I used the phone book first. The precinct in Sheepshead Bay could have made a mistake, or Antonelli could have read the number to me wrong, or I could have copied it incorrectly. I found him listed, Burton Havermeyer on West 103rd, but I didn't find any Havermeyers listed on St. Marks Place.
I was out of dimes. The bartender gave me change. His customers seemed more relaxed now that they realized I had no business with them.
I dropped a dime in the slot, dialed the number in my book. No answer.
I went out and walked a few doors to 112 St. Marks Place. I checked the mailboxes in the vestibule, not really expecting to find the name Havermeyer, then went back outside. I wanted a drink but Blanche's wasn't where I wanted to have it.
Any port in a storm. I had a straight shot of bourbon at the bar, a top-shelf brand. To my right, two men were discussing some mutual friends. 'I told her not to go home with him,' one of them was saying. 'I told her he was no good and he'd beat her up and rip her off, and she went anyhow, took him on home, and he beat her up and ripped her off.
So where's she get off coming and crying to me?'
I tried the number again. On the fourth ring a boy answered it. I thought I'd misdialed, asked if I had the Havermeyer residence. He told me I did.
I asked if Mrs. Havermeyer was there.
'She's next door,' he said. 'Is it important? Because I could get her.'
'Don't bother. I have to check the address for a delivery. What's the house number there?'
'Two twelve.'
'Two twelve what?'
He started to tell me the apartment number. I told him I needed to know the name of the street.
'Two twelve St. Marks Place,' he said.
I had a moment of the sort I have now and then had in dreams, where the sleeping mind confronts an impossible inconsistency and breaks through to the realization that it is dreaming. Here I was talking to some fresh-voiced child who insisted he lived at an address that did not exist.
Or perhaps he and his mother lived in Tompkins Square Park, with the squirrels.
I said, 'What's that between?'
'Huh?'
'What are the cross streets? What block are you on?'
'Oh,' he said. 'Third and Fourth.'
'What?'
'We're between Third and Fourth Avenues.'
'That's impossible,' I said.
'Huh?'
I looked away from the phone, half-expecting to see something entirely different from the interior of Blanche's Tavern. A lunar landscape, perhaps. St. Marks Place started at Third Avenue and ran east.
There was no St. Marks Place between Third and Fourth Avenues.
I said, 'Where?'
'Huh? Look, mister, I don't-'
'Wait a minute.'
'Maybe I should get my mother. I-'
'What borough?'
'Huh?'
'Are you in Manhattan? Brooklyn? The Bronx? Where are you, son?'
'Brooklyn.'
'Are you sure?'
'Yes, I'm sure.' He sounded close to tears. 'We live in Brooklyn.
What do you want, anyway? What's the matter, are you crazy or something?'
'It's all right,' I said. 'You've been a big help. Thanks a lot.'
I hung up, feeling like an idiot. Street names repeated throughout the five boroughs. I'd had no grounds to assume she lived in Manhattan.
I thought back, replayed what I could of my earlier conversation with the woman. If anything, I might have known that she didn't live in Manhattan. 'He's in Manhattan,' she had said of her husband. She wouldn't have put it that way if she'd been in Manhattan herself.
But what about my conversation with Havermeyer? 'Your wife's still in the East Village,' I'd said, and he'd agreed with me.
Well, maybe he'd just wanted the conversation to end. It was easier to agree with me than to explain that
