advertisement came on for an institute specializing in wounds that won’t heal located in Sleepy Hollow. I switched off thinking of that poor Headless Horseman and his wound that never healed properly.
I went over and turned on the TV. Didn’t have a cable box, but I’d attached the old line directly to the back of the set and still picked up the feed for NY1, New York City’s 24-hour cable news channel. I also got a few other stations and listened to the audio of scrambled signals whenever a movie channel aired
Nothing about an old man’s death in a traffic incident on NY1. Their top local story was the ex-sitcom star that’d died the night before of a heroin overdose. It was a big story, had to be if my mom saw it aired nationally.
Craig Wales had overdosed in a back room at the club hosting the after-party for a premiere of his first feature film. What made it even more sensational was that, on behalf of a fan website devoted to the TV show he used to star on when he was still in his early teens,
I tried to suss it out. OFF 2 *^*. Well, but of course, it was so simple a five-year-old could make it out. Quick, run and get me a five-year-old. It made me wonder what direction our language was headed in. Rebuses and charades, grunting and pointing?
At the left-hand corner of the TV screen was the current time and temperature. 11:11 and 81 degrees.
I emptied my pockets on the desk. The photograph of Owl and the girl, Elena; the pink parking garage ticket; the three handbills, Owl’s hotel receipt, my business card…what else had there been? The money. She had taken that, but anything besides? Couldn’t put my finger on it. I looked at the wristband I’d found in the hotel wastebasket. Nothing new came to me.
Everything but the photo, I sealed in an envelope. The photo I folded into my wallet.
I took off my shirt and put on two new ones, one a bright lime-green t-shirt with a white collar, and, over that, a button-down long-sleeve blue dress shirt, which I buttoned all the way, except for the collar. It wasn’t a fashion statement, these were my work clothes. In case I was spotted, I could shed the dress shirt and, at least superficially, become another person.
From a desk drawer, I got a folded paper painter’s hat and stuck it in my back pocket for the same reason.
Finally, I slipped on my battered old camper’s watch.
Checked the time against NY1 before switching it off, just as the handsome young face of Craig Wales flashed once more on the screen. The news loop reporting his O.D. was coming round the bend again, round and round all day long, same on every network, until it was no longer sensational or shocking, merely predictable, monotonous as a carnival wheel’s odyssey.
I left the office with keys in hand and someplace to go.
Chapter Five: LEGWORK
It was a short walk to the Yaffa, back to St. Marks Place and a block east, and with my sneakers on almost a pleasure.
Yaffa Cafe was a holdout from the old East Village, an enduring landmark still standing and in operation. It had survived the wave of upscaling gentrification that had swept through the neighborhood because it was a favorite with the yuppie crowd and tourists. Probably half the place’s income came on the weekends from late-night snackers and afternoon brunchers.
It was still early for the lunch crowd, but the sidewalk tables were almost full. I didn’t go in, just took up position on the opposite side of the street and watched, pretending I was carrying on a cell phone conversation. My empty left hand held to the side of my face, I rattled off inane drivel.
It dates me, but I recall a time when a person couldn’t stand around doing nothing without someone wondering what he was up to, maybe even approaching and asking outright, “What are you up to?” To stand around without attracting attention, a guy had to be smoking a cigarette or reading the paper. But that all changed when 90% of the population began walking around with cell phones attached to their heads.
I repeated my location in a too-loud voice, then said, “Ah, yeh…hmm what…uh-huh…right, yes…eleven… before, uh-huh…” And on and on in a constant spiral, like a toilet that won’t quit flushing.
To nail the cell phone disguise, you have to be completely unaware of and unresponsive to your immediate surroundings. Having a real phone isn’t even necessary; they’re so compact nowadays, just holding a cupped hand to the ear does the trick.
I’ve picked out undercover cops trawling for drug dealers around the neighborhood using the method with real phones and, no doubt, actually conversing with someone at the other end, but they blow it by noticing me when I clock them. A true cell phone zombie you can stare at for hours and they’re unaware of your inspection. Off in another dimension, a connecting anteroom between themselves and whoever they’re talking to, half-between here and there, but nowhere.
I said my location a couple times and paced ten feet one direction, ten feet the other direction, keeping my vision wide, attention on Yaffa.
Most of the people at the sidewalk tables were finishing late breakfasts, so by half-past eleven half of them had gone. But they weren’t my primary interest. I only watched the people who left to determine whether they were followed or not. It wasn’t foolproof. If the person doing the following were halfway decent I might not even tag him or her, and all of this would be for nothing.
But luck was on my side, because he sucked. I pegged him as my squirrel before he even got underway. He loitered on the same side of the street as me, but he stood directly opposite the cafe while I was positioned about thirty feet farther east, watching from an angle.
He was a rail-thin twentysomething with a shaved head darkened by a bluish five o’clock shadow. Eyes squinted in Internet slits, from too long gazing in dim light. He had the complexion of a trout’s belly. He wore tan corduroys and a gray work shirt with a name stitched over the pocket: Jeff.
While everyone around him—young men and women in tailored suits hurrying west in the direction of NYU or the subway, younger men and women in soiled black jeans and skeleton-and-skull t-shirts slouching toward Tompkins Square Park to sleep, old women pushing wire carriages off to the grocery store—was going someplace, leaving someplace, all in varying degrees of hurry, his sole movement was to lean on one foot, then the other, and back again, like a top-heavy metronome.
I guess whenever you see an amateur doing something you do professionally, you feel a certain pique. I almost wanted to shout at him, “Stop looking directly at your subject, dummy!”
His lips were tightly compressed and his eyes straining, white-rinded, glued on the Yaffa.
I followed his gaze to the sidewalk tables. Which of the remaining patrons was his study? I knew who I’d be watching, the striking young woman with the Degas-bronze profile and long brown hair that fanned around her face whenever she leaned forward to sip cappuccino or look up and down the street. I could barely take my eyes off her myself.
She was waiting for someone, checking the watch on her slender wrist inside the sleeve of an ochre yellow silk blouse.
At another table, a gray-haired couple in matching checkered-flag outfits who’d been consulting a fold-out map refolded it, paid their bill, left. I turned to my squirrel, but their departure meant nothing to him.
I went back to studying the lanky brunette, all the while keeping up my cell phone act, repeating my location, what time it was, what time it was going to be, my location, what time it was, etc. There was something irresistible about this woman, something that made you think of Pavlov and dogs and bells, or maybe moths and flames.
Twenty minutes went by. People left, a few more arrived, but my squirrel still watched and waited, and the
