A Manhattan Ghost Story Read online

  “No,” I said, my voice low. “Thank you. No.”

  She licked her lips again and her knee came up slowly and cautiously into my groin.

  I told her, “Please, don’t do that.”

  She kept doing it.

  I grabbed hold of her wrists, hard, and tried to push her away. I couldn’t. She said again, “I’m tight; I’m good—you come with me and find out; I want you to come with me and find out.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and I heard a little tremor in my voice. “Thank you. No. Some other time. Some other time, soon.”

  “I’m clean, too,” she said. “I’m tight; I’m good; I’m clean—you come with me and find out.”

  I looked past her, down the hallway. Several other women were staring at us. One of them—an older woman with stiff black hair and thin legs—was smiling at us, as if amused, and another woman, in the act of cleaning herself, looked at me very much as the girls hailing a taxi had, with quiet and studied indifference.

  The short woman still had her knee in my groin and her hands on my chest. I gripped her wrists harder, hoping to push her away, but it was impossible. I felt, strangely, as if I had just come into a room filled with flies and they were beginning to alight on me.

  I said to the short woman, trying hard for a soothing tone and missing it, I think, “Tell me your name. I want to know your name.”

  The question made her smile gratefully. “You wanta know my name? You really wanta know my name?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “My name’s Sheila.”

  “That’s a nice name. I’ve always like that name.”

  Her smile broadened. She looked very pleased; her knee lowered from my groin. “Yeah,” she said, “ain’t it?”

  And from behind her I heard, “Sheila!”

  I looked. I saw only that the older woman with the thin legs and the other woman were both furiously involved in cleaning themselves now. I felt Sheila’s muscles loosen and I let go of her wrists. She slid away from me, her mouth open a little, her eyes wide, as if she had been surprised, and she backed away slowly, without much grace, as though she was having trouble making her legs work properly.

  I heard again, “Sheila!” It was a young man’s voice, I guessed, someone in his late teens, and it had a distinct tone of forced authority to it.

  He appeared then, from within a room several doors down the hallway. He was eighteen, perhaps nineteen, and was several inches shorter than I, with a head of unruly, brown hair, small, dark eyes, and a grin on his round, pink face that was like the grin I’d seen on the face of the murderous truck driver—a kind of slick shiteating grin which seemed to announce loudly that he was very happy with himself.

  He said to me, “Ain’t this great? Ain’t this fantastic?” and came forward a few steps, looked back, toward the women still cleaning themselves; he held his right hand up, snapped his fingers. The women disappeared quickly into their rooms. “Ain’t it great?” he said again. Then the grin left his face abruptly. “You got to keep ‘em in line, that’s all. It ain’t hard. Shit, it wouldn’t be, would it? Which one you want? You want Sheila?”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said.

  He ignored me. “I got one named Ruth, and one named Cathy, and one named Wilhelmina; she’s my favorite.”

  I felt myself backing away, toward the door.

  “Course, they’re all just marking time, you know,” the boy said. “You ask ‘em; they’ll tell ya—hey, where you goin’?”

  I reached behind, found a doorknob, I assumed it was the one to the front door.

  “You gotta pay first,” the boy called frantically.

  I turned the knob. “Thank you, no,” I murmured, and pushed the door open, my eyes still on the boy. I felt a pair of hands at my waist, from behind. I glanced around, saw a flat, gray face, a mound of dark brown hair, a set of gray teeth.

  The boy called “And besides, she’s all done, so you ain’t gonna have no fun with her.” I looked at him again; he came forward. “Let me,” he said, and straight-armed the woman. She stumbled back, into her room. “Jesus,” the boy whispered; he smelled abominably of beer and sweat. “Christ almighty!” And he shut the door, though clearly with effort, as if the woman were pulling on the other side of it. He got a key from his pocket, locked the door, grinned at me again. “She’s leavin’ tomorrow, early; so you can’t have her,” he said. His grin altered. ” ‘Less of course, you like ‘em that way.”

  I told him again that I was looking for someone. And again he ignored me. He said, “Some guys do. I try to keep ‘em out, but it’s hard, it’s hard—you can’t keep the sickies out; there’s no way you can keep ‘em out, not all of ‘em. Some get through; the live ones get through—”

  “Please,” I cut in, “I need your help.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “I want to; really, I want to. But I go out that door—” he nodded glumly at the front door—”and you got a real loony on your hands. I mean a real class A loony. In here—hey, it’s okay. I like it. Kind of a feast for the eyes. Most of the time. Till they start comin’ apart, you know. Then it ain’t so good. Then you gotta start cleanin’ up after ‘em, you know, and they start gettin’ real desperate, real horny, ‘cuz they’re desperate, you know, and then you gotta kinda keep the door locked when you’re takin’ your naps. But the rest of the time—” His grin reappeared suddenly. “It’s great. It’s fantastic, better than watchin’ my sister and her goddamned girlfriend, that’s for sure. I mean, you gotta be a real wacko—” He stopped. His grin faded; he lowered his eyes, took a deep breath, scratched idly at the inside of his elbow. “Damned place’s got lice,” he murmured. “Every day, every fuckin’ day, I gotta take a fuckin’ shower with fuckin’ lye soap to get rid of the fuckin’ lice. Damn it all to hell—”

  “Have you seen her?” I cut in. “Have you seen Phyllis?”

  He turned away suddenly, violently, still scratching at his elbow. He moved with great agitation toward the room he’d just come out of. “Goddamn it all to hell, shit fuck! Next I’ll get roaches in here—next I’ll get roaches; I’ll get silverfish. All the time cleanin’ up after ‘em, all the time cleanin’ up their little messes—” He was at his door now; he went into his room, babbled on furiously, “All the time gettin’ in my hair, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” And he slammed his door shut.

  I saw other doors open then. Immediately. Down the hallway. I saw a few faces stick out, some smiles. I heard the door behind me open—the door that the boy had closed and locked—and far down the hall, half in darkness, I saw what looked very much like the woman I had followed into the house. She was standing with her back against the wall; she had her arms wide, her legs wide, and she was naked.

  From behind me I heard a low, ragged humming sound, as if someone were trying to whisper with her mouth closed. And I saw also that several more faces had appeared from within the rooms lined up down the hallway.

  And the woman at the end of the hallway, the woman standing half in darkness, was opening her mouth and closing it, very slowly, and a noise was coming from it—a long, low noise. This noise:

  “Ahhhb—”

  Followed by this noise:

  “baaaahhnnerrr—”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Abner, of course. The woman standing half in darkness was calling my name. Or trying to. And so I called to her: “Phyllis!”

  And she repeated, “Ahhhhbaaahnnnerrr—”

  The low, ragged humming noise behind me drew closer. I felt something touch my arm and I glanced around, not for long, then back again, very quickly, at the woman at the end of the hallway. I saw that she had turned sideways to me and that she was moving off, to what had been her right. The touch at my back grew stronger. I glanced around once more and saw the mound of dark hair, the flat gray face, the pitiful approximation of a smile. The smile changed. The mouth formed this word: “Please.” And these words: “Keep me here!”

  And I ran from it, past the faces sti
cking into the hallway, past the smiles. I ran very clumsily; I knocked over several of the washstands and heard them clatter to the floor behind me, then I heard the wash basins and pitchers shattering.

  I got to the end of that hallway and found only the odor of the woman who had been there—the odor of damp wood, Phyllis’s odor. I inhaled very deeply of it.

  I saw the boy appear from his room, saw his mouth drop open when he caught sight of the shattered porcelain and the washstands lying about. He shook his head slowly, looked down the hallway at me, and said, his tone one of tortured disbelief, “You can’t do this!” And he started toward me, head still shaking. “How are they going to clean themselves now? I’ll get silverfish in here; I’ll get roaches in here …”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He said, “You’ll have to leave. This is not orderly. It has to be orderly. We have to have some order. Who will want them if there’s no order?” He was very close to me now, within arm’s reach. I said again, “I’m sorry.”

  Phyllis’s odor mixed with his odor—the odor of nervous perspiration and stale beer, a combination that was sickly sweet and made my stomach churn. “Please …” I said.

  And then his small, moist hands were around my neck, squeezing hard, though not as hard as Phyllis could have or Sheila could have, not hard enough in fact that I couldn’t plead with him to stop at the same time, because I could see myself doing something that I didn’t want to do, having always been something of a pacifist.

  I said to him, “Please don’t do that!”

  But he continued to babble on about roaches, lice, silverfish, about having to clean up, about needing order, and something in my brain screamed that he really wasn’t worth much, that he was only a guy who took care of a whorehouse in the middle of Manhattan.

  And I was glad my brain said that to me.

  I lifted my knee hard into his groin. It broke his grip on me at once, and a look of intense surprise and pain spread all over his face, which made me happy. I smiled. He doubled over. And again I brought my knee up, into his mouth this time. His top front teeth went through my pants and settled deep into my skin; then he thudded backwards to the floor, where he lay with his hands to his groin, his arms stiff, his knees bent, his mouth oozing blood, and a constant, low, moaning sound filtering up out of his throat.

  And I was still smiling. I thought he looked like a beetle that had gotten turned on its back in the sun.

  I noticed the women then. They were walking very slowly and very stiffly to the door that opened onto East 80th Street. Sheila got to the door first. Then the older woman with the thin legs, then a tall brunette. They bumped into each other, like cartoon characters. They got to the door, bumped into it, bounced back a little, took another step forward, bounced back.

  I remember thinking that it was kind of comical, like watching The Three Stooges or I Love Lucy.

  And then I heard someone weeping. Sheila, I supposed, because the weeping stopped as quickly as it had begun and a voice—Sheila’s voice—said, “We are not zombies!” I heard a tremendous, quivering anger in the words.

  And then weeping again. A chorus of it—low and soft. And all the while, through it—through the weeping—they kept walking into that door and bouncing back a little. It seemed to jar them; their bodies shook, like wood hitting stone.

  To my right, where Phyllis might have gone, I thought, a door was standing open. I stepped through it, into a small, dark room that had only a small cot, like an army cot, in it—no sheets or pillows—which smelled as I might have imagined it should—of come and sweat.

  The room had one window. It faced a brick wall, part of the building next door. I went to the window, started to open it, heard the weeping continue behind me, heard the small, stiff noises of bodies hitting the door at a slow, walking pace.

  I said, beneath my breath, “Jesus God in heaven,” which surprised me because it was a curse I had never used before, one that had vaguely religious overtones.

  Then, because the window wouldn’t open, I kicked through it, kicked out the shards remaining at the sides and went out into the narrow, paved service passage between the buildings.

  It was dark there. And cold. And quiet. I went way back into the service passage, far from the window I’d come out of. At the front of the service passage, I could occasionally see people walking past, traffic.

  It was good to be alone. It was good to be out of that house.

  I heard a cat purring loudly nearby. I looked. It was a big, orange and white cat—marmalade is the correct term—nursing at least half a dozen newborn kittens. I smiled at the cat. I said hello to it and congratulated it. It continued purring, and I continued talking softly to it for quite some time. After a while, I sat down near it and fell asleep.

  At the Hammett Mausoleum, Halloween, 1965

  “Joe says it’s a nice day, Abner.”

  “Shit, too.”

  “You callin’ me a liar? I’m not a liar. Joe says it’s a nice day—he says it’s always a nice day over there.”

  “What time is it, Sam?”

  “How’m I supposed to know what time it is? What do you think?—You think I’m fuckin’ Big Ben or something? I don’t know; it’s 10:45, 11:00. Who gives two shits?”

  “I do. I gotta get home. You’re getting awfully hostile, Sam.”

  “I’m gettin’ hostile? We’re all dead, Abner—‘course I’m hostile.”

  “I thought you brought a watch along.”

  “I did. It stopped. The spooks got to it and made it stop. John Cameron Swayback gave it to ‘em and said, ‘The spooks got it now, and we’ll see in a couple million years if the Timex is still running.”

  “Who’s John Cameron Swayback?”

  “So I don’t know what time it is, Abner. Sorry.” He put his hands over Flora’s skull, his arms straight; he was seated Indian-style again. “I mean it this time, Joe Hammet. Give us a sign, goddamnit, or we’re gonna do something sleazy, I promise.”

  “I’m not doing anything sleazy, Sam.”

  “Wimp. I’ll tell you something, Abner. I may not live very long, but I sure as hell am gonna have some fun, and that’s more than you’re gonna do. You’ll probably end up being a damned encyclopedia salesman, or a muffler installer or a social studies teacher.”

  “I’m gonna be a photographer, Sam.”

  “Yeah? Well, you gotta be able to see to be a photographer, Abner. You gotta be able to see, you know. And you don’t see nothing’. I’ll bet you don’t even see old Joe Hammet standing right there—” he nodded—”beside ya, grinnin’ away. How do, Joe?”

  “Eat shit and die, Sam.”

  “I’m already dead, Abner. Why ain’tcha lookin’? He’s there; he really is.”

  I looked, quickly. Sam laughed. “Gullible bastard!” he said.

  “Trusting,” I said.

  “You’ll probably sell lamps or something; you’ll probably be a TV repairman.”

  “I told you what I’m gonna be, Sam. I’m gonna be a photographer. I’m gonna take photographs.”

  “He really is there, Abner. I’m not kiddin’ this time. He’s there, and he’s reaching out to touch ya; he wants to touch ya—he’s very … sensual.”

  I felt something touch my left shoulder lightly, like a moth settling down.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When I got back to Art’s apartment, Kennedy Whelan was there. He’d made himself some perked coffee and was putting sugar in it when I came in.

  “For Christ’s sake!” I muttered, shrugged out of my coat, hung it in the closet. “This is private property, Mr. Whelan.”

  “No,” he said, and seated himself at the dining room table, withdrew an ugly cigar from an inner pocket of his suit jacket, stuck it in his mouth and began chewing on it. “This is a crime scene, Mr. Cray.” He stopped, gave me a once-over. “You look like shit, Mr. Cray. You look like you’ve been sleeping in an alley.” He grinned. I went over to the cupboard, got a coffee cup, poured some
coffee for myself, went to the table with it and sat down across from Whelan. He sniffed conspicuously. “You stink, too,” he said.

  I sipped the coffee. “What do you want, Mr. Whelan? I’m very tired.”

  He rolled the ugly cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other; he was clearly trying to strike a pose, trying to intimidate me. It was working. “I want to ask you about Art DeGraff.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I want to ask you where he is.”

  “I don’t know where he is, Mr. Whelan. You know as much as I do about that, probably more.”

  “I don’t believe you, Mr. Cray.” He leaned forward, took the cigar from his mouth, jabbed the air with it as he spoke. “I think you’re hiding something from me. I think you know where your perverse little friend is, and I think you’re protecting him.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said simply, and sat back in the chair.

  He sat back, put the cigar in his mouth again, grinned. “And what about this black chick you’ve been seeing?”

  This came as a surprise to me. I shook my head. “That’s none of your concern, Mr. Whelan.”

  He said nothing for a moment. He let a grin slowly come and go; then he said, “You’re right; it isn’t.” He stood abruptly, reached down, took another sip of coffee, went to the sink, poured the remainder of the coffee down the drain, looked back at me. “You know, of course, that I could have you thrown out of here if I wanted. Your friend’s case is still open.”

  “Is it?” I said, trying for a tone of impatience and weariness.

  “But I’ll let you stay. You’re good bait. He’ll come back here, eventually, because you’re here. Then I’ve got him.” He went to the front door, looked back, grinned again—the cigar, well-chewed now, still in his mouth—and left the apartment.