Chapter 98

There was a man, an old vet, his legs shot dead in some long-ago war, who spent his days rolling his rickety wheelchair up and down the avenues and boulevards of that central Brooklyn neighborhood known as Crown Heights. His place of residence was a mystery, as was his name. He appeared and disappeared like the sun in a winter-torn sky.

He was always attired in army fatigues, highly polished brown shoes, and a dented helmet pushed down low over his eyes. On warm days he unbuttoned his shirt, allowing the panels to flap open, exposing the chain of sparkling dog tags splayed across his clean white undershirt.

He spoke only to himself—spewing long, rambling monologues that went on for hours. When he wasn’t blathering, he was belting out Italian operas. The authenticity of the compositions were a hotly debated subject amongst the old European residents who swore to God and country that they had heard a variety of mother tongues minced into the arias. Nevertheless, they forgave the mongering because his voice was so achingly beautiful. He performed these musical wonders all over Crown Heights.

On the morning Harlan moved into 245 Sullivan Place, the former-soldier-turned-troubadour parked his wheelchair in front of 245 and launched into Handel’s “Messiah.”

* * *

On that same morning, another old man sat in his apartment watching the street from his third-floor window; he spent most days doing just that: watching.

At his age, under his circumstances, there was little else to do but sit, watch, and wait for death to find him. He had no family to speak of, nor did he have a significant other. All he had to keep himself company was an ornery, toothless tabby named Meow. On that particular morning, Meow was propped on the windowsill, ignoring the flutter of pigeons on the opposite side of the glass, fascinated for the moment by the rope of smoke curling from the hot tip of the old man’s cigarette.

Besides Harlan and the cripple, the only other people on the sidewalk were a roving band of Jehovah’s Witnesses clutching briefcases and Bibles, casting pitiful looks at the barflies staggering home from a night of drinking.

The old man stubbed out his cigarette into a nearby ashtray, and glared down at the top of Harlan’s head. “Every day there’s one more than the day before,” he whispered. “Meow, we are so lucky to see another morning, aren’t we?”

The cat looked at him passively.

“Yes, yes, of course we are,” he said, stroking the tabby’s back.

Meow blinked slowly, deliberately, and then yawned.

“Is it breakfast time?”

The skin beneath Meow’s fur twitched.

“Yes, I believe it is.”

When Meow was done eating, she licked her whiskers and paws clean, jumped to the floor, and sauntered off, leaving the man alone with his thoughts and his saltine crackers. Outside his window, Harlan was gone, as was the cripple, replaced now by an elderly couple seated in matching mint-and-white-striped lawn chairs in the shade of a pin oak.

Just as the old man was about to retire to the cool darkness of his bedroom, his neighbor Eudora Penny marched into view. Tall and robust, sporting a pageboy wig the color of coffee grounds, she strode along with her battered navy-blue purse slung over her shoulder. That purse was as much a weapon as it was a receptacle for house keys, chewing gum, and compact face-powder.

He knew this because one late winter night back in 1962, when the streets were silent and empty, and the sky cloaked in a spooky deep blue, a would-be thief lunged at Eudora from the shadowy entrance of the playground. The two scuffled, falling against parked cars, until Eudora gained an upper hand and caught the goon by the throat. She shoved him against a tree and used her purse as a mallet, whacking it repeatedly across the mugger’s face until he fell to his knees, pleading for mercy. Not once did Eudora Penny cry out for help. When she was done beating him, she calmly turned and walked away.

The old man had witnessed the entire assault from the window of his darkened bedroom. The savagery of it conjured memories, stoked a fire deep in the pit of his stomach. He’d returned to bed and spent the remainder of that night reliving the assault in a lucid dream. At daybreak, the old man had thrown his wool coat over his bathrobe and hastened outside in his slippers to check the sidewalk for blood. He was rewarded with a trail of burgundy droplets that led all the way to the gas station.

He suspected Eudora Penny wasn’t who she claimed to be, and that excited him because neither was he.