that could possibly be considered pertinent, and it only confirmed what I had already taken pretty much for granted.
I wonder what makes people think of things. Maybe some other story caught the corner of my eye and jogged something loose in my mind. I don't know what did it, and I wasn't even aware of it until I had already left the Microfilm Room and gone halfway down the stairs. Then I turned around and went back where I'd come from and got the Times Index for 1959.
That was the year Leverett started his tip sheet, so maybe that was what had triggered it. I looked through the Index and established that it was also the year in which Mrs. Martin Vanderpoel died.
I hadn't really expected to find an obituary. She had been a clergyman's wife, but he wasn't all that prominent, a minister with a small congregation out in the wilds of Brooklyn. I'd been looking for nothing more than a death notice, but there was a regular Times obit, and when I had the right spool in the scanner and ran down the page with her obituary on it, I knew why they'd thought she was worth the space.
Mrs. Martin Vanderpoel, the former Miss Frances Elizabeth Hegermann, had committed suicide. She had done so in the bathroom of the rectory of the First Reformed Church of Bay Ridge. She had slashed her wrists, and she had been discovered dead in the bathtub by her young son, Richard.
I went back to Armstrong's, but it was the wrong place for the mood I was in. I headed uptown on Ninth and kept going after it turned into Columbus Avenue.
I hit a lot of bars, stopping for a quick drink whenever I got tired of walking. There are plenty of bars on Columbus Avenue.
I was looking for something but I didn't know what it was until I found it. I should have been able to tell in advance. I had had nights like this before, walking through bad streets, waiting for an opportunity to blow off some of the things that had been building up inside me.
I got the chance on Columbus somewhere in the high Eighties. I had left a bar with an Irish name and Spanish-speaking customers, and I was letting myself walk with the rolling gait that is the special property of drunks and sailors. I saw movement in a doorway ten or twelve yards ahead of me, but I kept right on walking, and when he came out of the doorway with a knife in his hand, I knew I'd been looking for him for hours.
He said, 'Come on, come on, gimme your money.'
He wasn't a junkie. Everybody thinks they're all junkies, but they're not.
Junkies break into apartments when nobody's home and take television sets and typewriters, small things they can turn into quick cash. Not more than one mugger out of five has a real jones. The other four do it because it beats working.
And it lets them know how tough they are.
He made sure I could see the knife blade. We were in the shadows, but the blade still caught a little light and flashed wickedly at me. It was a kitchen knife, wooden handle, six or seven inches of blade.
I said, 'Just take it easy.'
'Let's see that fucking money.'
'Sure,' I said. 'Just take it easy with the knife. Knives make me nervous.'
I suppose he was about nineteen or twenty. He'd had a fierce case of acne not too many years ago, and his cheeks and chin were pitted. I moved toward my inside breast pocket, and in an easy, rolling motion I dropped one shoulder, pivoted on my right heel, and kicked his wrist with my left foot. The knife sailed out of his hand.
He went for it and that was a mistake because it landed behind him and he had to scramble for it. He should have done one of two things. He should have come straight at me or he should have turned around and run away but instead he went for the knife and that was the wrong thing to do.
He never got within ten feet of it. He was off balance and scrambling, and I got a hand on his shoulder and spun him like a top. I threw a right, my hand open, and I caught him with the heel of my hand right under his nose. He yelped and put both hands to his face, and I hit him three or four times in the belly.
When he folded up I cupped my hands on the back of his head and brought my knee up while I was bringing his head down.
The impact was good and solid. I let go of him, and he stood in a dazed crouch, his legs bent at right angles at the knees. His body didn't know whether to straighten up or fall down. I took his chin in my hand and shoved, and that made the decision for him. He went up and over and sprawled on his back and stayed that way.
I found a thick roll of bills in the right-hand pocket of his jeans. He wasn't looking to buy milk for his hungry brothers and sisters, not this one. He'd been carrying just under two hundred dollars on his hip.
I tucked a single back in his pocket for the subway and added the rest to my wallet. He lay there without moving and watched the whole operation. I don't think he believed it was really happening.
I got down on one knee. I picked up his right hand in my left hand and put my face close to his. His eyes were wide and he was frightened, and I was glad because I wanted him to be frightened. I wanted him to know just what fear was and just how it felt.
I said, 'Listen to me. These are hard, tough streets, and you are not hard enough or tough enough. You better get a straight job because you can't make it out here, you're too soft for it. You think it's easy out here, but it's harder than you ever knew, and now's your chance to learn it.'
I bent the fingers of his right hand back one at a time until they broke. Just the four fingers. I left his thumb alone. He didn't scream or anything. I suppose the terror blocked the pain.
I took his knife along with me and dropped it in the first sewer I came to.
Then I walked the two blocks to Broadway and caught a cab home.
Chapter 13
