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IT DIDN’T TAKE much for me to elude the officer who had been heading in my direction, not once I got onto the crowded city streets. Within the first three blocks, which I zigzagged past, his scent faded, letting me know he had taken a wrong turn, was heading in the wrong direction and I had successfully evaded him.
As I walked up the street in the direction of the Algonquin Hotel, I started wondering what exactly Howard had gotten himself into. I didn’t know much about this Howard guy, but based on his looks, I think I’d pegged him correctly as a financial analyst type of guy. Perhaps he worked for a bank or an investment firm.
But that didn’t explain how he got mixed up with the guys in the suits who looked like they’d walked off the set of Goodfellas. And I wasn’t clear on what or who they were. Sure, they reminded me of characters from some gangster movie, but I couldn’t tell mafia guys from Italian businessmen. I mean, for all I knew, these guys could be FBI or CIA. And maybe Howard had gotten himself into hot water in some sort of illegal operation. Maybe he’d been working at embezzling for a client and was being picked up for questioning.
The fact was I didn’t know anything.
So I did exactly what I did when I was writing and needed to be reinvigorated, or inspired.
I took a walk.
It was Brooklyn author Denis Hamill who taught me that. I remember him giving me the advice one evening over drinks at a little bar in SoHo called Blind Tiger. This was back when I was just starting out, my first novel sold but not yet published, and had bumped into him, offered to buy him a drink because I’d loved his novels and his newspaper column so much.
The whole thing blew my mind because he invited me to sit with him, and once we started talking about writing, the conversation took on a life of its own. Over the course of the next few hours, he shared wonderful tidbits of writing advice.
He said to me, “Michael, a writer needs to go out and walk. Dickens did some of his best thinking and plotting on long walks through London, from affluent neighborhoods to the people of the abyss.”
He then went on to tell me that once he has created a character, he likes to take them out on a walk and explore the sights, sounds, smells and textures through them. “Let them feel the rain, the sunshine, the snow underfoot. Let them hear and smell and taste and touch the world.” Basically, he was saying, let them live, let them breathe, let them occupy a space and time. And watch them, observe the nuances of each of them and how they react to the stimuli.
I remember him smiling at me and then pausing before speaking again. “As you sponge up the world, so will they. And you will see them come to life as members of a neighborhood.”
These were very fine words of advice, and advice that I’ve continued to try to heed over the years.
But here’s the absolute beauty in those words.
They didn’t just apply to writing.
They applied to problem solving.
And that’s exactly what Dickens was doing, what Hamill does when he takes his characters out for a walk and experiences the world through their eyes.
He’s problem solving.
There’s something about the distinct nature of walking that triggers other processes deeply buried beneath. The whole concept might stem back to what Thoreau was harking about in his classic essay, “Walking.”
Walking can put you in touch with the simple things – it can help to make things clear.
And that’s exactly what I needed to do at that moment. Exactly where I needed to go. I needed to take that walk up Madison Avenue with Howard beside me. I needed to listen to what he had to say about the various shops and stores along the way, observe which ones he paused at as much as which ones he ignored. Pay attention to where he focused his attention, how he approached each intersection. Live the essence of this street through his perception.
Yes, a difficult thing to do, given that I didn’t really know Howard and was mostly making things up about him from a generic concept I’d gotten off of a quick sight and a quick smell.
But it was a start at least.
As I moved up the street, I first imagined Howard passing by the Swarovski galley store on the corner of East Fifty-ninth. I envisioned him slowing down his pace to actually take in the different items in the display window; stroking his chin as he eyed the gorgeous crystal danglers with the pinwheel-shaped diamond crests, imagining how they would look on Gail.
I immediately resented him for that, jealous of the fact that this was the guy who got to buy Gail nice things, who got to think about those things, about spoiling her. The guy who got to drape the necklace over her neck, then place a kiss there. The guy who got to slowly unzip the back of her dress and let it fall to the floor, then lean in to cup her breasts and bury his nose in her hair.
I gave up on that exercise rather quickly.
Fucking Howard.
As I kept walking, I remembered how sometimes taking a walk wasn’t about thinking about the writing at all, but about doing something completely different. About just walking as a means of taking in the scenery on my own, about taking my mind off of whatever strange writing issue was facing me and causing the anxiety.
So, if I took a walk to escape from writing, to clear my head of the issue I was focusing on, then perhaps I would use this walk to clear my head of the issue with Howard by focusing on my writing.
I started to imagine Maxwell Bronte, and see the sights I was seeing through his eyes. After all, Maxwell and I had walked so many roads together over the years that it was an easy thing to do.
Maxwell was like someone who had been a dear friend my entire life. One of those rare people who I could sit across the table from in a restaurant and not have to fill the air with idle chatter, just be comfortable in the silence, because we were comfortable with each other. He was like a life-long friend that you just know would love the steak you just ate, or the movie you just saw, or the joke you just heard, because you knew so many of the particular nuances of their personality, their likes, dislikes, the things that made them smile or maybe just get up in the morning.
Maxwell and I had that relationship.
We’d gone on many Denis-Hamill-inspired walks; more than any other character I’d created. I’d walked countless miles beside my good friend Maxwell, saw many of the wonderful sights of Manhattan Island through his eyes, experienced many events through his unique perception.
And, I realized, I loved him like a brother.
In fact, taking an imaginary walk with him was like slipping on an old, beat-up pair of comfortable shoes. Sure, they were worn and smelly and threadbare. But they fit so perfectly, and you knew exactly what to expect as you slid them onto your feet.
My relationship with Maxwell was like that.
So I took his hand and started walking down the street, decidedly happy that I would be sharing the pleasure of this walk with him.
I hadn’t walked more than four or five blocks before something caught my attention. I’d been having a dialogue with Maxwell, listening to him tell me the excited story of the time he was eight years old and had dared to have the training wheels taken off of his bike, when a familiar scent suddenly captured my attention.
I paused, sifted through the myriad of scents bombarding my nose, and I was able to pick it out.
It was the scent, not of the men who had abducted Howard, but of the suits themselves. Those distinctive Goodfellas style suits they all wore. They had obviously come from the same source, the same tailor, or been run through the same dry cleaner, but they had a distinctive fabric scent that identified them as unique, at least to my nose.
And I wouldn’t have noticed it had I been focusing on tracking; because if I had I most likely would have been trying to focus in on the odor of the men in those suits.
It’s funny how I can tune in on a particular noise or sensation, blocking all of the others away; that my conscious mind doesn’t always pay attention to the influx of sensory input from the periphery. It’s always there, but I’m not always attuned to it while moving around on autopilot.
I suppose the act of trying to pay attention to it all might make a person mad, so yes, it was quite often that I would be minding my own business, wrapped up in whatever conscious thought or process kept the steady flow of sensory input from driving me bonkers, when a particular noise, smell or sight would command my attention.
And so, focusing on something else had helped me detect this unique element. The fabric of the suits.
It was something, at least.
I paused, let the scent filter in, and determined that the distinct fabric scent had been on this street where I was standing not all that long ago, that there were perhaps two or three individuals, whose body odors were uniquely infused into the suits, and the northerly direction they had been moving in.
Maintaining a “hook” on the distinct smells of the fabric of the suit combined with the infused body odors I was able to deduce three men.
I traced the scents north for another block before turning right at the next street.
These weren’t the men I had encountered before, but were very likely part of the same gang; so finding them might properly lead me to Howard.
When I moved up another block I picked up a fourth scent mingled in with theirs.
Even though it was a new scent, it was somewhat familiar. It reminded me of Howard.
Howard?
I paused, compared the fourth person’s scent as it lingered with my memory of Howard’s. No, it wasn’t him, but it contained many elements that Howard’s smell possessed.
A relative.
A close relative.
As I was reflecting upon what this might mean, I heard a faint noise burst out of the typical city background noise that I recognized immediately.
It was the distinct sound of flesh hitting flesh, mixed with a bone on bone feel to it – in other words, knuckles hitting cheekbone, followed by a groan.
A second punch followed it, this one a punch to a softer air, followed by another groan and an exultation of air. A punch to the gut. Then came a third hit, less fleshy and more boney, most likely a knee connecting with a skull.
The sounds were coming from across the street.
As I crossed the street toward the alley where the punching was coming from, I heard a scuffling of perhaps three or four distinct sets of feet.
No words were being spoken, just grunts and heavy breathing. A few more punches punctuated through the air, the final one with the gristly crunching of a nose being broken, then the sound of someone falling to the pavement, hard.
I quickened my pace.
When I turned the corner of the alley, I could see a group of three men in dark suits standing over a man laying prone on the alley floor. Two of them were kicking him. The third stood near the man’s head, hands planted on his hips, watching the event.
“Hey,” I called out, running toward the group. “Leave him alone!”
As I rushed forward, I was able to smell more about what was going on, pick up the pattern of the four distinct heart beats.
The attackers weren’t filled with the blood rage that one would expect witnessing such a scene, nor were they filled with any sort of heightened adrenaline.
No, these were seasoned pros. Hit men.
With the exception of the one closest to me. His adrenaline and fear was spiked much higher than the other two, suggesting to me that he was a newbie, perhaps only “on the job” for a short time. He was the first to turn tail and run in the opposite direction.
The other two paused long enough to size me up as I came charging toward them, and the one who’d been watching the other two pummel the man, leaned down and whispered to the fallen man.
“Your lesson for today is over.” Then he gestured to the other man, and they dashed down the alley. As I neared, I could hear that the heartbeat of the fallen man had become sporadic. I smelled fresh blood mixing with the dust and dirt of the concrete alley floor.
“It’s okay,” I said quietly as I reached the prone man. “They’re gone now.” I crouched, noticing the stream of blood pouring from a gash on his forehead.
Then the flashback hit me.
Racing down the alley, the blur of the buildings on either side, the whine of the police siren closing in.
And the damp, sticky feel of blood on my right forepaw.
The flashback ended, and I started to turn the guy over, slowly, talking to him, telling him I was trying to help. His heartbeat remained sporadic, jumpy and I thought he might be at risk of a heart attack. His left eye was swollen shut, his nose was a mess of twisted flesh and broken bone, and his lower lip was split wide open. Blood poured from so many different places on his face that it seemed to be more of a solid crimson mask than a series of cuts and wounds.
He was white, in his mid-thirties with short, blond hair. He was dressed in a business suit, a light grey one. Not at all like the suits of the guys who had just fled the scene. But he looked a bit familiar
That’s when it hit me.
The reason this guy’s scent reminded me of Howard was because he was, as I’d suspected, a relative. A close relative. Smelling him up close, seeing him, even with the damage the thugs had inflicted upon him, the familial resemblance was uncanny.
This man must be Howard’s brother.