French Pressed

I stayed close to Mike as we entered the dead-end alley.

On the left of us were cinder-block buildings; on the right was a sprawling junkyard, surrounded by an eight- foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. There was a fence at the end of the block, too. Beyond it, I could see the cold, uneasy waters of the Harlem River.

My attention returned to the stark gray buildings on our left. They seemed to be decaying before our eyes. The nearest building was topped by a faded sign that read Big C Plumbing. Under that, a smaller sign proclaimed the space For Rent. The building itself had high, broken windows. Its door was shuttered by a steel gate splattered with graffiti. The building next door had housed a Rapido Washing Machine Repair and Service business, which had also gone bust.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Mike said, his eyes busy scanning the empty street. “Look for the numbers. Big C Plumbing was seventy-three. This repair place is seventy-five. The building at the end of the block should be seventy-nine.”

We continued down the dead-end street, and I noticed a gap between the buildings. Another structure had been here once, but it was torn down now, leaving a flat patch of dirt between the cinder block buildings. As we approached the empty lot, the bitter smell of woodsmoke floated lightly on the brisk wind. The second Mike smelled that aroma, he slowed his pace and rapidly unbuttoned his overcoat. But the sun was behind a cloud now, and the blustery temperature near the Harlem River was downright frigid.

“Are you warm?” I asked (naively, as it turned out).

Mike reached out, touched my shoulder, gently but insistently pushed me to his right side so that his body was now standing between me and the lot we were about to pass—shielding me, as I realized a moment later, when the loud clang woke me up to what Mike already knew.

Someone had whipped a beer can so hard it flew from deep inside the empty lot, all the way across the street, bouncing against the junkyard’s chain-link fence.

We took a few more steps forward, and I finally saw the bonfire blazing inside the steel drum, the half dozen Hispanic-looking youths in black hoodies and red sweatpants gathered around it.

“Stay to my right,” Mike whispered, continuing with easy strides, as if we were strolling through Times Square at noon.

One of the punks noticed me anyway and whistled. Other catcalls followed. I braced myself for some crude comments. These came in ugly succession. Then three youths broke off from the pack and approached us, the flunkies flanking their obvious leader.

The leader looked about seventeen. He had light cocoa skin, a wispy soul patch on his chin, long sideburns, and short black hair covered with a red knit cap. The punk on the leader’s right was clutching a can of Mexican beer. The one on the left spun a long chain that dangled from his pants. The leader’s hands were free, and he was clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Hey, papá,” he said. “You lost, man?”

“No, junior. I know where I’m going. Do you?” Mike said, staring the leader down. That’s when I noticed he’d carefully drawn back one side of his overcoat, making sure the punk saw the large- caliber handgun strapped to his shoulder.

The leader spied the weapon and stopped in his tracks.

The gangbanger with the beer stepped forward. “Screw you, man! You don’t scare us! How would you like —”

“Don’t do nothin’, hijo!” the leader shouted. He rolled his eyes. “Dude’s a cop.”

At their leader’s gestured command, the youths retreated back to their bonfire, where they eyed us warily as we approached the final building on the decrepit block.

Something in me still wanted to turn around, go back to those young men, ask them who was responsible for designing and painting that Red Razor gang tag. I wanted to tell the boy that he had potential, tell him he could have a life. But Mike would have strangled me if I’d tried anything close to a stunt like that.

I was naive sometimes, but I wasn’t an idiot. I stayed to Mike’s right, kept my eyes averted from the young men.

We finally reached the end part of this dead end. The building marked 79 was a three-story brick structure covered in soot. There were cracked windows on the ground floor that had long ago been painted over. Two of the upstairs windows were covered with cardboard; dirty curtains dangled from a brass pole in the third. The building itself had once been part of the electric company’s massive holdings. This I knew because of the words set in stone above the front entrance:

RAYBURN WAY CONSOLIDATED EDISON MAINTENANCE STATION 116

Another sign had been added to the black steel door, painted in gleaming silver letters in a delicate, flowing script:

THE SHERMAN CREEK ART COLLECTIVE

The door itself was rusty and pitted, and looked like it hadn’t been opened in decades. Mike tried the handle, pulled as hard as he could, but it was locked.

We both spotted the mail slot beside the door and read the names scribbled in no particular order on white tape: Saul Maxwell, Dexter Ward, Maryanne Vhong, T. De Longe, Nancy Roth.

Mike looked for a doorbell or an intercom, but there was none, so he pounded on the metal door with his fist. He was about to knock again when we heard muffled sounds from the other side, then the door opened.

A tall, rail-thin young man appeared, wearing a black T-shirt and faded, paint-spattered overalls. His long brown hair was stringy and dirty; the scraggly King Tut beard hanging from his chin was decorated with blue plastic rings. He clutched a paintbrush in one soiled hand, a dirty rag in the other. His ears were pierced and decorated with tiny silver earrings that looked like skulls. When he spoke, I noticed his tongue was pierced, too.

“You knocked?”

“Are you Toby De Longe?” Mike asked.

The youth shook his head. “I’m Saul Maxwell. Haven’t seen Tobe in a couple of days. I reckon he’s upstairs, sleeping it off.”

“Sleeping what off?”

Maxwell shrugged.

“Do you reckon he’s alone?” Mike asked.

The kid’s eyes flashed. “You ask a lot of questions for some asshole who came knocking on my door.”

Mike displayed his shield. “Let’s talk, you and me. Asshole to asshole.”

“Frenchy’s with him,” Saul Maxwell said, frowning.

“Who’s Frenchy?”

“Toby’s girlfriend, Brigitte. She’s French Canadian, so we call her—”

“Step aside,” Mike said, muscling past the man. I followed him through the door.

The layout of the first floor was still one large industrial space, illuminated by fluorescent ceiling lights, half of them burned out. There were visible holes in the concrete floor where factory machines had once been bolted. I noticed another steel door in the corner, beside a concrete staircase with steel tube railings.

The walls were gray and unpainted, except for one massive section that had been turned into an impressive mural depicting the Manhattan skyline as seen from the middle of the George Washington Bridge. The central image was the figure of a man clutching his head and wailing in despair—an impressive pastiche of The Scream, Edvard Munch’s most famous painting.

In a corner I saw an ancient, avocado-hued refrigerator, beside it a card table with a hot plate, a roll of paper towels, plastic plates, and a Mr. Coffee machine with a badly stained carafe. A six-foot folding ladder, several easels, all of them covered, and another card table laden with bottles and jars of paint dominated the space under the mural.

I smelled something like burning roses and a perfumed tobacco before I noticed there was another person in