The Nervous System (6 page)

Looking for cameras now. It's a superficial search I make, but it's not likely they would have rigged this room. There's nothing in it.

Except for the wood panel covering a section of the westernmost wall, which sports an outsized eighteenthcentury French map showing the West Indies and the Lesser Antilles.

Press my palm into the sepia splotch representing Trinidad. Birthplace of my bastard father, and his bastard father before him. Apply pressure, and the panel swivels on a central axis, opening up an eighteen-inch gap into darkness.

I take a moment and breathe the air of my adopted home, not knowing when and how I'll return. Alls I know is my little haven is under direct siege, and extreme protective measures are called for.

Click on the penlight and slide in, drawing the panel shut behind me, proper haunted-house stylie.

I clomp down metal spiral stairs of pretty recent construction, a fair descent.

Downstairs, underground. Backtrack toward the dumbwaiter shaft.

Damp. Endless recess of shelving, worn leather binding. No rats thus far, but man do they grow larger and bolder.

Old paper, smelling of feces and dirt. Beyond that, trace odors given off by the garbage fire pits that once made up Bryant Park. Maybe I'm imagining things.

Natch I don rubber gloves, check the fit on my mask. I see this labyrinth as if from above, its curvature well known to me.

If the Reading Room is the library's heart, the subterranean cathedral with its miles of shelving is the joint's brain, containing all things, all knowledge. I alone remain to bear witness.

When I come upon it, the DA's box is upturned at the ass-end of the dumbwaiter shaft, contents having partially slid out across the concrete floor. A single floodlight is still operative so I click off the penlight.

I quickly see what I'm looking for, make sure it's intact, and flip open the file.

Given the DA's sloppy habits, this is a comparatively tight and well-organized set of papers, photographs, and subfiles. Laid out well, which I appreciate, and I start from the top.

A crappy set of fixed-point shots of a black man and Asian woman in various states of sexual congress. The pictures are infrared and of poor quality.

Timestamp has events taking place between two fifteen and two thirty-five p.m., and there are Korean Hangul characters indicating
Room C
on the lower corner of the stills. The photos date back twenty-one years.

Yeah, I both read and speak Korean dialects, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. See, I told ya. Fucked up, right?

For the most part the male has his back to the camera, but the accompanying documentation has this activity taking place in a brothel on East 53rd Street. Identifies the seventeen-year-old female as a Korean national named Song Ji-Won, a.k.a. Jackie, Sunny, or Kiki Oda, known also to profess to be Japanese. Born outside Seoul.

The male is ID'd as U.S. Senator Clarence Howard, age forty-one at the time of the report I'm reading. I know all this background jazz, but a primer:

First African American member of the Republican Party to have been elected senator in New York, largely on the strength of his relationship with a funky mix of mainstream politicians, going further back to more peripheral figures, Harlem king-making preachers, etc. Plus the support of the predominately white establishment in the boroughs and upstate. Et cetera.

Howard straddled several very different worlds, and cantered on down to D.C.

A socio-psychopath, deft compartmentalizer, and a born politician.

This story, the whorehouse, etc., is only interesting because Howard came into full bloom on an old-school “family values”–style platform, viciously antigay, antiabortion, anti-Muslim, antiunion, pro-gun, yada yada.

Prior to 2/14, the big man was busy aligning himself with the post–Tea Party folks (after their much ballyhooed splinter and the RNC riots/multiple shootings) who had recently surged into power. He was a loud supporter of the actions against New Persia (sorry, the Islamic Republic of Shariaistan), one of the last gasps for our threadbare military overseas.

And perhaps most significantly, Howard was the prime mover in the antiunion contingent that emerged to combat the evolution of domestic workers' groups. Or “domestic terrorists,” in the parlance of the senator's kind.

He and his ilk stood unapologetically responsible for events that followed, such as the Valentine's Occurrence of February 14. That's just my own vibration.

And, of course, the man's wife of thirty-five years is herself a ferocious force, archconservative socialite/heiress and fundraising genius Senator Kathleen Howard née Koch.

Her command of basic English and her understanding of history and function of government were so deeply compromised that nobody took her seriously. Nobody took her seriously as the schools commissioner for the State of North Dakota. Nobody took her seriously as the mayor of Bismarck. And when she ran for state representative, well …

But Kathleen was nice with a slogan, had cash to burn, and her hair was never less than white-lady perfect. So it goes.

First husband-and-wife team with a hardcore agenda, just body-checking motherfuckers on the floor of the Senate.

The very picture of modern, media-friendly American political extremism. Modern, modern, modern, and biracial at that; the union of a golden Son of Harlem with blueblood corn-fed Midwestern stock proved a powerful one. Something for everybody, like.

A loose photograph slips out of the file, depicting a girl I assume to be Song Ji-Won. It's a still from a security camera, high-resolution this time, cropped so I'm only really able to see her and no context.

Song is laughing, her hand blurred slightly in midgesture. Maybe eighteen to twenty-one years old, wearing a gray waist-length fur. Black or very dark red nail polish. She's a stunner, vibes extreme confidence. Looks smart, and like she's enjoying herself.

I slide this photo into my inner breast pocket.

NYPD file. Dated eighteen years back.

Crime scene photos, an industrial barrel bearing the stencil
PROMISE LAND IMPORTS
, a mass of cabbage and what appears to be a scalp, or the top of a human head, as well as a protruding stump. More photos along these lines, which I choose to leave alone.

The text is minimal, two bodies:

—Unidentified 19–21 year old Asian female remains, dismembered, minus hands/feet/teeth, face burned off/soldered really, perhaps by blowtorch. Partial silicon breast implants (serial numbers removed/unreadable).

—Unidentified child, approximately 2 years old, Asian mix, dismembered and incomplete in the same manner as other body.

Within ten hours of the discovery of the dead came the arrest of one Kwon Man Seok, a.k.a. K-Man, a twenty-three-year-old midlevel Kkangpae lieutenant in the Korean mob, coowner of Promise Land Imports and the Executive Comfort Lounge, 18 West 33rd Street, a hostess bar, both businesses known funnels for human traffic, narcotics, and prostitution, according to the report.

The female was presumed to be the “property” of a competitor, no identification necessary. Unknowable turf disputes were cited, and I find no further mention of the child.

Case frickin closed + enjoy your weekend, boys.

But hey now. What have we here? K-Man strolls out the joint in May 2006, according to his parole report. Free and clear and nary another mention herein.

Damn, I know a hooker isn't worth much to our justice system, but a child? To walk that early, it's downright stanky.

His rap sheet. Small-time syndicate stuff. Suspicion of human trafficking, drug possession, reports of illegal organ trade. All dismissed or deferred.

Rosenblatt also included a page with a single CCTV photograph showing Senator Howard and a man identified as Korean mob boss Danny Ya, who would have been K-Man's senior officer, in front of the Tribeca restaurant Nobu. The date is two weeks before the discovery of the bodies.

A day prior, we have a printed transcript of Howard holding a conversation with two men at the Calvisius Caviar Lounge, Four Seasons Hotel, NYC—one Nic Deluccia, “formerly of the NYPD,” I get a za-zing cause I know that name; and an unidentified “active ATF agent”—during which the senator makes such regrettable statements as, “She is asking for too goddamn much now,” and, “[
Garbled
] easiest to make the whole motherfucking thing [
fingersnap
] disappear.”

Hold up. Nic Deluccia? I get an image, a small room, scarred-up wooden table, white dudes, a can of Tab … cops.

Nothing more for the moment. It may or may not come, so I move on.

Deluccia is credited with this zinger: “Just have to know the right people in that community, fucking bucketheads [
garbled
], but these things can be very simply resolved.” To which the senator responds: “It's a question of perception, how this thing is made to appear.”

And most distasteful of all, at least to me, is this exchange:

Sen. Howard:
Kids?

Deluccia:
No sir.

Male 2:
My boy is thirteen …

Sen. Howard:
Tough age.

[Laughter.]

Male 2:
Tell me about it … and my eighteen-year-old, ah, daughter, starting up at Barnard this fall. Big transition.

Sen. Howard:
That it is. Good school. Bit free-thinking, if you catch my meaning. I'd keep an eye on her.

[Laughter.]

Sen. Howard:
But a fine school. Children, biggest blessing in life.

[Interruption, passing waiter.]

Sen. Howard:
[Garbled]
will forever haunt me, involving the … But I don't see how …

Deluccia:
Can't concern yourself with that, sir.
[Garbled]
as collateral, unavoidable and of course very unfortunate, a very difficult thing.

Sen. Howard:
God forgives. We have only to ask.

Male 2:
As you say, sir.

No photographs accompany this section, but we have a dated CD in the plastic slip holding the transcript. I assume this to be audio of the conversation. If I want to listen to it, I'd have to find a goddamn
CD player
, which sounds so motherfucking exhausting that for the time being I'm happy to take the transcripts at face value.

Peep the disc sideways, hold the penlight to it. Could be holding data too for that matter, it's been awhile since I've seen one of these.

Nic Deluccia? Think. This skull of mine. Sealed-off sections, vaults, like Al Capone's: maybe containing a stale absence … maybe choked with radiant gems. All I can dredge is a televised news conference … Gotti-era mob sting?

I go deeper. A blue-uniformed Nic Deluccia at a podium, brass buttons, a bouquet of microphones … and Jesus, if I have the perspective right, I'm up there too. Among the uniforms. Deluccia or somebody saying, “… what we can accomplish when working in cooperation with local communities.” Held aloft is a
New York Post
, headline reading, “Bronx Baby-Grabber Nabbed.” Scattered applause. I must be a kid, cause everything seems outsized, too big. Flash cameras going off. Nic is turning toward me, headless, and another flash wipes the scene.

It's in there somewhere. I know this man. I'd have to run a more intensive scan. Let that simmer. I've learned I can't force it.

Also learned I can't trust it either. False memory a distinct possibility.

Bite my penlight. Back to the papers, the big picture. Rosenblatt was a world-class bullshitter, and he must have known that some of this here is pretty thin, but gut level says it's real. With highly dubious and circumstantial aspects, but real enough.

I replace the file and rise, wincing at my fucking knee. Automatically shake the pill bottle in my pocket, pop it open, and drop one down my gullet.

Well, Clarence Howard, I do believe I've seen enough to make an initial assessment.

What nags is that all this material is so frickin old. Given what the public and private sectors have had to struggle through post–9/11 and particularly post–2/14, I find it hard to fathom why the whole narrative couldn't just be dismissed. Who gives a shit, really? We got fresher fish to fry, all of us.

But it's a profoundly ugly story. And the senator seems very anxious to kill it, even at this late date. I sense movement between the lines.

Listen here: I fear no man, save myself. Power has been redistributed with the upheaval brought about by 2/14. The playing field leveled. The agents of Babylon, they no longer hold the best cards. They may have more men, more bullets, but when it comes down to it, instinct and mojo trump cash money.

It's a knife fight out there, intimate, cheek-to-cheek. And I was raised on that tit.

Flow proactive.

Happy minding my own, but if the senator wants to raise a ruckus, I'm only too willing to oblige. Smack me, and I smack you back. That's real.

This dude concerned about exposure with this nasty hooker cut-up? We'll give him exposure. Realness: on the street, you hit first and you hit hard cause you never know what the other guy's got.

Fucking threaten me, man? Fucking threaten the New York Public Library? The books are
eternal,
nigger. The books, they're bigger than all of us.

Plus, I'm not into hurting the ladies. Don't countenance chopping up kids.

Next moves. Starting points. Scare up some Koreans, and see what shakes loose.

On the back of the folder is a Post-It, a couple phone numbers, which do me no good, as landlines are a thing of the past. Hell, as are cellular networks if you're not military, and even then …

But we also have a couple loose addresses:

Club Enduring Freedom, 8 West 32nd, suite 602

Bubble Teen Tea + BBQ, 38 West 32nd, ninth floor

I peel this off, and take the page detailing Promise Land and the Executive Comfort Lounge. Commit the moniker “K-Man” to memory, easy enough though my memory is spotty.