friend at Brill might give me a way in there, though I’d need to tread very lightly. And then there was the fax itself. It had been sent from somewhere, and there was a phone number printed on the top of each page. However thin, it was a thread to pull on.
I went to sleep at around two a.m., to the thump and slide of boxes being moved around upstairs.
Chapter Four
“I don’t know a thing, and I don’t want to know a thing,” the bodega man said. He was a tall, thin Latino in his middle fifties. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut short, and his graying mustache was neatly trimmed. He wore pressed khakis, a gray sweater, and new-looking sneakers. And he was never still. Just then he was vigorously wiping down the small countertop near the checkout, where an earlier customer had spilled a little coffee. The counter, like the whole store, was clean but thick with merchandise. Combs and painkillers, condoms and CDs, lighter fluid and vitamins and an endless supply of batteries were crowded in dense but orderly displays around the register. His morning rush was over, and for the moment we were alone in the store.
“Look, you’re not the police. I don’t have to talk to you. Besides, who ever got into a hassle because they didn’t talk to somebody?” I could think of a few people, but I didn’t comment. He came around the counter and headed briskly down one of the narrow aisles. I followed, sure that I’d be swallowed in an avalanche of tampons and breakfast cereals.
“And besides, you know how many people come in here every day to make calls or send faxes?” Actually, I had no idea, but I suspected he’d tell me. For someone with nothing to say, he liked to talk. “I get sixty, seventy people in here some weeks, some weeks more. They got no phones, so they come in here and buy cards and make calls. They send faxes, and get them here too. That’s a lot of business. How am I supposed to know anything?” I could appreciate the sentiment.
I followed him down more aisles to the back of the store, where his copier, phone, and fax were, in a little kiosk near the refrigerator section. There was a swinging door to a back room beside it. He pushed it open and reached in and rolled out a metal bucket and a mop. He started mopping the floor.
“I’m not interested in all the business you do in a week,” I said. “I’m interested in somebody who sent a fax from here eight days ago. It was a twelve-page fax, to a local number. Is that longer than what your customers usually send? Do a lot of them send faxes locally? Do you remember who sent faxes eight days ago? Do you keep any records?” He stopped mopping and looked at me for the first time since I’d walked in.
“You’re not a cop,” he said, as if he hadn’t already said it a half-dozen times.
“I’m not,” I affirmed yet again. He mopped in silence for a while, and then stopped.
“Pay me,” he said.
“Why should I pay you? You keep telling me you don’t know anything,” I pointed out. He chuckled a little at that.
“Yeah, yeah, but since you’re not a cop, you can charge in some expenses, so you can pay me. Besides, maybe I know something.” He went back to his mopping.
“Tell me something, and I’ll pay you what it’s worth,” I suggested. I was smiling too.
“Okay, okay,” he said, laughing, “but no less than a hundred.”
“No less than fifty,” I offered. He stopped working and leaned on the mop.
“Okay. First off, you’d be surprised what people send from here. Long letters, big documents, local numbers, long distance. They do all kinds of things. I don’t keep records. But I remember about a week ago
… maybe the day you’re interested in… this bag lady comes in. She stinks to high heaven, got maybe fifty sweaters on, and these high-top sneakers that are five sizes too big. I’m thinking, she wants to sell me cans or something, and I’m about to ask her to leave. But she didn’t have cans. She had a long fax to send. I’m pretty sure it was to a local number. See, that’s different. I don’t usually get street people in here sending faxes.”
“You know who she is?” I asked. He wrinkled his brow elaborately, like I was crazy.
“You ever see her before? In the neighborhood?” I asked.
He thought about this. “Maybe yes,” he said. “Maybe in the park, across from the hospital, over by the playground. I walk by there most every day. I could’ve seen her around there, or maybe it was a different bag lady.”
“Besides the sweaters and the sneakers, what did she look like?”
He thought some more. “She was white. She was old. I mean, they all look old, but she really was old. Maybe sixty, older maybe. With a lot of frizzy gray hair sticking out.” He gestured with his hands out by the sides of his head. “She was pretty short, five foot one or two, but round. I don’t know how much of that was sweaters. What else? Her high-tops, they were blue… really dirty, but like electric blue.”
I was impressed, and I told him so. I gave him two fifties, plus seventy-five cents for a cup of the strong coffee he had just brewed, and left him to his cleaning.
Finding the bodega on Madison and 98th Street had been easy. One of the reverse directories on the Internet had taken the phone number on Pierro’s fax and given me an address on Madison. At nine a.m. I’d taken the Lexington Avenue subway up to 96th and walked west. It was a beautiful fall morning, clear and cold, yesterday’s rain not even a memory. I saw the corner storefront, and the English and Spanish signs in the window, advertising phone, fax, and copying services, and figured that was the place. I hadn’t expected much, really. Blackmailers don’t typically give their phone numbers out too freely. On the other hand, I try never to overestimate anyone’s intelligence, and it was a lead I had to follow.
Coffee in hand, I went around the corner to Fifth Avenue, walked north a couple of blocks to Mt. Sinai Hospital, crossed the street, and went into Central Park. I entered just above the East Meadow and near a small playground tucked up against Fifth. I was in a rectangle of the park that was bounded to the west by the Park Drive, to the north by the 102nd Street entrance to the drive, to the east by Fifth Avenue, and to the south by the 97th Street transverse. There were only a few miles of footpaths running through the area, but I was hoping not to have to cover them all. Based on what my friend at the bodega had said, I decided to work my way out from the playground.
Finding someone living on the streets is either pretty easy or nearly impossible. It’s a question of habit. There are some street people who, regardless of how disturbed or detached from reality, follow routines. They travel in defined territories, along consistent routes. They sleep in the same places and eat in the same places; they go to the same spots to bathe, to find clothes, to find money, and to get medication. If you know one of the stations along their route, and you have enough time to wait, they will often come to you. There are others, though, who follow no discernible pattern. They roam widely, sleeping and eating wherever and whenever opportunity presents itself. These people are almost impossible for one person to find without some luck or divine intervention. I hoped that the blue-sneaker lady was a creature of habit.
At this hour, the playground was almost empty, just a few moms bundled against the morning chill, watching their preschool kids, who were oblivious to it. No street people in the playground or on the benches nearby. I walked north. On the path that wound its way to 102nd Street, I met some runners, many dog walkers, and some more mothers with strollers, but no blue-sneaker lady. I walked west along the Park Drive access road, and picked up another path headed south. This one was quieter and less traveled. The traffic sounds from Fifth and from the transverse were muted to a background susurrus. I could hear the bare tree limbs rubbing in the small breeze, and the mangy gray squirrels were loud as they bounded through the fallen leaves. A few tough sparrows hopped around on the path just ahead of me, looking to mug me for breadcrumbs, and even the sound of their tiny talons on the pavement was distinct. Beneath the soot and the exhaust fumes, I could even make out, faintly, the loamy smell of autumn. I finished my coffee and wished I had another.
I rounded a bend and came upon two men picking carefully through a trash can. They each wore many layers of wrinkled clothes, in shades of dust. One was tall, with a graying beard; the other wore a brown knit watch cap. They were sifting through the garbage for cans, bottles, and other recyclables that could be exchanged for cash. They worked efficiently, without talking. When they realized that I wasn’t passing by, they paused and straightened up, looking me over warily. I was wearing jeans, a pair of beat-up paddock boots, and a leather jacket over a black turtleneck. I didn’t think I looked particularly threatening, but they might’ve taken me for a cop, or somebody who wanted to take something from them. I stopped while I was still about ten feet away, so as not to make them more
