Playland (5 page)

“On a novel.” Why not? “How’s this for a first line?” I could always come up with a first line. The second line was always a pain in the ass, but first lines—ready, aim, fire: “ ‘It was the kind of hotel that looked like you could bang the waitress in the coffee shop, which I did.’ ”

“Film noir.”

“That’s what I had in mind.” God, I loved dealing with Marty Magnin. You put out bait, he would always bite.

“Good area. You need a couple of vedettes, only one of them a gross player, and you keep production costs down.”

“Exactly.”

“Listen, I’m interested. Fax me the story line, I’ll tell you if there’s a picture there. But keep it down to a page, you wouldn’t believe the amount of reading I have to do every weekend.”

“What the fuck is this?” Marty Magnin said.

“You told me to fax you what I had.”

“That’s it? What about the chick in the coffee shop the guy boffs.”

“This is just a possible back story I’m playing around with.”

“To tell you the truth, Jack, I don’t think there’s a picture in it.”

“Jack, no more faxes, okay? The fruitcake letters made more sense than this shit.”

“It’s incident, Marty, part of the weave. I’m just giving you a taste.”

“Listen, kid, my taste buds tell me you keep on like this you’re going to end up in the bin.”

I began to sing. “ ‘She dwelleth in the Ground—Where Daffodils—abide—’ ”

“You’re singing songs now?”

“Emily Dickinson. Remember I said you could sing all her poems to ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas.’ ”

“Leonard Fox, Jack. He’s the one to call. The best shrink in New York. Sydney Allen swears by him.”

“I’ll make a note of it, Marty.”

“You getting it regular?”

“Regular.”

“That’s swell. Lizzie would’ve wanted you to get laid.”

“I know that, Marty.”

“Great, Jack. Really great. I come to town next time, we’ll schmooze.”

“I look forward to it, Marty.”

T
hen a monday six weeks later.

I knew she was going to get her purse snatched. Knew it with an absolute certainty the moment I first set eyes on her on West Fifty-eighth Street. I had just bought some sheets at Bergdorf’s. Some people wait for the white sales—Lizzie always did—others get their sheets at Abraham & Straus or the discount houses on Delancey, but I said fuck it, so it cost $331 for two sets of plain white New York king-sized sheets and twelve pillow slips, Bergdorf’s was only a block away, and my time, when I was working, was valuable. It was even possible to say, and I was happy to do so in the discourses with myself that had become my primary mode of conversation (even on the street, where I was no longer embarrassed when other pedestrians gave me that strange sideways look they give to people they catch talking to themselves in public), that with the time factor, I was saving money; I had also learned from the saleslady at Bergdorf’s that New York king-sized beds were shorter and wider than Los Angeles kings, which were longer and narrower, and information, even as trivial as this, was power, although this was a proposition, as it pertained to bed linen, that I was not
prepared to argue too strenuously while talking to myself on my daily constitutional.

It was the first time I had ever bought sheets, and I had not realized how heavy they were, like a load of bricks, so heavy that as I walked up Fifty-eighth Street toward my apartment I had to keep switching the shopping bag from hand to hand. I was switching hands when I noticed the young woman. Nice legs, sensible pointy tits, and I would wager the barbered rectangular trim that had become, now that I was back, however hesitantly, in circulation, my new benchmark for measuring erogenous indulgence. The uniform tailored blue suit and the uniform white silk blouse with two gold buttons at the neck and the uniform black Mädler briefcase and the oversized Bottega Veneta bag swinging from a shoulder strap. Mistress, she thought, of all she surveyed, and no one knew how wrong she was more than the slender young black with the dreadlocks and the bombed-out Stevie Wonder look trailing just a few paces behind her, the one who also knew, as did I, that if she had an ounce of brains she would be walking on West Fifty-seventh Street or on Central Park South and not on Fifty-eighth between Sixth and Seventh, a street that looks like a tunnel, even at high noon on a sunny day in July, which this was not.

Smash and grab. He had that bag off her shoulder and was heading east on Fifty-eighth like a DB high-stepping toward the end zone with an interception. Neon Deion. This was where I made my mistake. I decided to be a hero. No, not decided, it’s not something you decide, any more than the grunt who throws himself on a hand grenade to save Lou and Tiny and Leroy and Geraldo and the other joes in his platoon decides to be a hero. It is something done by instinct, and if I had time to think it over rationally I would have said no way, Jose, fuck you, Lou and Tiny and Leroy and Geraldo. It just happened that I was switching the Bergdorf bag full of sheets from left hand to right as he passed, and without thinking I hauled off and hit him in the face with it. You get hit with $331 worth of sheets and pillow slips, it tends to get your attention. In this case, the bag
of sheets upended him, ass over tea kettle. His head bounced off the sidewalk, like someone was dribbling it, and then he just lay still. Of course he dropped the young woman’s bag. She didn’t even have time to scream, and now this spade is stretched out cold and her bag is sitting there on the sidewalk, and what does she do? She picks up the bag, puts it over her shoulder, and continues on her way as if nothing has happened.

Wait a minute, I said, call the police, I’ll watch this guy. And she said, not breaking stride, I don’t want to get involved, fuck him, and I said, He could be dead, and she said, That’s your problem, and I said, Jesus, lady, and she said, flipping me the bird, Up yours, and with that she heads for Sixth Avenue under a full head of steam and disappears around the corner, gripping that bag of hers like grim death, and if she had done that in the first place, the dumb bitch, none of this fucking nightmare would have happened. I was just left standing there, no victim, no bag, and this spade Stevie Wonder clone is lying on the sidewalk with blood coming out of his ears. I didn’t have Lizzie’s nurse info, but I knew that blood pouring out of the ears was not a good sign. Then from out of nowhere this yuppie Rambo in a three-piece suit blindsided me with a cross-body block, and he says, I saw you hit that black man, and someone else said, Racist, and a third person said, Murderer, and a fourth said, Call the police, and the long and the short of it was that I wound up at the precinct house on West Fifty-fourth Street, where I was interrogated, picked out of a lineup by three eyewitnesses, informed of my rights, fingerprinted, photographed, and finally after twelve hours booked for assault with intent to kill.

It was like a bad dream. The arresting officer hung a number around my neck when they took my mug shots, full face, left and right profiles, and in every angle I looked furtive, cornered, in need of a shave, my asshole screwed tight as if I was already anticipating the buggery awaiting me when I was transported by bus to the Riker’s Island lockup. Even today I find myself waking up in the middle of the night reciting the number—NYPD-45-23-9387.
The reason for the bust and the charge sheet was that when the purse snatcher—John Doe in the initial paperwork, later identified as one Shaamel Boudreau, no known address, but with a yellow sheet showing twenty-three arrests and six felony convictions—hit his head against the sidewalk, his brain was so rotted with crack and smack and booze and by assorted traumas he had picked up at Attica and other resorts maintained by the New York State Department of Corrections that the knock on the noggin took care of him. Bought him the farm.

“So, John, you have a history of violence?”

“Look, I just want to call a lawyer.”

“Why? You haven’t been charged with anything yet. We’re just having a fucking chat here, trying to find out what happened, why you busted Mr. Doe, what’d he do to you got you so pissed off.”

“Don’t I get my rights read to me?”

“Hey, you must’ve seen too many movies, you want your rights read to you, that’s what Robert Redford does in the movies, ‘You have the right to remain silent,’ and all that shit.”

“I write them.” A big mistake. Wrong place to list your credits.

“Hey, Leo, this guy writes movies for Robert Redford.”

Leo was the bad cop in the good-cop/bad-cop tandem, although his partner Al was no day at the beach. Leo said, “I suppose you think knowing Robert Redford is going to get you a free fucking ride, cowboy.”

I tried to parse how Robert Redford had got into this conversation and then thought there was nothing to be gained by saying that actually I did know him, we talked about doing a picture once, and nothing came of it. Just nod and keep cool. Easier said than done.

Leo again: “So what’ve you got against niggers, you like to beat them up on the street so much?”

“Look, can we take this from the top again?”

“Is that what they say in your movies, take it from the top? That’s cute, right, Al?”

“Cute as shit.”

“You ever done this sort of thing before?”

“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with not liking niggers, John, a lot of guys don’t.” Al, the good cop. “For that matter, a lot of cops.” An exegesis of police racial attitudes was an aspect of the good-cop role that I had never considered. “So you say you don’t like niggers, there’s guys in the department will say, ‘Welcome to the club,’ you know what I mean?”

“No, I don’t know what you mean. Look, all I am telling you is there was this woman—”

“He’s taking it from the top again, Al.”

“Like Robert Redford. He a good guy?”

“She was coming down Fifty-eighth Street—”

“You got to give us a name, John …”

“I don’t know her name. She was carrying a Bottega Veneta bag.”

“Say again.”

“An expensive leather handbag.” I knotted my fingers to indicate the meshing pattern. I must have been mad. “The leather is all meshed.”

“What the fuck is this Bodega Venta, you ever heard of it, Al?” To me: “You jerking my chain or something, cowboy?”