck tattoos leads us to a table near the front window. Lunette is sitting in the back, trying to keep her head aloft over a Bloody Mary. I tell the waiter we’re moving and pull out a chair across from her. She barely stirs when I sit. She’s wearing big sunglasses even though it’s dark in the corner.
I knock on the table. “Rough night?”
She makes an affirmative noise with her mouth and looks at Margo. “Who are you?”
I flip through the menu even though I know what I want. “You’ll have to forgive Lunette. She’s part Russian. Lunette, this is my cousin, Margo.”
Margo reaches her hand across the table and they shake. Lunette takes a long sip of her Bloody Mary while the waiter takes our order. I tell him to bring me sunny-side eggs and toast and hash browns and a pot of coffee. He laughs even though it’s not a joke and goes back to the kitchen.
“So,” Margo says to Lunette. “What do you do?”
“What do I do?”
“For a living.”
“Is it important for you to know?”
“Just… making conversation.”
Lunette makes another noise with her mouth and digs through her purse, then reaches her hand up to her mouth. I grab her wrist. “Don’t be mean.”
“She’s a gent.”
“And she’s blood.”
Lunette shakes me off and dry-swallows whatever pill it is she’s taking. To Margo she says, “I’m sorry dear. My hangovers make me into a different kind of person.”
“I know the feeling,” Margo says. “But what’s a gent?”
Fearing Lunette will give her the unkind version, I jump in. “It’s a nickname for people who move here but weren’t born here. Gent is short for gentrification.”
“Why?”
The waiter puts down my coffee and a glass of ice water. I drop three cubes into the mug and tell Margo, “Because when some trust-fund baby is willing to shell out three grand a month for an apartment, it drives up the surrounding property values and prices people out. Places like CBGB closed because of people like that.”
Lunette nods her head. “Dreadful.”
I take a swig of my coffee. “My landlord is pretty close to getting me out, I think. He could get four, five times what I’m paying, easy.”
Margo pokes at her light-and-sweet mug. “Where will you go if you have to leave your apartment?”
“I can afford a bench in the subway, but it would have to be on one of the crappier lines, like the G train.”
“What about moving to a borough? You could go back to Staten Island.”
“That would be like admitting defeat,” I tell her.
“What about Brooklyn?”
Lunette cringes. I laugh.
Margo scrunches her brow. “I thought Brooklyn was supposed to be cool. I know a lot of people back home who talk about Williamsburg like it’s Shangri-La.”
“Williamsburg is where you go when you’re afraid to be an adult. I wouldn’t last a week.”
“If I move here, you could stay with me. We could figure it out.”
I smile at her. “Thanks, but you don’t need that kind of trouble.”
“So,” Margo asks both of us. “How do you two know each other?”
Lunette laughs at the memory. “Some guy whipped his dick out on the subway and waved it in my face. Ash leveled him.”
Margo purses her lips. “Does that kind of thing happen often?”
“The penis on the subway or Ash hitting people? Both are surprisingly frequent. Don’t worry though. The city is safer than it seems.”
I’m gearing to defend myself when the food arrives. The eggs are salty and scrambled, but I don’t care. I wave to the busboy for more coffee and Margo asks, “It’s not, like, that safe, is it? Did you hear about that girl? The one who got killed near here two nights ago? The one the papers called the Greenpoint Goth?”
Lunette looks up at me. I keep looking at the plate. I don’t want to have this conversation. It would be rude to get up and go. I’m tired of talking about dead people. It seems like I can’t avoid it. I shrug my shoulders. “She was a friend.”
“Oh Christ Ash, I’m so sorry,” Margo says.
“Please don’t apologize. You didn’t kill her.”
“My mom almost didn’t let me come here because of that. She didn’t want to drive me to the train station.”
“It’s not dangerous,” I tell her. “Sometimes it can be. You just need to be smart.”
Lunette says, “Chell was smart.”
“She was. How about we all back the fuck off this topic of conversation?”
“We can’t actually,” says Lunette.
“Why?”
“Because there’s something I need to tell you.”
“About?”
“About Chell.”
I put down my knife and fork and fold my hands in front of me. I don’t look at Margo when I tell her, “This is terribly rude of me, but could you give us a second.”
Margo nods. “I’m going to go out front and smoke.”
I wait until she’s out on the sidewalk, then ask Lunette. “What have you got?”
“I asked around a little bit because you’re too angry to have rational conversations with people. I found out on the day she died, she went to go meet with the head of her burlesque troupe. They’re doing a show tonight at Skidmore. At night, she was out at whatever mystery job she was working that nobody seems to know anything about.”
“Good. All things I didn’t know.”
“Yes, but there’s more. Do you know what she was doing in the morning?” Lunette pauses for effect. “Brunch with Ginny.”
I let that glance off my chin, then nod and push myself out from the table. Margo is standing just outside, finishing her cigarette. She offers me one, but I take out my own. She asks, “Do you want me to leave?”
“No. It’s fine. We’ll take you out tonight. I just have no idea what to do until then. It’s still early.”
Margo tosses her cigarette to the street and says, “I need to be at NYU for a meeting pretty soon with one of the advisors from the film department. Maybe you and Lunette could come up with me and show me around the neighborhood a bit.”
“Sure. Why don’t you go back inside to finish eating with Lunette. I need to make a call.”
Margo heads inside. I walk down the block and my hands are shaking.
Ginny lied to me.
She said she hadn’t seen Chell in what, weeks? I should kick in her door and punch her in the face before her guards take me down, and it’s fine to because she’s really a guy. But the only way she’ll tell me the truth is if I confront her with it.
I toss the half-spent smoke into the street and head back to the restaurant. Lunette is sitting by herself. She cocks her head to the side. “In the bathroom.” I sit across from her. She frowns, says, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“Not much to say right now that won’t upset me.”
“We’re going up to NYU?”
“Yes. And it would be a big help if you came. She’s supposed to be staying with me, and she can, but it’ll be good if she has some other people to hang out with. Keep an eye on her. Can you do this for me?”
“She’s sweet.” Lunette picks up a spent sugar packet and tears the pieces in half. “Is she my type?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“So, Ash.” She puts down the sugar packet and takes my hand. “I know this is hard. I hope you’re being smart. Please promise me you’ll be smart?”
“I love you too much to make you promises.”
“Well, at least you seem… calmer than normal.”
“I’m off booze until I see this through.”
“You’re not drinking?”
“Clean and sober.”
Lunette’s face registers a level of shock that makes me uncomfortable. She says, “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you this serious.”
We stop at the northeast end of Washington Square Park to get our bearings and so Margo can look up the address on her phone. Her meeting is in a building around the corner, and I tell the girls to head over because I need to run an errand.
After they disappear, I head diagonally across the park to the chess tables. Most of them are full up with players, except for the one at the end of the line where Craig is sitting by himself, pondering the carefully-aligned pieces on the stone playing surface.
His hair is wrapped into a sloppy ponytail, done with his hands and not a comb. His skin’s cracked from living outside and eating a diet that consists mostly of booze. But his gray eyes are sharp, and when I sit across from him, they probe me in a way that makes the muscles in my back tighten.
I start the game the same way I always do. Clearing some pawns, a bishop, and a knight into the middle so I can castle my king behind the rook. Craig chips away at the sides of the boards, looking for an opening. I think I’m holding him back when he manages to snatch one of my pawns.
And then another.
And then my bishop.
I panic and push into the middle. Put my spare rook onto a square I think will cost him his queen. I don’t even see the bishop that takes it out. It’s not long before I’m down to a knight and the three pawns guarding the king. Craig still has a lot of his pieces.
The game is over, but I keep playing out of respect. Within a few moves he’s backed my king into a corner with a bishop and a rook. I knock over the king and he smiles for the first time since I sat down.
“Chell died two nights ago,” I tell him as he resets the board. “Hear anything about it?”
He shakes his head.
I pull a twenty dollar bill out of my pocket and slide it across the table. “Ask around, see what you can find out. I was black-out, so if anyone saw me stumbling around, that would help too.”
He looks around to make sure no one is watching us, then crumples the money in his hand and pushes it into the pocket of his tattered Bomber jacket.
Craig doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s worth the money.
We play two more games and both times I hang on a little longer, until he decides to stop toying with me and gouges my defenses. When I’m tired of getting my ass kicked, I thank him for his help, then walk over to Mamoun’s to grab a shawarma, wait for the girls to finish.
I want to work the case, but I don’t want to abandon Margo. I’m glad Lunette is sticking with us because that makes it easier. The two of them talk on an endless loop and I only have to weigh in occasionally.
We grab dinner at Milon so I can introduce Margo to the joys of cheap Indian food. Then it’s time to drink. Margo wants to go down to the bars on MacDougal because that’s where her friends have told her to go. I tell her MacDougal is a great place to get puked on or date-raped by a frat guy.
Instead we go to Stillwater. Lunette disappears for the juke box and fills it up with Faith No More even though we won’t be here long. The bartender slams down a glass of whiskey for me, but I pass it off and ask him if he saw me or Chell the night she died, but he didn’t.
After a bit, we head across the street to KGB, where the red lights make everyone look like a junkie. The bartender offers me his condolences and I stop him from pouring me a vodka. Chell was a regular here, and I ask him if she’d been around and he says no. I can smell the alcohol and I want a drop, just a tiny little drop. Lunette and Margo are tipsy and that makes it worse.
Bombay and Romer show up and they order drinks but say they want to knock off to Coyote Ugly. Drunken idiots drooling over tits isn’t really my scene, but Bad Kelly might be working, and last I heard she was dating a cop. That might be useful.
I introduce Bombay and Romer to Margo and head for the bathroom where a guy I sort of recognize is ducking into the stall. He offers me a line of coke and I wave him off with a heavy heart.
We leave and find Coyote Ugly is packed out the door and that annoys me. We push our way in and Bad Kelly is dancing on the bar in a black bra and skintight jeans. Her red hair hangs in sweaty ropes in front of her eyes. She’s pouring tequila down guys’ throats and they’re reaching up, trying to grope her, but she’s kneeing and elbowing their hands away.
Lunette pulls rank on some guys at a booth in the back, making them get up for her and Margo. They think she’s hitting on them, so they try to squeeze back in after the girls sit. It’s fun to watch their crestfallen expressions when they realize they’ve been had. Bombay appears at my side with a glass of Jay on the rocks, but when I don’t take it he shrugs, throws it back, and proceeds onto his beer.
I want to talk to Bad Kelly but she’s on the bar, and I don’t know what else to do with myself because it’s too loud inside for a conversation. Some guy grabs me and yells into my ear that he needs to hire me to find someone. He rattles off some details, his face way too close to mine, but I’m not listening, and when he’s done, I tell him I’m booked. I consider exit strategies when I notice Bad Kelly waving at me.
She rubs her fists at her eyes like she’s mock-crying.
Sorry about Chell being dead, is what she’s trying to say.
Most other people would do something like that and set me off, but Bad Kelly has a stunning inability to understand what’s appropriate in polite society. We’re a little similar like that so I give her a pass. I point at her and then at the door of the bar. She holds up five fingers, spread out, so I go outside and wait.
The crowd makes me anxious. Too many guys flailing their arms because they drank too much and there are woman nearby. Just as I’m finishing my first cigarette, Bad Kelly comes out wearing a heavy fleece. A guy’s fleece. Probably demanded it from someone standing at the bar. She meets me at the curb and takes out her own cigarette, the pack ragged and wet from being crammed in her sweat-soaked jeans. She leans toward me for a light and asks, “You okay, sweetie?”
“Not even close.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for.”
“What do you need?”I light another cigarette for myself. “Information. Anything you can tell me about Chell. What she’d been up to.”
Some guy with a popped collar and a backwards baseball cap comes up to Bad Kelly and gets two inches closer than appropriate. “Hey gorgeous. Taking a break?”
She wraps herself around my arm, her body warm and small against mine. “Boyfriend.”
I tell him, “Fuck off.”
He takes a step toward me, but when I don’t take my eyes away from his, he retreats. When he’s out of earshot Kelly says, “Thanks.”
“My job. So, anything?”
“Haven’t seen her around lately. She’s been off in Brooklyn, working on something for Ginny.”
“What kind of something?”
“She didn’t tell me. I mean, I didn’t ask her. But she said something about the ‘fucking hipsters.’”
“That’s good. One other thing. Are you still dating that cop?”
“We don’t date. We fuck.”
“Want to do me a solid? And if you pull this off, I’ll owe you big time?”
She speaks slowly, drawing out the word. “Depends.”
“When there’s a high profile murder like this, the cops withhold details so they can separate the real suspects from the cranks. I need to find out what they’re holding back from the press. Can you poke around?”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“You’ll think of something.”
“Me and this guy have been on the skids.”
“And?”
“You’re essentially asking me to let him fuck me so you can get an inside track.”
“First off, that’s not what I’m asking you. And I wouldn’t even ask you this if it wasn’t important.”
Bad Kelly turns away from me and crosses her arms. She says, “I’m not a whore, Ash.”
“I didn’t say you were. I’m not saying you have to fuck him. But are you never going to see this guy again?”
She drops her cigarette and shakes her head. “You’re an asshole.”
“Kelly. How many times have you called me on the tail end of a bad relationship to keep things clean? I have always been there for you.”
She shakes her head, still refusing to look at me. “You are such an asshole.”
“I’ll owe you.”
“Yes, you will.” She heads back for the bar.
For a very fleeting moment, I feel guilty. The feeling passes.
Margo and Lunette are sharing a cigarette outside the front door. They’re deep in conversation so I don’t try and break in. Some guy comes up to me and asks if he can have a cigarette. I tell him a pack costs eleven bucks and to go buy one if he wants one so bad. Inside I find Bombay drinking a new beer. He sees me and puts two fingers up to his mouth.
Good, because I don’t smoke enough anyway.
By the time we fight our way back outside, Margo and Lunette have disappeared. Bombay lights himself a cigarette, then lights mine. I take out the card for Noir York and the thumb drive.
He asks, “What do you need?”
“Anything and everything. Whatever you can tell me.”
He nods, sticks them in his pocket.
“Another thing,” I tell him. “Find out everything you can about Nellie Bly.”
“The journalist?”
“You know who she is?”
“Sure. She was a journalist back in the 1900s. She was famous for infiltrating a mental hospital to uncover abuse of the patients.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read books.”
“Thanks dick. Find out what you can about the rest and I’ll swing by tomorrow.”
I head back into the bar and find Lunette and Margo back at their table. Lunette looks at her watch and says, “You should head to Skidmore. That burlesque show is starting soon.”
“Thanks, kid. Can you take care of Margo?”
She curls her lips up in a very drunken, very suggestive smile. “Oh, I’ll take care of her.”
“Stop that.” I turn to Margo, hand her the key to my apartment. “Hang out with Lunette. If you get tired, she’ll take you back to my place. Sleep in the bed and I’ll take the couch.”
Margo is drunk and doesn’t appear to be used to being drunk. “But we’re having fun!”
“Then keep on having fun. I’ll see you in a bit.”
She calls something after me but I don’t hear her.
There’s a line to get into Skidmore. There’s also a door with a bouncer stationed outside that no one is lined up at. I recognize him, and he recognizes me from around. I ask him, “Girls back there?”
He shifts on his stool. “Why?”
“I need to talk to Cinnamon West.”
“Sorry man. You need to go in like everyone else.”
I consider passing the guy some cash, but my wallet feels light. I can’t keep paying people for information. I nod to him, thank him for his time, and get in the line. It doesn’t move, so I light a cigarette and a girl standing near me grumbles and waves a hand in front of her face, even though the smoke isn’t going anywhere near her. “Welcome to New York,” I tell her.
Suddenly the line moves forward and I’m at the door. A pretty girl asks for ten dollars. I give it to her and my wallet is now empty.
The place is simple. A bar along one wall, a stage across from it, and tables and chairs sized for toddlers. Lots of wood and amber lighting, so the place has a previous-century feel. There’s a makeshift stage at the back of the restaurant, which doesn’t look like much more than wooden pallets and plywood.
The show hasn’t started yet, so I work my way toward the curtained-off area in the back. Cinnamon peeks out, probably looking for someone else, because when she sees me she rolls her eyes. I wave to her and she points me to another doorway across the bar.
It’s a storeroom, white tile walls and shelves with cleaning supplies. Cinnamon sweeps in. She’s holding a robe tight around her body. Her afro is comically big. I wonder if it’s a wig but am too afraid to ask.
She looks at me like she’s waiting for a punch line. “What?”
“Nice to see you too.”
“Ash, this isn’t a good time.”
“Then I won’t keep you. I knew Chell met with the troupe the day she died. I just need to know if she said anything or did anything that might point me to who killed her.”
“I saw her, but I don’t even know what you mean.”
“Anything. Anything you can think of that stood out?”
“So you’re a private detective now?”
“I’m a friend who wants to rip the throat out of the guy who killed her. Especially before he hurts someone else.”
Cinnamon shakes her head. “You know Chell hasn’t danced with us in a while. She wasn’t even looking to get back in. It was a social call.”
“That’s fine. I just need to know if she said anything.”
She nods, slowly. “I think so. Maybe. You didn’t hear this from me?”
“Of course.”
“She’s in something. Some kind of game kind of thing. It’s an acting gig.”
“I knew that already.”
“There’s a girl, she’s another dancer. She went for the same part and didn’t get it. She was pissed, saying Chell only got the job because she knew somebody. Something like that.”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“Her stage name is Fanny Fatale. I don’t know her real name.”
“You think one of the other girls might know her?”
“You’re not coming back stage.”
“That’s fine. I’ll wait.”
Her face takes on the edge of a straight razor. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“Clearly not.”
She shakes her head. “Because you loved that girl too hard, and she carried it like a burden.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She turns to leave. “We have to start the show.”
“Cinnamon, c’mon, don’t be like this.” She doesn’t say anything. I yell after her, “You know what? Don’t comment on shit you don’t understand.”
When I duck out from behind the curtain, people are staring at me. I stick my middle finger in the air as I head for the door.
Do you remember that night we went to the Brooklyn Bridge?
You complained that I never wanted to do anything touristy with you. When you first moved here, you had designs on seeing the big attractions. The Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Empire State Building. You were shocked to learn I had never visited any of them. Locals don’t do tourist shit, I told you.
After some begging, I agreed to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. I wasn’t going to be caught doing anything else. At least I could explain that away if someone saw me. Plus, it was on the East Side. I still wasn’t comfortable being within ten blocks of the trade center.
You were okay with the bridge. In fact, after I told you, you became fixated. Within days you were spouting off history and facts. If it weren’t for you, I would never have known it’s the oldest suspension bridge in the United States, or that it’s a bad spot for suicides because it’s too low to the water.
The night we walked up there it was in the middle of the summer, and it was warm, but it wasn’t hot. It was early evening and we decided that the best time to go would be at dusk when the sun was dipping behind the horizon and the lights in all the office buildings were clicking on.
We scoped a park bench on the Manhattan side of the span and stood by it for twenty minutes, waiting for the couple sitting there to vacate. Then we pounced, barely beating out a European family. They looked amenable to sharing the space so we spread out and took it all.
We sat there watching the city twinkle and you nestled your head into my shoulder. You were wearing a sundress and no bra and heavy combat boots. We traded a flask of whiskey between us until it was empty. Eventually you leaned back and made a noise and it sounded sad. I asked you what was wrong.
You said, I can only see a couple of stars. Maybe, like, twelve?
Light pollution.
That’s sad.
It’s no big deal.
Have you ever even seen the stars?
When I was a kid. I was camping with my dad up in Bear Mountain.
What did you think?
It looked pretty amazing. But it looks pretty amazing here too.
Can we go up to Bear Mountain?
We’ll borrow a car from someone.
Can we do it soon?
Are you okay?
Just a little homesick.
You’re homesick?
Just a little.
We sat there for most of the night. The whole time I was working up the nerve to ask you a question. After that first night in your apartment and the bathtub I guessed something would happen between us and I was wrong. Things stayed platonic, and I didn’t want to scare you off so I didn’t push it.
But I spent a lot of time wondering whether I should kiss you.
I didn’t want to just do it and have it come off the wrong way. Being as big as I am has always made me skittish about how my advances would be interpreted.
When I had drank enough whiskey that I had some nerve and figured you’d be a little more relaxed, I asked, Can I kiss you?
You didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to look at your face. When I did look at you, the way your mouth was set told me I shouldn’t have asked.
You said, Ashley, you’re a good person and a great friend. Please let’s not ruin that?
I know, it’s just, I thought…
I’d like to break the cycle. I don’t want to hurt you.
You don’t scare me.
You looked at me, the smoke in your eye billowing, and you wrapped your arms around me. I considered vaulting myself over the railing of the bridge. Not that I wanted to die, but I wanted to get away from the shame digging a finger into my neck.
You said, What we have is perfect. And I just don’t want to be with anyone right now. Can’t we just stick with this?
Sure. Forget I asked.
We never went up to Bear Mountain.
I shoot a text to Lunette to find out where her and Margo are, and she responds almost immediately: She’s staying with me tonight. Will call tomorrow.
And there’s that.
I consider walking by Chanticleer. But I’m still fitting the pieces together. A full night’s sleep to think this all over would be nice and I’m free of other responsibilities, so I head for home. Margo still has my key, but I have a spare hidden in the hallway of my building.
As I turn the corner to my block I think I see something in the corner of my vision, darting away. Probably a cat. I pat my jacket for my smokes when I hear a shuffle behind me.
There are two of them, both in tight jeans and dinner jackets, with ski masks over their faces. They’re wearing thick Buddy Holly glasses over the ski masks, the arms slid through eye-holes. They’re the same height. One is thin and one is heavy.
The thin one pulls out a knife.