The City When It Rains

  “As I was saying, I know the ordinances,” the old man began again, “but that doesn’t mean that I want to be treated special. But when it rains, I’m like a great many people. I want a cab.” He brushed his nose quickly with his hand, and Corman noticed that he held a leather strap. He followed it downward to where a large seeing-eye dog sat calmly on the sidewalk, its large pink tongue hanging limply from its mouth.

  “This man refused to take me,” the old man cried with a sudden, wrenching vehemence. “Refused to accept me as a passenger.”

  The driver’s eyes shot over to him. “Not you, pal,” he said. “The dog. I don’t take no animals in my cab.”

  “This is a trained dog,” the old man shouted. His finger wagged in the air. Corman focused on it and shot.

  The driver waved at the finger dismissively. “Yeah, well a trained dog gets fleas and shit just like any other dog.”

  The old man’s face lifted in offense. “This dog does not have fleas, sir,” he declared.

  The driver’s face tightened. “How the fuck do you know? You couldn’t fucking see them if it did!”

  The old man’s body stiffened. He seemed on the verge of lunging toward the driver. “I was blinded by the Japanese, sir,” he screamed. “On an island called Iwo Jima. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of it.”

  The driver laughed. “I seen the movie with John Wayne,” he said. Then he winked good-humoredly at the crowd, which only stared back at him resentfully.

  “Yes, well I was not with John Wayne, sir,” the old man fired back. “I wasn’t making movies. I was protecting this country!”

  “All right, all right,” one of the patrolmen said. “Let’s everybody calm down here, okay? Let’s just everybody cool it.”

  The second patrolman moved closer to the driver, motioned him forward, then whispered something into his ear.

  The old man drew in a deep breath. “Anyway,” he said, “I asked this gentleman …” His hand swept out, reaching for something. “This gentleman …”

  A man in jogging clothes leaned his shoulder into the searching hand. “When the cabbie refused to take him, he asked me to get the cabbie’s license number,” he said to the patrolmen. “And when the cabbie saw me doing that, he started cursing me.”

  The driver turned away again, his eyes moving along a line of small square windows across the street. “I used to take them in, the blind people,” he told the second patrolman, “but I always ended up with fleas all over the car. It’s like every time I picked one of these people up, it cost me twenty bucks to fumigate the fucking cab.”

  His eyes turned from the patrolmen and began to search the crowd imploringly. “Can you blame me? Huh?” he asked. “What would you do in my place?” He looked directly into Corman’s camera, his eyes narrowing intently. “What would you do in my place?” he demanded. For a moment he stared fiercely at the camera. Then, suddenly, his whole body slumped back against the cab, as if defeated, and as he did so, Corman felt his sympathies shift miraculously toward him and away from the old man. It had happened in an instant, so that Corman recognized the shift must have come from some separate quarter of existence that lay beyond the teachable forms of right and wrong, a world of ancient traces, basic as the primordial ooze.

  It made him think of Sarah Rosen, the way her body had been starved down to its glistening fundamentals, perhaps even in the way her mind had finally come to concentrate with a single, sacrificial intensity on the ancient devotion of her motherhood. For an instant, he could see her standing at the tenement window, her white arms wrapped around the blue-eyed doll, her eyes fixed on the unrelenting rain, her body trembling like the prophet’s robe. The air seemed to chill around him, as if a wintry blast had unexpectedly swept through the city, and he felt himself ease back into the crowd, away from Sarah and her ledge, toward a safer place, where the purest urges were seeded with protective dross, the stars were fixed, lakes had bottoms, and things fell back to earth because they had to.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  “DO YOU THINK she had to?” Corman asked. He still felt oddly shaky, as if the sudden shift in his sympathies had rocked his own foundations.

  Grossbart looked at him questioningly. “What are you asking?”

  “About the woman, the one who went out the window.”

  “Is that why you wanted to meet me?” Grossbart asked. “The woman?”

  “Just to talk about her,” Corman said. Only a few weeks before, it would have been Lazar across from him now, the calm face watching him in the shadowy light of some bar in the Village.

  Grossbart glanced out the window of the pizzeria. The heat from the ovens had misted the glass, but people could still be seen hurrying across Sixth Avenue, most of them headed for a place that sold safari clothes and had a stuffed rhinoceros in the window. “What have you found out about her?” he asked when he looked back at Corman.

  “Nothing much,” Corman said. “They picked up her body today. I took some pictures.”

  “Pictures? Why?”

  “Something I’m working on.”

  Grossbart looked at him pointedly. “Have you come up with anything?”

  Corman shook his head. “Not much.”

  Grossbart looked at the wedge of pizza which was turning cold on Corman’s plate. “You going to eat that?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  Corman slid the paper plate across the table toward him.

  Grossbart took a small bite of the pizza, grimaced. “Jesus.”

  “It’s never good here,” Corman said.

  Grossbart let the piece slide lifelessly back onto the plate and wiped his fingers with a napkin. “I heard about the button,” he said. He shook his head. “But you got to understand something, Corman. Something like that, all it does is make you look like some kind of hot-shot amateur detective. And, between me and you, that’s not the way to impress the people downtown, or the guys on the beat. They work with pros.” The napkin shot up to his mouth and wiped the grease from the lips. “Besides, that button stuff, that’s bullshit. She could have pulled it off. It could have fallen off. Christ, anything.”

  “It seemed strange,” Corman said.

  “I know the feeling,” Grossbart said. “But in this case, my guess is a lot of things went haywire for this girl. Simple as that.” He turned to the window, wiped a path through the mist with the sleeve of his jacket and pointed eastward. “When I was a rookie, a woman over there in Brooklyn killed her two sons.” His eyes flashed back to Corman. “Seven and four, that’s how old they were. This woman, she found the tallest building in Brooklyn. Now at that time, there weren’t that many tall buildings in Brooklyn, but she found the tallest one, and don’t ask me how, but she got to the top of it, and one by one she dropped the two boys off, then went off herself.” He leaned back in his seat, nodded toward the pizza. “At the bottom of the building, they looked like that, all three of them.” He glanced back up at Corman and stared at him intently. “She was a middle-class woman, a good Catholic, happily married as far as we could find out, the whole schmeer. So I asked myself, ‘Christ, what happened?’ On my own time, I started checking around. Nothing. Then the ME’s report came in. Turns out the woman had a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. The guy at the morgue, he even showed it to me. A little black ball, nothing. I looked at that thing, and I said to myself, ‘There’s the murderer.’” He lifted his hands, palms up, fingers spread. “Simple.”

  Corman shook his head doubtfully. “Sarah Rosen didn’t have a brain tumor.”

  “Well, there’s all kinds of people, Corman,” Grossbart said. “Some are lucky. That’s just the way it is. Others, it’s like they’re made up of some different kind of substance. Velcro, something like that. Trouble sticks to them.” He smiled. “Just petty stuff sometimes. When they’re on the ramp, the fucking train takes forever.”

  “It would take a lot of trouble for someone to end up like she did,?
?? Corman said.

  “Some people are born drowning,” Grossbart said. “They bob around a little, gasp for air, but basically, they’re drowning.”

  Corman leaned forward. “If I were trying to run down the story of this woman, where would I begin, Harvey?” he asked. “Like I told you back at Number One, I’m new at this. I could use a few tips.”

  Grossbart shrugged. “Well, you could start with the neighborhood.”

  “I did that. They’re all illegals. They won’t talk about anything.”

  “Didn’t Lang have a guy?”

  Corman shook his head. “He thinks I’m a millionaire, hit me up for money.”

  “Which you don’t have much of, I take it,” Grossbart said.

  Corman wondered what it was that made him look so strapped, and realized that if Grossbart had noticed it at all, then Lexie would see it written across his face in bright, pulsing neon.

  Grossbart pulled himself to his feet. “Well, I don’t know what else to tell you. You’re working a case now, so you learn how it is. Either you get something direct, or you stumble on to a new lead, or … you just come up a crapper.”

  “I can’t do that,” Corman said, surprised by the edge of desperation he heard in his own voice.

  Grossbart looked at him a moment, then took the napkin from the table and unnecessarily wiped his fingers again. “You know what I say, Corman, not just to you, to everybody. I say, ‘Hey, you looking for a mystery, some big tragedy? Look in the fucking mirror.’” He smiled thinly and let the napkin float back to the table. “Nobody has to go any further than that.”

  Corman smiled tentatively and thought of Lucy. “I do,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  A SHORT FLIGHT of stairs led up to the second-floor landing of the Inside Track. Corman paused at the bottom of them, slapped some of the rain from his hat, then headed up.

  There was a small counter just inside the door. The man behind it nodded politely as Corman walked in. Corman nodded back and began to make his way to the right toward a room filled with small tables and chairs.

  “That’ll be five dollars,” the man behind the counter said.

  Corman turned to him. “Five dollars?”

  “Entrance charge,” the man explained.

  Corman hesitated for an instant, then reluctantly reached for his wallet and counted out the money.

  The man took the money and handed Corman a small booklet.

  “What’s this?” Corman asked.

  “The racing program,” the man told him matter-of-factly. “Good luck, sir.”

  Corman walked toward the room to the right, searching through the crowd for Willie Scarelli. He found him near the front windows, sitting with another man, both of them going over the same racing program Corman had been handed at the door.

  “Who do you like in the first?” Scarelli asked. He was dressed in dark navy-blue pants and a red blazer. A cigarello hung from the corner of his mouth, and while he went over the program, he chewed its white plastic tip determinedly.

  The other man frowned. “Where’d they get these wheezers?” he said. “Off a truck to the glue factory?” He shook his head despairingly. “Every year, more of these cheap claimers in New York.”

  “Yeah,” Scarelli moaned. “Shit.” He circled something in the program, then thought better of it, crossed it out, put another one around something else.

  Corman touched his shoulder. “How you doing, Willie?”

  Scarelli looked up. “Corman?” he said, obviously surprised to see him. “I didn’t know you followed the ponies.”

  “I don’t,” Corman told him. “I was looking for you.”

  “Well, pull up a chair,” Scarelli said. He nodded toward the other man. “This old fart is Darby McMillan. He pretends inside knowledge.”

  Darby continued to stare at the racing program. “Glad to meet you,” he muttered. He puffed irritably at a white meershaum pipe, grunting under his breath from time to time, as his eyes went down the program.

  Corman took a seat.

  “Be right with you,” Scarelli said. “Soon as I decide what to play.” He glanced toward Darby. “What about Forest Drive,” he said. “What do you think?”

  Darby’s eyes swept the form. “I think he’s being ridden by a douchebag,” he said.

  Scarelli’s face tightened as his eyes returned to the program. “Eddie Sheen. Yeah, not the go-jockey for that fucking stable.”

  “Look at the guy on Ginger Snap,” Darby said. “Another douchebag apprentice.” He shook his head. “With these old nags, you got to have a rider with some balls.”

  Scarelli considered it for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Fuck the first,” Darby said. “I’ll just place some recreational doubles. We can still play Ginger Snap in the fourth.”

  “You gonna play any exactas in the first?” Scarelli asked.

  Darby laughed. “Exactas?” he said. “Fuck. I’d be more willing to bet that two of these old whores won’t make it to the eighth pole.”

  The two men laughed together, then went on to the fifth race, comparing jockeys, horses, trainers, stables.

  They were still doing it when a voice suddenly sounded across the room: “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for our National Anthem.”

  Chairs scraped loudly across the floor as the people in the room got to their feet, then stood silently as the anthem swept over them. Darby placed his hand over his heart, while his eyes roamed about the room, catching for a moment on a tall young woman who chewed the end of a swizzle stick while she stood in place. “Oh, Sweet Jesus,” he moaned under his breath.

  “Well, let’s do it,” Scarelli said when it was over. He sat down quickly, glanced at one of the television sets that hung from the paneled walls, then handed a roll of bills to Darby. “Just spread it around on some doubles,” he said. “And include that fucking apprentice in some of them. Who’s to say, lightning might strike.”

  “Okay,” Darby said. He reached for his wallet with one hand and thrust his other one palm up toward Scarelli. “I’ll always put myself out for a two-dollar bettor.”

  Scarelli nodded. “Don’t forget my change,” he said with a wink.

  Darby turned and walked toward the betting booths at the back of the room.

  Scarelli took a sip of ale then wiped his mouth with a napkin.

  “So, what’d you want to see me about?” he asked, as he glanced toward Corman.

  “A story,” Corman said. “At least, a possible story. A guy I know—in publishing—he thought you might be interested.”

  Scarelli leaned back in his seat. “Well, absolutely,” he said. “You know me, I’m always looking for a story. What’s yours?”

  Corman dug into his camera bag and came out with the picture. “Take a look at this,” he said as he handed it to Scarelli.

  Scarelli eyed the photograph casually. “Looks like somebody gave her a good beating,” he said.

  “She jumped out of a window.” Corman pointed to the small mound of cloth that could be seen near her outstretched hand. “Threw a doll out with her.”

  Scarelli continued to stare at the picture. “Is this that jumper from Hell’s Kitchen?”

  Corman nodded.

  “I heard a little something about that,” Scarelli said. His eyes drifted over to Corman. “Saw some video on it, too.”

  “They were there.”

  “Network?”

  “Local.”

  Scarelli’s eyes settled on the picture again. “What do you know about her?” he asked.

  “I’ve found out a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  Corman labored to put everything in order, arrange the facts so Scarelli would be drawn in by them. He decided to start small, build toward a big conclusion.

  “Well, first of all, she’s white,” he said.

  Scarelli laughed. “Like everybody else who has a say in anything.”

  “It turns o
ut she graduated from Columbia,” Corman added.

  “When was this?”

  “Eighty-eight.”

  “So she was young when she took the leap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Twenty-three, four, something like that,” Scarelli said. “Can’t tell much from the picture.” He grimaced as he looked at it again. “Jesus, it did a job on her nose.” He looked back up, as Corman fingered the edge of the photograph. “Is this a drug thing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bright, promising youth tragically destroyed by drugs, that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I got to know so,” Scarelli said. “Because if it is, it’s dead in the water. Shit, man, you got Broadway heavies iced by that stuff, big-time basketball players. Ivy League’s small potatoes compared to that.”

  “She wasn’t a junkie,” Corman assured him.

  “Okay,” Scarelli said. “Shoot. What else you got?”

  Corman could feel the room closing in around him. In his mind he saw Trang grinning happily as he and Lexie toasted each other behind the beaded curtain of a dark, Oriental den. Quickly, he riffled through his other pictures, found the one he wanted and pressed it toward Scarelli.

  “What’s this now?” Scarelli asked, without reaching for it.

  “Take a look,” Corman said.

  Scarelli reluctantly took the picture and stared at it without enthusiasm. “What the fuck is this?”

  “A button.”

  “She throw that out, too?” Scarelli asked in mock horror. “Ain’t life a fucking tragedy?”

  “Look where it is.”

  “By a window,” Scarelli said. “So what?”

  “It was on the ledge of the window she jumped out of,” Corman told him.

  Scarelli glanced toward him. “I repeat, Corman, so what?”

  “That button came off her dress,” Corman said.

  “Yeah?” Scarelli asked teasingly. “What about it? You’re thinking murder, right? Some bastard heaved her out, and in the process, ended up with a button in his hand.”