Koko

When Harry came out of his kitchen, the framed magazine covers blared out at him like loud music. His face, his name. It took the breath right out of his body.

6

Before going downstairs for the cab, he poured himself a shot of Absolut. It was treacly from the freezer, and slid into his throat like a bullet made of mercury. The bullet froze whatever it touched, and evaporated into warmth and confidence as soon as it touched his stomach. Harry capped the bottle and returned it to the freezer.

Alone inside the elevator, Harry took out his pocket comb and ran it through his hair.

Outside on Ninth Avenue he raised his arm, and a cab swooped across two lanes and came to rest before him. The door locks floated up with an audible pop! Everything now was a sequence of smooth, powerful actions. Harry climbed into the back seat and gave the directions to the driver.

Down Ninth Avenue the taxi went, everything clear, everything seen in the frame of the moment. A tall window reflected a sky filled with heavy clouds. Above the roof of the cab Harry heard sudden wing beats, swift and loud.

He stepped out of the cab onto an empty sidewalk and looked south across busy Canal Street to the block that contained the arcade. A crowd of people carrying shopping bags and small children turned off Canal down Bowery. While Harry stood watching another small group composed of young Chinese men in suits and topcoats walked out of the Manhattan Savings Bank and also turned down Bowery. In a few seconds the second group had overtaken the first, and walked past the arcade without even glancing in. Suddenly all of Harry’s plans and precautions seemed unnecessary—he was an hour early, all he had to do was go into the arcade and hide on the staircase.

He hunched his shoulders against this heresy as much as against the cold. Visualizing an action helped bring it into being. The preparations were themselves a stage in Koko’s capture, an essential aspect of the flow of events.

Harry trotted through a break in the traffic and jumped up onto Stage Two of his preparations, the traffic island north of Confucius Plaza. He could see the entire block between Canal and Bayard, but he was exposed to anyone who would happen to look across the street. Harry backed away toward the far side of the island. The Chinese businessmen were waiting to cross Bayard, and the family with the babies and shopping bags was just straggling past the arcade. Nobody stood pretending to read the menus in the restaurant doorways, no faces were visible in the windows.

When the light changed Harry ran back across Bowery and ducked into the arcade for Stage Three.

It was even better than he remembered it—darker, so quiet it was hushed. One old lady dawdled between the shops. Today there were even fewer customers than he had seen two days before. The staircase to the lower level was nearly invisible, and when Harry glanced down it he saw joyfully that the bulb at the bottom of the staircase had burned out, and no one had replaced it. The lower level of the arcade was illuminated only by the weak light from the barbershop’s windows.

He gave a quick check to the arcade’s far end. A skinny Chinese in pajamas stared at him from the stoop of a tenement before retreating back inside.

Stage Four began at the base of Confucius Plaza. A few Chinese in padded coats came across the wide plaza and were admitted into the office building at Harry’s back. They paid no attention to him. Half a dozen concrete benches sat among the trees and planters on the plaza. Harry chose one that gave him an uninterrupted view.

Now and then a truck stopped directly before him and blocked his view; once a delivery van parked directly in front of the arcade. Harry checked his watch as he waited for the van to pull away, and saw that it was two- twenty.

He felt for the knife in his coat pocket. The pocket seemed to be empty. Harry groped more industriously. The knife still eluded him. Sweat began to drip down into his eyebrows. He tore off his right glove and thrust his hand into the pocket—the knife was gone.

People passing in cars were pointing at him, laughing, leaving him behind as they swept by on their ways to parties, receptions, interviews.…

He poked his fingers to the bottom of the pocket and found a rip in the lining. Of course his pockets were ripped, the coat was eight years old, what did you expect? The knife lay inside the hem, useless as a toothbrush. Harry worked it up the lining, and gradually got it near enough to the rip so that he could thrust his fingers through and feel for it. A row of stitches popped, and the rip widened. He found the knife and drew it up and transferred it to his left pocket.

An eight-year-old coat! He had nearly lost everything because of an eight-year-old coat!

Harry sat down heavily on the bench and immediately put his left hand into the coat pocket and folded it around the knife. He had lost his focus. Harry wiped his forehead, put his glove back on, and folded his hands in his lap.

Trucks, cars, and taxicabs streamed past on Bowery. A large group of well-dressed Chinese men moved past the arcade. Watching them, Harry realized with a spurt of panic that anyone could have slipped inside from Elizabeth Street while he watched this end.

But Koko was a soldier, and he would follow orders.

The Chinese men reached Bayard Street and scattered with waves and smiles.

It came to Harry that he was sitting on a stone bench with a knife in his pocket, waiting not to capture someone but to kill him, and that he thought he could become famous for doing this. This idea seemed as cruelly barren as the rest of his life. For a moment Harry Beevers contemplated himself as just one man among a million men, a lonely figure on a bench. He could stand up, drop the knife into a planter, and go off and do—what?

He looked down at his body clad in loose dark uncharacteristic clothes, the clothing of an active man, and this simple proof of his uniqueness allowed him back into the heart of his fantasy. His rich destiny again embraced him.

At two-thirty Harry decided to alter his plan and wait out the time remaining on the staircase. It never hurt to be in position early, and being in position would mean that he would also see anyone who entered the arcade from the far end.

Harry stood up. His body was very straight, his head erect, his expression carefully neutral. Harry Beevers was locked in. The man was wrapped tight. He reached the curb, and his nerves reached out to every human being and every vehicle moving past. High heels clicked toward him, and a young Chinese woman joined him at the crosswalk. When she glanced at him—a pretty young woman, that silky Chinese hair, sunglasses even on a day like this—she was attracted to him, she found him interesting. The light changed, and they set off the curb together. In the middle of the street she gave him a rueful, questioning look. On the other side of the street the girl turned toward Bayard Street, stretching out the particular nerve that he fastened to her, drawing it out further and further like an unbreakable thread.

Harry moved quickly into the darkness of the arcade. From its far end came the sound of low voices and moving bodies, three bodies, and Harry casually moved nearer the wall and pretended to be interested in a large poster glued to the wall. X-RAY SPECS. THE BLASTERS. Three overweight teenage girls in duffel coats came slouching past the angle in the arcade. He recorded their brief acknowledgment of him, the way their eyes flicked sideways, and how they silently commented on him to each other. They carried knapsacks and wore scuffed brown loafers. The girls moved slowly down the length of the arcade and finally walked out into the lighter air, still pretending not to have noticed him.

Harry checked both ways—the arcade was empty, and the Bowery end gaped bright and grey—and crossed to the staircase. The burned-out bulb had of course not been replaced. He quickly went down half a dozen steps, checked back toward the Elizabeth Street entrance, and then went down the rest of the way. Harry unbuttoned his coat. He peeled off his gloves and shoved them into his pockets. The railing dug unpleasantly into his hip when he leaned against the side of the staircase.

At once an arm emerged out of the blackness behind him and clamped around his neck. Someone standing at his back pulled him off-balance and pushed a thick cloth into his mouth. Harry reached for the knife, but his hand tangled in a glove. Then he remembered it was the wrong pocket anyway, but in that second he was falling back and it was too late for the knife. He heard his handcuffs clatter onto the staircase.