City Dark(74)

At the corner of Forty-Third and Eighth Avenue, Robbie dashed across the street in front of a black limousine and a city bus. Joe hung back, petrified of the headlights, but then got moving. Going west, Forty-Third Street was swallowed in darkness. But there on the right, just a few steps down from the corner, was the open door of a business with a corona of yellow light and the tinny sound of music. The music was the kind Joe heard where people spoke Spanish. He fell in step behind Robbie, wanting to stay within his shadow as they approached the door.

When Joe peeked in, the first thing he saw was the fattest man he had perhaps ever seen. The man was surrounded by candles and sat on a wooden chair in front of a darkened pastry counter. The candles were placed along the counter, on the floor behind him, and on shelves on the wall. The man was sweating profusely and bulging out of a tentlike baby-blue T-shirt. He wore shorts that ballooned below the belt line between his legs. On a table next to him was a transistor radio that played the music, with lots of horns and harmonious voices.

“Mira, Nate!” he called out, his dark face breaking into a toothy smile. “Tu corillo!” From the left side of the store, a tall, lanky man stood from a table and set down a tiny cup of coffee. He brushed his hands on his jeans and walked over to the door. He was dark skinned and long limbed, with sad, expressive eyes. Joe liked him instantly. He seemed kind and knowing, which was exactly what Joe craved in that moment.

“Joe and Robbie,” Nate said. His voice was deep and smooth, like a DJ’s. His lips turned up into a smile. “I’m Nate Porter. Welcome to New York.”





CHAPTER 59


Sunday, September 3, 2017

East Seventh Street

Manhattan

10:51 p.m.

Nate Porter opened the outer door to his East Village apartment building and sighed. At sixty-eight, he was getting too old for this. He had been away for Labor Day weekend with friends on Fire Island and had returned early to get a fresh start on the week. Now instead of relaxing, doing laundry, and maybe reading a book, he had a mini crisis to deal with.

There was a little vestibule between the outer and inner doors of the building. The lock on the inner door had been broken for months, with a quarter-size hole where the lock housing should have been. Just inside the inner door, spread out in the dimly lit hallway, was a clearly homeless man with terrible body odor and blackened bare feet.

Nate was not surprised. This was just the latest in a string of impositions, hardships, and insults being hurled at the residents by their landlord, among the most notorious in the entire city. The landlord was determined to clear the building of its rent-controlled tenants and convert their apartments to what would be multimillion-dollar condominiums. Nate had moved into the building as a younger man, when the corner was dangerous and trash strewn. By 2017 it was a playground for the rich, and do-gooder old queens like him were just in the way.

He was the building’s unofficially appointed advocate against the landlord’s tactics, and so tasked with dealing with things like this: the landlord’s thugs planting homeless men in the hallways, along with heroin addicts and prostitutes. Nate was well suited to the job. He was a retired social worker and had dealt with vulnerable populations for decades. It was through city social work, in fact, that he had met Mike Carroll, the man who would become his lover not long before becoming a father figure to two young boys in July of 1977.

“Sir,” Nate said, “you can’t be in here.” Age had grayed his hair and stooped him a little, but he was still tall and slim, neat and fastidious, with the same kind face and knowing aura. His voice retained its DJ quality, sonorous and calming.

“Fugginlivehere,” the man mumbled into the floor.

“Sir, that’s not true. There’s a nearby men’s shelter I can point you to up on Thirtieth Street. They’ll assist you, but you can’t stay here.”

“Fugginlivehere,” he said again, slurred really, so the words would have been unintelligible had Nate not just heard them. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

“You need to get up,” Nate said more forcefully. “Get up and get out, or I’ll see to it that you’re escorted out.” He was careful not to threaten to call the police, as he was certain the guy had been allowed in by someone connected to the landlord.

For a moment the man was silent, as if he’d fallen asleep. Then he turned toward Nate, exposing broken teeth behind a leering grin. When he spoke this time, there was no slur in his voice. His eyes, surprisingly alert and cruel, narrowed on the older man. “Back off, asshole. I got a right to be here.”

Nate clenched his fists and gritted his teeth but then slowly unclenched them and grinned back. “Five minutes.” He made a five with his left hand. “I’ll be back.” The lobby was small and rectangular, maybe twenty feet wide, with a brass mailbox panel on the right side and two elevators straight ahead. The guy stretched out across the lobby floor so that his head was just under the mailboxes. Nate walked around him toward the elevators. Just before the elevator bank, on the right, was the door to the stairwell.

“Come back with an army,” he heard. “See if I give a shit!”

The building had two elevators, only one in service. The other, on the right if you were facing them, had been broken for months, with no signs of being fixed. The steel doors on the lobby level were stuck in a partially open position, with a rectangular piece of plywood covering the bottom half of the doorframe. The plywood was screwed into the wall on either side, and blue painter’s tape created a big X over the entire frame. Before the weather turned in April, cold wind whistled up the shaft, blowing hard enough through the lobby that a letter might fly out of a person’s hands at the mailboxes.