page numbers. This information is resubmitted to the clerk with a small voucher (purchased in the cashier's office down the hall from middle-aged black women discussing their love lives on the taxpayers' time) and the clerk returns a microfiche cassette, which may then be examined, page by blurring page. All help is given grudgingly, and you are under suspicion of stupidity, by definition.
The arcana of the tax stamps on the documents is never explained, but if you know what to look for, which I did, then a wealth of information reveals itself, not least of which is the ever-rocketing value of Manhattan real estate. From the ancient annum of 1697 until April 1983, the great city of New York imposed a real estate transfer tax of $1.10 per thousand dollars of assessed value. In 1983, owing to the booming value of condominiums, the city raised the transfer tax to $4 per thousand of assessed value, which is where it stands today and probably far into the future. Thus could I calculate that 162 Reade Street, the building Jay Rainey had purchased by exchange the night before in the Havana Room, had a value of $9,000 in 1912, $56,000 in 1946, $112,000 in 1964, $212,000 in 1967, $402,000 in 1972, $875,000 in 1988, $1.5 million in 1996, and $2.2 million in 1998, this last the sum paid by an entity calling itself Bongo Partners. Voodoo LLC, the company listed as the owner on the contract for sale the night before, was not on the deed history.
I sat awhile, as irritated as I was confused, and not unaware of the tentacle of legal abstraction quietly encircling my leg. Of course there was a problem with the deed. Why would it be simple or easy? This was a real estate transaction that had started in a steakhouse and ended up with a dead guy on a bulldozer! So screw you, Bill Wyeth! You blew it! So far as the city of New York was concerned, Bongo Partners was- today, right now- the owner of record of 162 Reade Street. If Voodoo LLC was not the legitimate seller, then Jay might have traded his precious oceanfront acreage for nothing- might have been defrauded. And if this was the case, then Jay could easily sue me for malpractice! The title man was supposed to make sure the title was clear, that the property was in fact owned by Voodoo LLC. In the hurry of events I hadn't asked him any questions. Why hadn't he told us that Bongo Partners were the owners of record? I could invent several explanatory scenarios, none of which was reassuring. The irreverence of the names of both corporations was probably connected, of course. Voodoo drums, bongo drums- something like that. I was not free of Jay Rainey, not yet anyway. I copied the records and slipped them into my briefcase.
I was on my way out when I remembered Lipper's claim that his steakhouse had once been owned by Frank Sinatra. Maybe that was true, which would be a smile, as they say, and so, in a mood for distraction, I pulled the deed on the restaurant's West Thirty-third Street address. The provenance of the property constituted a pocket history of New York; as two unimproved lots it had originally been owned by the First Presbyterian Church; fifteen years later the first and narrower lot was sold still unimproved to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which, having train tracks all over that part of town, erected a 'below-grade iron-ribbed train shed' on the western edge of the property; this long, narrow rectangle, I realized, constituted the footprint of the Havana Room, and explained why its elevation was so different from that of the steakhouse's first floor. Then, in 1845, the larger lot was sold by the church to an Englishman, who built the first version of the restaurant, a 'steaks and ale house,' in 1847. He bought the train shed in 1851 and, it appeared, remodeled and connected the structure to his existing building. The merged property changed hands several times in the period 1877-79, perhaps because of the crash that occurred that year, and was merged with an adjacent brownstone to the east in 1921, as the twenties roared and people ate out, and sold again. The transfer tax indicated an enormous leap in value, which suggested to me that three buildings had successfully been remodeled into one and enjoyed great popularity. But not for long; the restaurant had been seized by the city for unpaid taxes during the Depression, then sold soon after. The configuration of the lot had been stable since then and the owners changed once a decade or so from the thirties until the sixties, the restaurant business being as difficult then as it is today, and then settled into a long continuous ownership by an evolving entity: from 1972 until 1984, City Partners, Ltd.; from 1984 until 1988, City Partners from 1988 to the present, City Partners Real Estate Investment Trust- a publicly traded real estate holding company. The ownership of the restaurant could not be more generic, more hohum. Frank Sinatra, the mobster-hangin', whore-bangin', egomaniacal crooner, was nowhere to be found on record. More surprising, neither was Old Man Lipper.
But who owned the steakhouse wasn't my concern. I needed to find Jay and tell him about Bongo Partners and his maybe-rotten deed.
His building in TriBeCa wasn't far from City Hall, a crosstown walk of five minutes, so I set out, finding no comfort in the honk-and-go of Broadway. It was just another wintry Thursday. The snow from the night before was already filthy, and the sky looked like rain. Which would melt not only the snow in the city but all the snow out on Jay's farm. Our tire tracks and footprints from the night before would be lost. But maybe that meant that any bulldozer tracks in the soil would be revealed- the earlier record of Herschel's activity the day before. Was that good? Would it corroborate Poppy's description of events? Something was bothering me about that description, I realized. What was it? Go back to what you were taught, I thought. Which was this: one of the summers I was in law school, I worked in the Brooklyn D.A.'s office, and there was an older career prosecutor named Coover who refused promotion to management and instead- in addition to ruining his teeth by chewing on plastic coffee swizzle sticks- simply banged out one conviction after another. He was a quiet legend. He'd seen any number of slick law students come and go- mostly go, on to lucrative corporate jobs- and wasn't much impressed. I was no exception, nor should I have been, flummoxed as I was trying to square the rules of evidence with the jargon of police write- ups. But early in my time, Coover had seen me puzzling over a simple arrest report for a misdemeanor drug charge and muttered as he passed by, 'Worship Chronos, kid.' I puzzled over the statement until I remembered that Chronos was the god of time, which led me to understand the invincible truth of simple chronology. I never forgot the lesson, and here it was, essential to understanding what had happened the day before.
But I had already turned the corner to Reade Street and needed now to follow the street numbers. There was number 162, set in a row of similar buildings, with high windows fronting the street, architecturally utilitarian but elegant in its simplicity and impressive in its size. The windows were double-paned and glazed, the facade cleaned and re-pointed, the enclosed foyer up to date, the brasswork polished. I cupped my hand against the glass of the lobby. Men have gotten very comfortable owning such structures, and I could see Jay desiring this building, knowing that it would provide him a steady stream of rental income for the rest of his life, if he so wished. Across the street stood a nearly finished apartment house, a straggler from the recent boom. Around the corner hunched the kind of bar where European tourists hoping to ogle movie stars rub shoulders with fluffed-up girls from Jersey hoping to be ogled as movie stars.
'Bill!' came a voice. 'You beat me to it!'
I turned to see Jay pull up in his truck. He hopped out, dressed in a fine suit and blue tie, shaved and shined, ready for business, a big and bouncy man who looked nothing like the stooped wretch I'd seen only seven hours before. Here was the man I'd first met in the Havana Room, large and confident. He looked up and stretched out his arms. 'Well, this is it! And the check is in the bank, man.'
I let him shake my hand but warned, 'We need to talk.'
His smile froze. 'Sure, I know we do, but first, c'mon, we'll have a look.'
He pulled out the key ring he'd received from Gerzon the night before and opened the main door. The foyer was dusty and someone had shoved a thick wad of takeout menus through the mail slot. He moved toward the wide staircase that led to the first floor.
'Wait a minute, Jay,' I began, putting a hand on the shoulder of his overcoat. 'What happened after we left? Did Herschel's body get found? Did the police deal with it?'
He turned. 'I called Poppy this morning- he said the ambulance guys came and declared Herschel dead. They had a little trouble getting him off the tractor.' He winced appreciatively. 'Had to use an air blower.'
'Then?'
'He got taken to Riverhead Hospital and his body was going to be picked up this afternoon. I sent flowers to the family this morning. There's a big funeral home in downtown Riverhead, handles a lot of the black funerals.'
I watched Jay's face for worry. He seemed untroubled. Then again, he might be an adept liar. 'You know, Poppy said he noticed Herschel out there at ten at night.'
'Yes?'
'Kind of weird to be out there on a bulldozer, in the cold.'
Jay shrugged. 'He was running late.'
I was figuring this out as I spoke. 'Poppy also said he saw the bulldozer.'
