On the Nickel (10 page)

Sure enough, just past Beethoven like the day before, Eddie Coltrane Monk was bowing away at his violin, and mostly being ignored by the handful of people who had drifted into the park, a few obviously well-heeled Asian tourists and some people who probably worked nearby.
Eddie, Eddie!
he wanted to say,
they aren't worth it. I bet they don't even know you're working so hard at the Violin Concerto in D, Opus 61. You're no Perlman, but you
are
better than I remember. Maybe you really worked at this piece once. You did say that Beethoven was hard.

He watched as Monk seemed to give up in mid-bar, let his violin slump and cranked his neck up at the powder-blue sky. The man looked like he was going to howl like a coyote, but he didn't. He merely sighed and leaned forward to pick up the violin case that had been at his feet. He studied it to see what it contained in change, and then rolled his wheelchair a few feet toward the cannon. The only place to sit was a wall with a rounded top that was clearly built to discourage sitting.

‘Mr Monk, sir, your Concerto in D was very nice.'

‘You know it, huh?' As if nothing could surprise him. When he looked over, he seemed to recognize Conor vaguely.

Conor boosted himself onto the barrel of the cannon. ‘Of course I know it. Doesn't it hurt you having all those people walk past when you're giving it your whole soul? You really were going at it.'

The man raised his graying eyebrows. ‘Son, you gotta just let that stuff sink into the general burden. You can't use no kind of feeling of resentment for nothing.'

‘You're a wise man.'

‘Well. Didn't nobody tell you that sometime the wise men end up playing for dimes in the park. Cormer?'

‘Conor. Do you ever do popular music?'

‘Not so much. To my ear, the violin don't sound right squalling at “Barndance Polka.” You want to play with me some time? Guitar and violin go together like harp and kazoo.'

He
did
remember. Conor laughed. ‘I'm trying to write some songs, and I could use your help with the music.'

‘Can you buy me dinner?'

His father would have said,
does a goose go barefoot?
or something like that, but he just said, ‘I'd be honored, sir. At the finest restaurant on this square.'

They both studied the upscale eateries across at the Biltmore, the forbidding look of them, the valets in uniform out front.

‘Well … you and me,' Eddie Monk said, ‘we can play bold when my tuxedo comes back from the cleaners. But there's a taco wagon very soon gonna park itself over that way that wouldn't do me no druthers.'

‘You got their best filet mignon sandwich.' He hopped down from the cannon. ‘What went wrong with your career, Mr Monk? I can tell you've got fine hands.'

‘Oooh, where
did
that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow get off to?'

‘Sirs! Hello.'

Maeve had seen the two white men emerge from the Fortnum Hotel and they obviously weren't the kind of men who lived there. They looked more like desk men or security guards who might be able to give her a coherent answer about Conor.

‘What you doing down here in the deep shit, kid?'

The one in front was really big-shouldered, like a TV wrestler, and had ringlets of golden curls cascading from under a baseball cap that said
Ignore Previous Hat.
The other was shorter even than she was, and his eyes were all over the place. She began to doubt her judgment about approaching them at all. There was something distinctly hostile and dangerous about them.

‘I'm looking for an old friend,' she said. ‘Have you seen this boy?' She held out the photo of Conor at arm's length. But they barely looked at it.

‘Get a new boyfriend, Sugar,' the little one said. ‘If he's living down here, he won't never do you right.'

‘He's a nice young man, a musician.'

‘Poverty and death are all you'll find here,' the big man said, and she backed a step involuntarily at the harshness of his voice. He shooed her away with a backhand gesture just as three very old men emerged from the hotel door carrying aluminum baseball bats. One of them wore a
yarmulke,
and it was one of the oddest confrontations she'd ever witnessed. Maeve ducked down behind a trash dumpster near the curb.

The little man with the wild eyes turned to his pal. ‘Can I take them down?'

‘Not now, Rice.'

‘Did you just cut the steam pipe for our heat?' one of the old men demanded.

‘Don't know what you're talking about, Fructose.'

‘We're calling the cops and the city inspector immediately. You're not welcome in this building any more. Tell Vartabedian that we'll move out of here when he gargles in the toilet.'

‘Tell who?' the big guy said.

‘Just tell the prick you work for he's
farcockt,'
another of the old men said.

The little man with the strange eyes was trembling, his right hand digging around in his pocket, and the big man encircled Rice's shoulder gently but forcefully and walked him away hard.

‘It ain't but one thing to know,' the big man called back at them. ‘One thing. Clear out real soon, darlin's.'

The two men climbed into their high SUV and drove off, and Maeve cautiously came out from behind the dumpster where she'd been hunkered down.

‘Sirs!' she called as the three old man headed back toward the hotel.

‘Young lady. What are you doing in this den of iniquity?' The man who seemed like their leader lingered while the others waited for him by the doorway.

‘I'm looking for a friend who might be here,' Maeve said. ‘Is this place so terrible?'

‘I'm afraid it's a war zone, daughter, and we're a bunch of dainty cowards,' the old man said. ‘Thank you, Musketeers,' he said to the two other old men as they chose to ignore Maeve, shoulder their baseball bats and slip inside.

She wanted to ask immediately about Conor, but she was too intrigued by the confrontation she'd just witnessed. When she kept talking, the man waited outside with her and told her his name was Samuel Greengelb, and then he insisted they go into the lobby. ‘Please, child. It's safer for all in here. Have I met you?'

‘No, sir. I don't think so.'

All but two of the overstuffed chairs had been slashed to shreds, and she settled primly near a dead TV. He told her about their fight with the landlord over expelling them in order to expedite the conversion of the Fortnum into high-priced lofts.

‘But we have long-term leases from an old owner. We're the three Musketeers – pardon me – the Resistance. We got nowhere to go but some public-assistance
dreck.
Those thugs of Mr Vartabedian are playing every dirty trick in the book to get us to leave. They kill the elevator so Joel in his rheumatism can't hardly get down to the store. They paint the halls with curses and they even deposit human excrement on the floors. They bang on our doors at three a.m., yelling anti-Semitism. They break our door locks when we go out, so we got to use wood bars and chairs to be safe. Tonight they cut the steam pipe. It's the only heat we got in winter. We talked to a lawyer,
pro bono
like, but he says it's very hard to beat guys with the big money.' Greengelb was so obsessed by his story that he hadn't even asked her name or why she was there.

‘My name is Maeve Liffey, sir,' she said, when he finally ran himself down. ‘My father is a detective, and I'm helping him look for this boy.'

She didn't expect much from showing Conor's photo. The old man studied it for some time. ‘Yes, I think this little
pisher
is staying here. He's on floor three near me, but he's usually out all day. He really should be home with his
mamele
and
tate,
if you ask me – he's a very nice boy. If he's the same one.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘Maybe this boy is too nice. This is a rough place here – it's so much worse now trying to live on The Nickel, and I don't think this boy really knows about the bite of the snakes out there.'

‘Thank you for the information, sir. Please tell Conor I'll come back to see him tonight. I'm Jack Liffey's daughter, a friend of his father. Remember Jack Liffey.'

He nodded gravely. ‘Better you write a note. I forget names. And if your father has any power in this city, don't forget us, the Fighting Musketeers.'

‘One for all, all for one!' Maeve said.

‘That's it!' He almost shouted. ‘Kibosh the mothers, in the idiom,' he responded with an arm pump, like a tennis player taking down his opponent.

After a while, he glared at the notebook that was mostly chicken-scratches and inserts, but he finally crossed out all his mistaken attempts and copied over his semi-final version, with only a few more amendments.

It made Maeve edgy to return to the Catholic Liberation shelter, but she'd finally convinced herself that she'd really only imagined that Eleanor Ong had recognized her. There was no way, not after so long – nobody had that kind of memory. So she'd come back to mollify her sense of duty and see how Felice and Millie were doing. She was a bit chagrined that she hadn't thought of buying any dollie clothes yet. Finding Conor was still at the top of her agenda, but she'd checked the Fortnum again, and he wasn't back, even though evening was gathering.

A skinny woman with a strawberry mark on her cheek, who was either taking the last of the sun or discreetly on guard, sat on a folding chair in the unlocked yard. The strawberry woman told her Felice and Millie had gone out looking for the missing husband. They'd had a second-hand report of a man much like him staying at a nearby flop a few days earlier. It seemed so sad to Maeve, all of it – suggesting a whole post-apocalyptic world of people who were out on their own in the hard rain, hunting for someone they had lost or a job they desperately needed or just the big lottery ticket. Felice looking for her husband, Maeve herself looking for Conor Lewis, her mother looking for a new boyfriend, her father looking for the secret to his legs and voice – everybody else in The Nickel probably looking for a smoke or a drink or just a generous soul to pass a few hours with.

‘Is your husband lost, too?' Maeve asked.

The woman on the chair roared with laughter. ‘Girl, I be runnin'
from.
If that cheatin' motherfucker ever find me, we both dead and buried. D'Sean – the dog, the whoremonger, man of a hunnert per cent lie …' She seemed to run down. ‘He say he gonna hit me with his big whoopin' karate swing when I lef', but I know he just gonna die stupid. This nun's got a place of peace here, what I call my temp'ry high tower of retreat. That what Reverend Lonald C. King back in Michigan say we all need, ever' one of us. Thereafter shall ye live in stillness, delivered from the hand of the wicked.'

Maeve wondered if she might need a high tower of retreat herself. She could see how it would be nice to think something like that was out there for her, waiting for the day when her father was truly gone and buried and there was nobody else she could lean on in that particular way. The way that had probably spawned the idea of god for millions in the first place. Thinking of her dad made her choke up a little.

‘What's the name of that nun who runs your high tower of retreat?' Maeve managed to ask.

‘Sister Mary Rose. I tell you – that woman got one great big soul on her.'

It was strange that nuns changed their names so radically, but Maeve decided not to say anything more about her for fear of arousing suspicion – plus the fear that her voice might break.

‘Please tell Felice that I'll come back later. My name is Maeve.'

‘I mos' surely will, Miss Maeve.'

Maeve slipped outside the gate into the abrupt piss-smells of the ruined street. What an unpleasant place, she thought. Then, standing not twenty feet away like an evil crow watching her, she noticed the short white man with the funny eyes that she'd met coming out of the Fortnum. He was watching her like a predator. She remembered the way he and his pal had challenged the old men at the hotel, and a chill clutched her spine as she walked deliberately toward her car, which meant diagonally past him, trying to ignore him.

‘Don't be no Runaway Sue,' the man said gently.

She wondered why something inside her required her to face up to moments like this rather than just sprinting away as fast as she could. She stopped on the crumbling street and turned back to meet the little man's crazed powder-blue eyes.

‘You rich kids hang down here, get you a big kick out of it. Mostly at Thanksgiving. You serve turkey dinner an' shit to the winos. Ever'body tell you how terrific and sanctified you are. That right, waspie?'

‘I'm not rich.' She saw his hands moving restlessly in odd patterns. She had a feeling that this man had risen from a trap door from somewhere deep down below, and his simple presence could taint any place on earth that he happened to stand, even a great cathedral.

‘Mebbe, girl. But you ain' no poorhead. I
know
you. I saw your picture of your boyfriend. What you think is worse? The things you do in this here life or the things you go and neglect to do?'