including me. I made sure he couldn't see me, intimidated by his staggering, violent strength, no doubt enhanced by the stuff he'd pumped into his system. He also appeared deeply alone, threatening in his bulk. My planned declarations seemed puny and even imbecile, but I decided to press forward, and followed him from thirty feet back as he disappeared into the front room, saying goodbye to no one, though it had seemed from the boy's comments that Jay was well known there. I fought through a sudden influx of eight-year-old boys, any of whom could have been Timothy a couple of years earlier, and watched Jay plunge out the front door into the cold. When I reached the door he had already crossed the three southbound lanes of Third Avenue and disappeared under the deep shadowed roar of the expressway. Across the street a neon sign promised XXX VIDEOS amp; BUDDY BOOTHS. I'd missed him again, or rather had found him and then let him go. Impossible, impossibly stupid. Or was I just scared of him? Was letting him go smarter?
'Jay!' I called, trying to lift my voice over the river of heavy traffic before me. I stepped into the street, waiting for an opening.
'Yo, man,' called a hoarse voice next to me. 'Don't mess with that dude.'
A face emerged from the doorway behind me, a man a few years younger, his hair brilloed around his head. He might have been white, dressed Latino, talking black. It gets harder and harder to tell these days. I turned back toward Jay, then checked the light.
'Why?' I answered, still watching. 'Why shouldn't I mess with him?'
Through the traffic I could see Jay getting into his truck.
'That guy? Lemme tell you about that guy, okay? He's no good. I mean it.'
'Come on.'
The cab darkened, the headlights went on.
'Jay!' I called again, stepping forward.
'Do I look like I'm messing with you?' the man said.
I watched the traffic slow. 'Jay! Jay!'
His truck bumped its way onto the other side of the avenue, heading north, toward Manhattan.
'I'm telling you, don't fuck with him!' He jerked his thumb toward the batting cages. 'Fucking gorilla, they ought to throw him out of there. Sucking on drugs, scaring those kids. Shit fucks you up, makes you crazy. The polices, they don't do shit, neither.'
'What, what?'
'That guy, he's done some stuff, okay? Let's just leave it at that. You ain't from around here, okay? I would of seen you before.' The man bobbed his head assertively, as if I had argued the point. 'One time some guy got into a argument with him, and it wasn't pretty. You know what I'm saying?' He stepped forward, grabbed my coat, yanked. Instinctively I stepped backward but it was too late. His face was close to mine, breath warmly foul. 'Just like that, huh? Like pulling down the fucking zipper on your coat, ha!'
This seemed unlikely to me. Street rumor, false legend. But I was scared anyway. 'How often does he come here?'
'All the time, anytime. Maybe like three times a week.'
So he probably lived nearby, I thought. 'You know anybody wants to make any money?'
He looked at me like I had a dead fish hanging out of my mouth. 'What're you talking about?'
I said, 'You heard me.'
'Tell me that again?'
'I'm saying I'll pay a hundred bucks to know where he lives. Somebody could watch for him, follow him home.'
'Come on, what the fuck.' He pulled a galvanized roofing nail out of his pocket and began to suck on it.
I wrote down my new phone number. 'Here's what the guy does. He follows that guy home. By car, whatever. Doesn't do anything. Nothing. No talking, nothing. Just the address. Then he calls this number'- I handed him the slip-'and leaves the address. Then he tells me how he wants to be paid. I'll come right back out here, if necessary.'
'Come on, you kidding me with that shit.'
'You're right,' I said. 'I am. I'm kidding.'
The nail bobbed up and down. 'Hundred's not much.'
'I'll pay three hundred.'
'Get out of here, three hundred?'
'Sure. What's your name?'
'Everyone call me Helmo.' He smiled with sly pride. 'You know, the hair and all.'
I nodded. 'Okay, Helmo.'
'Who are you?'
'Who cares who I am?'
Helmo made scissor fingers and took the slip of paper from me. 'Yeah, who cares?'
There was at least a chance that Jay had driven to his new building, so I got off the train at the City Hall stop and walked down Reade Street, past the Mexican guys cutting flowers in the Korean delis, past the delivery trucks and battered cabs. When I got to the building I looked for Jay's truck. Nothing. But a couple of windows were lit in the building. I rang the various doorbells until someone buzzed the main door. Inside I saw new menus and fliers on the floor, as well as a garbage can filled with plaster bits, lathing, trash. Had Jay already started some renovation? The more I thought about him, the stranger he seemed. He'd just bought a three-million-dollar building and here he was whacking baseballs in Brooklyn? A guy with a girlfriend named O and who attended basketball games at a private girls' school? I checked the door to the basement, which was locked, then headed up the high, steep stairs, hoping Jay might somehow be in one of the offices, still in his sweaty baseball clothes. I knocked on the various doors but got no response.
On my way down, the door to RetroTech opened, and David Cowles poked his big head out. 'You ring downstairs?'
'I did, yes.'
'It's Bill, right?'
'Bill Wyeth.'
He said, 'I was wondering whom I'd let in.'
'Just me. I'm looking for Jay.'
Cowles had one eye on a computer screen. 'Haven't seen him.'
'Has he been around?'
'Yes, in fact he was earlier and we discussed- oh, hell, hold on, that's the phone. Here, come on in while I get that.' I followed Cowles back toward his office and when I got there he was standing at the window.
'That's good,' he said into the receiver. 'All the way through?' He listened and nodded. 'Sure, all right.' He covered the phone. 'This will just take a second, Mr. Wyeth, bear with me. Just here- have a seat. My daughter wants to-' He uncovered the phone. 'Yes, yes, okay, I'm putting it on, go ahead.'
Then he turned on the speakerphone and I could hear a piano, some sweet and romantic sonata trilling into the room. I might have said it was Beethoven's 'Fur Elise,' but the sound through the phone was poor, as was the quality of the performance. But Cowles was enjoying it, smiling and looking at the phone and nodding his head with the music. Then the playing stopped. 'Good, good!' he called heartily, in the way of an encouraging father.
'You liked it?' came a girl's voice. 'I only messed up once.'
Cowles smiled at me. 'Very good, but keep practicing.'
'Daddy, I practiced it five times already!'
'How many times did you get it right all the way through?'
'None.'
'Do you want to mess it up tomorrow night?'
'No! What do you think?'
'I think you should keep practicing, sweetie.'
'Daddy! You're so mean.'
'It's true,' said Cowles affectionately. 'Nothing you can do.'
'Daddy!'
