The girl by the fountain
It all starts, like most things, with a dead body.
John W sets the whole story in motion when he comes over to where I’m soaking up a rare dose of the weak afternoon sun, all in a dither, but that’s his normal state, so I didn’t pay him no mind. ‘You know the park on Sunset and Hope. You know the place I’m talking about,—’
‘Yeah, John W. I know it.’
‘Dealer there be selling the good stuff—’
‘I don’t do gear, you know that.’
‘That’s cool, baby. But that’s Eight Tray turf. They got beef with me. Mess me up bad, if they get the chance. I got the money. Hell, you do me a solid.’
When John W is like this, he ain’t about to give up, so I save myself minutes of him badgering me into submission.
‘What they look like?’
‘Who?’
‘The seller. Jesus Christ, man.’
‘Yeah. She had hair, she was white, dressed like she was going to some fancy-dress hippy shit.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Why you gotta be so complicated? She’ll be the only one surrounded by heads. I’ll owe you one and a John W favour got a lot of flavour.’
John W’s eyes have a glassy, faraway quality at the best of times. You can never be sure what he’s seeing, so a white woman of indeterminate age, who is not bald, is the best description he’s going to dredge up.
So here I am, swaying in the clattering carriage of the Z train heading to The District and Hope Sunset park. John W and me used to call The District home before we got tired of the drama and moved uptown like a couple of society swells in search of a more tranquil life.
‘Train terminating here. Line closed. All out.’ The announcement sets off a chain reaction of bitching as the passengers leave. There’s a weary acceptance under the cursing. Remember this happened all the time back in the day. Past the Metro station, the demographic gets poorer with each stop and the money for the upkeep of the track dries up. Not been back in two years, but nothing changes.
Back up top, I take a few moments to get my bearings. The high-rise blocks of The District are unmissable but who knows which streets around have been selected for rejuvenation. The map at the subway entrance shows me a route and I head off, the incessant noise of a huge hornet swarm coming from the delivery drones above my head. Ever since the Drone Fairy hit, people can’t help but look up, hoping for another attack to send the drones haywire and have then fall from the sky, giving up their contents like Christmas come early.
I haven’t got more than a few blocks when I hit the security checkpoint. At first, I think police, but then see it’s private security, the ornate wrought iron gate logo on jackets.
‘The damn Experience.’ Didn’t notice the crowd were younger and more hip than should be the case. Must be getting blasé. I stick with them and hope they carry me along.
‘Excuse me, sir.’ The woman with the red scarf spots me, the thorn in all the roses. The smile is friendly, but we all know how this ends. Two black-clad security goons hover in the background in case I kick-off. ‘Could I ask what is the purpose of your visit today?’
‘Lady, I just want to pass through, going to Hope and Sunset.’
‘For your safety and convenience, The Village Experience has provided pedestrian access. Let me give you a map.’ The lines come out like an automated script.
The bridge is ten blocks down and puts a couple of miles on my journey.
‘That far? I just want to cross over. Won’t take a minute.’
‘The Village Experience regrets that in order to provide the safest possible environment we require guests to have a mutual agenda.’
I wait, but apparently, that’s the explanation. For something that doesn’t make sense, it gets its meaning over loud and clear.
‘What if I want to shop?’
‘The Village Experience would welcome your application.’ And with that she signals our conversation is over.
Thirty minutes later and I find the crossing. The overpass is a metal bridge contained in a plastic tube. Underneath you can see The Village Experience has reclaimed the whole of New Amsterdam Avenue. They know what they are doing, you have to give them that. They take over areas, make them destination places with shops, food stalls, entertainment, and bars. They have another success on their hands. The place is bustling, brightly lit shops and a double row of stalls in the centre of the road. Safe and clean. The city with all the crap filtered out. I take one last look and cross the bridge with the other rejects.
Another half-hour walk and I’m on the other side of New Amsterdam in the place opposite where I was blocked. Would have taken me 30 seconds to walk if I dawdled. It’s so close, I can see the checkpoint and the woman in the red scarf. This time a group of young men are not taking kindly to being turned away. Security appears, engulfs them and they disappear with hardly a ripple left to disturb the flow of people. The smile never leaves the woman’s face.
Screw it. I don’t have time to dwell on the world. The detour has added an hour and I want to get this nonsense done before the cold dark comes and The District tempts me with bad ways to keep warm. There’s a place like this in every city, where the pulse throbs, the night wails and the grime is real.
Every step closer and I get to thinking I could come back. The District was many things, but boring wasn’t one. Time has a way of dimming the bad while turning up the shine on the good. Two escapades, both of which have John W at the centre, burn bright as magnesium.
This foolishness keeps me entertained until I reach the park on Hope and Sunset. On the way in, I pass the best burrito truck in the city, that’s always parked to the side of the main entrance. Yesterday, a few hours of washing dishes had put some notes in my empty pockets, The fiery chicken diablo is the reason I agreed to this errand.
The smell gets me to drooling like some Pavlovian dog, that pepper heat is what you need when the icy winter wind makes you pull your thick coat tight.
The park is about the size of four football pitches; the tents grouped at the far end, in the shadows under the small clump of trees. At the entrance, a few kids are still on the swings and slides in a fenced-off play area. As the light fades the moms pull the kids to the gate and head towards warm rooms and cosy dinners, you hope. As the bell tolls and chimes out the hour, I scan the people to see if I can spot my contact. And damn, in the far corner is some old hippy in a floating Indian skirt and beaded Native American jacket. She and the group of heads crowded around are trying to be inconspicuous and failing miserably; all they need is a twenty-foot neon sign blinking Drug Deal in bright red letters.
I’m about to score John W his dope, when a blonde woman comes into the park and I clock she’s not kosher. She radiates confident energy, even if she has thrown over a shroud to smother it.
Apart from the blonde, another out-of-place person catches my attention. Coming across the lawn, a lithe man in a black tracksuit also scans the park and he pure screams 147 undercover. Fucking idiot. No one jogs in this park. Less than half a block away is the outdoor stadium. Here all you’ve got is wet grass and weaving concrete paths.
The woman passes the black tracksuit and don’t register him, not even the subconscious tics when you are trying to avoid showing you know someone.
A second check of the blonde and I see I’m right. Her clothes, her boots, her hair; everything about her is too glossy for this canvas. She reaches the point where the four paths meet and scans the park, clearly looking for someone. Her gaze passes over me and black track suit and lingers on the few women around.
So, she’s waiting for a woman and doesn’t know them by sight. Could be a blind date and a suspicious partner, what with the shadow trailing her. Not my business. She’s not a cop anyway.
A girl, in red converse, black jeans and hoodie, sits on a bench near the small fountain of a faux Greek goddess pouring water out of her urn. She sees the woman and stands up.
Then the afternoon spins out of control. Triple K comes from the shadows and he is bad news. Bootsie christened him Triple K because he’s whiter than the Klan and as violent. No one knows what colour drained from him. Sometimes you think Nigerian, then pure Polish. Ursula says this lack of identity is the cause of his conflict. Everyone else has him down as a pure psychotic off his face most of the time, who likes mayhem. Triple K is aimed at the woman and closes in with an intensity that holds a world of trouble for her. From his jerky movements, he’s tweaking out of his brain.
Panther fast, he closes the last distance in a blur, grabs the blonde woman’s expensive brown leather bag strap and uses it to jerk her backwards and around all exposed for the attack. I don’t see the blade but the whole pantomime tells me Triple K’s shanked her. The hand thrust, the shock in the blonde woman’s face, the girl springing back in horror.
I’m trying to move forward, but the shock has me standing in treacle. A black form blurs in my left vision. The undercover cop has flipped his badge out, silver flashing on the chain around his neck. Triple K runs, he is fast, and the shadows deep. Hitting anything with a pistol at more than a few feet is hard, more so a target that weaves in the gathering dark. In a few steps, he’ll be away. With one last warning the cop drops into a shooting stance and the pistol cracks. Triple K staggers then slowly crumples to the ground.
The cop reaches Triple K and frisks him. He’s in a bad way but still the cop slaps on the cuffs. I can’t say as I blame him.
The girl is white-faced, all blood drained by the violence. She is still young enough to want to run away from her troubles, pretend they never happened. Her hands hold her head like it might split. The last I see of her is the Ramones logo on her hoodie as she sprints into the dusk.
The shock wears off, my legs unstick themselves and I go reluctantly forward, knowing I’ll be no help, yet not brave enough to walk away.
The woman is quiet and still, except for the slight movement of the fingers of her left hand which scratch softly at the hard concrete. Her right hand clamps tight to her throat. Her face is unbelieving at the blood that bubbles through her fingers.
Death’s shadow is rising, nothing you can do will stop it and she knows it. I was right about her; up close she is glossy magazine beautiful. But her eyes are losing the light, becoming dulled and beat, all spark extinguished.
Two squad cars pull into the park. Four officers jump out and run to join the cop who stands over Triple K.
‘Hey, Buddy. Help.’ I call out. But the police are busy dealing with the crowd that gathers to shout accusations. They leave me to comfort the dying woman as she sinks away from all human kindness. I stay with her for five long minutes, before the white and red ambulance pulls to a halt and a green-clad medic jumps down.
The woman clutches my arm and tries to speak, the words come all blood gargled. As the medic snaps on a white glove, the woman convulses, sits up a few inches before slumping back down. The medic shakes his head, takes his bag, and moves on.
The crowd grows with every passing minute, and the anger feeds on itself. The medic kneels by Triple K, but you can tell he is on the way out. When he moves, an animal noise cuts into the air. A group of officers come to smother any commotion before it sends sparks into the tinder-dry emotions. One older uniform, with some authority stitched on his arms, pulls aside the undercover police, and mumbles some words.
‘Jesus. He ran up and slit her throat in front of the whole damn park. It was a good shoot.’ The undercover cop is loud, all hot jagged edges like shrapnel. He is one-tenth shock at the killings and nine tenth righteous anger at the crowd.
About this time, I search through the dead woman’s pockets, but find nothing. It leaves a nasty taste, but we have a desperate need for dollars, John W and me. Where she is going, the first morgue ghoul will have any shekels she got on her person. And that’s the least of the ghoul’s corruption, so the stories go.
Authority zips black bags over the bodies. An old police sergeant talks to me for five sentences.
‘You saw it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘After Triple K stabbed her, did you hear the officer give a warning before he fired?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good. You can go.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That is this done.’
And that was this done. No need to make a statement. The killing was all in the open and they had their pick of more respectable witnesses. The woman was dead and the killer was dead. All else is time ticking and already more shrill calls pile up. Police cars scream from one horror to the next. If you’d been half shanked, you’d better walk yourself to hospital. Only the dead is sufficient for the attention of the authority.
No one notices that the new bag I slip over my shoulder used to be the woman’s. No one cares. Human life ain’t worth a dime no more. It never used to be like this. Ten years ago a murdered rich woman would have caused days of activity, camera crews and solemn reporters giving ponderous updates. Blood had some worth, you could give a life a value. Even some street living person would have a moment of respect. Five years ago a couple of kids from an on-line news site would dart around, shove their microphone, and ask damn fool questions. Those days are over. The best you can hope for is to appear in some trending tag and rack up a eulogy of sad faces to give your life worth.
The crowd waits for who knows what, as the police mill around. Some try to start a chant, but it falls from the air and crawls away. In my new bag, I find sheets of paper with fine drawings. Two are print outs, but one is ink on paper. I’m no expert but they’re good, more than good. I’d say they were by Leonardo da Vinci, except the two prints outs are of a girl in modern clothes, initialled CM, and the ink drawing is signed Iona Jackson.
Once they take the bodies away, the entire scene collapses. With the police gone, the crowd ain’t got nothing to front and after they bitch the same words to each other, they have nothing left to say.
An icy wind blows the crowd away, and me with them. I take a last look and you’d never know some drama burst hot and claimed two lives. People blur past, all in a winter hurry. A cleaner, in a white apron, throws a bucket of water that steams white clouds into the crisp air. And, with dainty strokes for a man his size, brushes the last trace away. A stained pink flood that runs to the gutter and from the gutter to the sea. Of course in the twilight, I can’t see the colour but I imagine it so and you have to give a little shade when you talk about someone dying.
I remember to avoid New Amsterdam and head to the Q line at New Cross. Above my head is the incessant noise of a huge hornet swarm coming from the delivery drones. Ever since the Drone Fairy hit, people can’t help but look up, hoping for another attack to send the drones haywire and have then fall from the sky, giving up their contents like Christmas come early.
On the walk back, people give me room on the pavement, like to touch me is to be contaminated. Some days it makes a man think about who he is, but today I’m glad, the night is ice, the crowds heavy and I need to be home.
During the journey, I count off the deaths I can recall. The remembering takes me the two subway rides and most of the walk back. There’s a stack of them, but not all the same. You have the annual harvest of the street living. The winter comes like a howling banshee and blasts ice storms through the glass and concrete canyons worse than any high mountain pass. It takes the old hands who have been out for years and are drained of the fight and the newbies in their first season. Those who don’t listen can’t believe you can freeze solid, so close to all the warmth you could ever want. I put those deaths to one side. Then I tally the other deaths. I have a sprinkling of them all right. But I never heard no one speak of anything like today’s killing. And the grapevine witnesses every commotion that occurs on every street for many a mile. That’s the truth. Street-life leaves hours you have to fill. If some guy slaps his girl at ten o’clock by the station, you better believe I hear about it by 12 if I’m out taking a walk. And murder fills a big hole nicely. But I never heard of a situation equal parts spy thriller and equal parts neat and solved. Which make me think I’ve seen something unique the straight world don’t care to see. Or else I’ve slipped the last collar and am now bat shit insane. I don’t feel any madder than this time last night, but ain’t that the way. Every mad fucker I ever met is always convinced they’re the sanest person around. John W’s got a microchip in his ass, courtesy of the Illuminati. Ursula thinks a duck in St. Martin’s Park is out to hex her. Billy got himself a whole religion of demons. Sometimes you get the impression the entire world is fucking insane.
The falseness of the world occupies me until I reach the edge of Square Park. It is indeed Square, so some nineteenth century fuckwits named it Square Park. Where I live is one of the most desirable addresses in the entire city. The building is all lit up and gleams like the rich have embroidered the walls with gemstones to sparkle the darkness away. Two men in top hats and deep red velvet coats stand ready to lend assistance least the occupants have to exert them own selves in any way. I don’t put one unwanted trespassing foot on the private entrance, but still, they follow my every move like I could pounce at any moment.
Between the apartment block and its neighbour are two parallel rows of smaller buildings that house fancy shops and restaurants. And between these is an alley where they keep the bins and the other trash. Halfway down I pull back the grate and squeeze down into the ground.
John W says it’s an abandoned secret C.I.A base. Ursula believes a persecuted religion used it for services but isn’t too sure which one. Billy is ready to put money on it being an overflow vent for the sewer and swears we’re going to drown horribly one day in a wave of shit. I think of it as home. We call it Subterrane to give us class. I like it down here. Gives a person the quiet and space to think. Up top can be all nervy, always some commotion. A never-ending storm that moves but just keeps blowing. This person raves, that one loses it. Holy shit, if money’s involved, all hell’s raised up and unleashes a hurricane of emotion that tear up and down the streets.
Down in our hole, brick walls divide the space into three sections we call apartments. Apartments Subterrane, told you it was classy. Imagine four underground double garages, with no front doors, all lined along a narrow corridor and you got a picture of my home. I got one. John W got one. Billy ain’t got one, he’s an ex-cop and even though he sucks at a bottle most days, he’s not fallen as far as us. He lives in one of those cheap towers, used to be his neighbour when I was fancy. Ursula is in the last apartment. She likes to make out she’s a witch, but she’s some crazy old woman, who tries to sell silver-wrapped weeds as lucky heather and has a hex war with a duck.
A red cloth curtain covers the entrance of my place. It’s only red when the light catches it, most times it’s grey. But the cloth is heavy enough to keep out the wind that finds its way down here. At the moment it’s just a pup, but soon it will be a hungry wolf come howling, eager not to let one street living person escape.
I open my special hidey-hole with a thin blade, seal the one ink drawing that looks original in a plastic wrap and slide it under my few worthless treasures. It might be worth a dime, and love John W, but it’s best not to put temptation in front of him.
Near the far wall is a stack of twigs and branches, surrounded by bricks. The match drops onto the tinder and it bursts up and shows my place, a square of grey concrete lit by the weak flickering flames. Up above, this amount of space would easily cost you thousands, and down here I got it all for free. Living the dream, I like to say, but that stupid comment annoys even me.
I settle back on my sofa, which is the back seat of an old Buick, and find a bottle of wormwood. The liquid pours some fire into my veins and given the solemn moment; I attach the wire to the battery. The luxury of a dim bulb casts dancing shadows on the walls while I settle into the conundrum that floats before me. The scene is weird from the get-go. A rich woman in that hood, in that park. Triple K comes out of the gloom, another tragedy in the city of tears. She was there to meet the girl, but that is circumstantial to the shut case, it was a good shoot. And the police are right about that. It was a good shoot, by an undercover detective who just happened to be on the scene. From the way he scanned the place, he wasn’t there to bust the dealers, who were all out in the open, and was watching the woman.
The evidence so far is the word a homeless guy, a leather bag and three drawings to help solve an already solved murder. This fat bird ain’t gonna fly, and that’s the truth. The world is a harsh place and, if you think about it too hard, it will crush you. I’m ahead one fancy bag that could be worth a dime and no jacker has shanked me.
‘You home?’ The voice shrieks from the other side of the red curtain and echoes around the space. John W, damn. I clean forgot I owe him and if you owe John W a dollar or, a score, he gonna cling to you limpet tight, and not let go until everything is returned to him. He must have sniffed out the scent of money and I owe him fifty. To us, fifty ain’t no sum of money you can be flippant about.
I pass John W the bottle and he takes a slug of wormwood. I tell him the score went south,, but ‘Damn, fucked up, man,’ is the most I get out of him. If it ain’t about John W, or in any way related to his wellbeing, John W ain’t that bothered.
When I pass over his fifty, he holds up every note to check that I ain’t trying to pass some cabbage on to him.
‘What you think of this?’ I pass him the two drawings from the bag.
‘This is some fine shit. We could sell it, make us some dime.’
‘Yeah right.’ The way John W’s mind works is a mystery. He would go up to the first fancy house, ring the bell and then holler when the terrified owners called the police.
‘I’m off to the Square to score, you wanna come.’ When the sun sets, the good people abandon the park to the night beasts and you gotta be half crazy to set foot in the place. John W is more than half crazy and he has fifty dollars burning a hole in his pocket.
‘I’ll pass.’ I say adieu and John W goes off in search of a more receptive audience.
By the warm fire, the picture of me and John W rocking around the drawing rooms of the rich trying to unload our artworks cracks me up. For the first time in years, I take out my old tablet and write a few words about what has happened. Would have sold the tablet, but it wasn’t worth a dime. I’m writing out the tale of the day when noises from the dark interrupt and make me cat wary. For a moment, I think John W has come back, but the steps are too confident and there are too many of them. Before I can plan anything, the red curtain is ripped down and if I’m not dead in the next minute it will be a miracle.
