John Henry Days (26 page)

“So go right in,” she said, and pawed the in-box.

He turned the handle slowly.

It turned out that the white guy with suspenders was Jimmy Banks, the editor in chief, and he sat behind a desk of black metal with his hands clasped together. Behind him on the wall, framed covers of the
Downtown News’s
first few issues hung in parallel authority, to remind the people in the room of tradition in solid black and white ink beyond reproach, reiterating quaint outrages of a simpler city. There were ten others in the room, those whom J. had seen designated by bylines and their editorial maneuverings over the years, but he did not know whose face belonged to which riveting personal essay, which exposé, which descent into the downtown after-hours abyss in search of the first piece about the new raging drug. They slouched indolently in chairs, drooped on the floor, in the stiff gray cushions of the couch along the back wall, drinking coffee and diet soda, notebooks agape. They looked at J. but did not say anything. He sat along the back wall, on the floor, next to a thin woman with black fingernails, black dress and oily, glinting dyed black hair. He did not intend to speak unless addressed. He listened to the old hands of the
Downtown News
to see how it worked.

“Bumpurs—I’m trying to riff on that.”

“Cops and Bumpurs. Do the Bump. Bump me in the morning and didn’t just walk away.”

“Bump, jump, lump, stump …”

“The cops knock on the door and—”

“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

“Maybe we should focus on the cops.”

“Knock knock. Who’s there? Cop. Cop who? Cop come to kill ya.”

“How about Shooting Range in High Bridge? You know, because they have those rooms in the basement of the precinct for target practice.”

“Did anyone besides the cops see that she had a knife, or just them? Because that’s something. That’s an angle.”

“High Bridge Target Range. Target Practice.”

“Bumpurs, Bumpurs, Bumpurs …”

“Permanent Eviction.”

“Her family says there’s no way she could have attacked them because she had a heart condition. And arthritis.”

“Shotgun, High Bridge: The Blankety Blank of Blankety Blank.”

“Are NYC Cops the City’s Secret Police?”

“Go Nazi—secret police, Gestapo, something along those lines.”

“Are NYC Cops the City’s Gestapo?”

“Gestapo on 174th Street.”

“This isn’t a Sidney Lumet film.”

“Hump, mump, dump, pump … I’m thinking.”

“Jackboots on 174th Street.”

“Franklin, you’re barred from the rest of the meeting. The rest of you focus on the race thing. I think that’s it.”

“It’s not a very riffable name.”

“What’s wrong with Permanent Eviction?”

“Race and Rent. Of Race and Rent.”

“The Devil and Officer Sullivan.”

“The Case of Officer Sullivan.”

“Are You Next?”

“How about a Tale of Two Cities? You see, High Bridge is one city, and Chelsea is the other, then we can bring the Raymond case and compare the different responses to—”

“I thought we killed that piece. I thought we agreed to kill that piece.”

“But now we have a peg again. It’s fresh again. Uptown, Downtown, the two different standards—”

“Forget it. Blumenthal doesn’t mention it. Where’s the cop from?”

“Italian, from somewhere in Queens. Forest Hills.”

“The Italian Stallion Meets the Great Black Something.”

“Isn’t Sullivan an Irish name?”

“Bumpurs Bumpurs Bumpurs …”

“Focus on the victim.”

“Deadly Physical Force.”

“Anyone see
Cheers
last night?”

“Have Gun, Will Evict.”

“Ah ha.”

“Law of the Landlord.”

“New Lease on Life.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Settling Arrears.”

“Arrears of Death.”

“Why is this so much fucking trouble? Maybe we should skip it for now and come back to it.”

“Past Due. In for Arrears. Are NYC Cops the New Debt Collectors?”

“Will you get off the fucking interrogatory hed? Save it for the subhed, Christ.”

“No one saw
Cheers
last night?”

“Thinking, I’m thinking.”

“High Noon in High Bridge. Showdown on 174th Street. Was Eleanor Bumpurs Gunned Down in Cold Blood?”

“The Executioner’s Song.”

“In Cold Blood.”

“We used that last week. And you—you’re back on the goddamned interrogatory hed again.”

“Black and Blue! She’s black, they’re blue!

“We get it.”

“Bumpurs Bumpurs Bumpurs.”

“The Fire This Time, go for the Baldwin thing. They threw garbage at the cops the next day, right, from the rooftops—The Fire This Time.”

“But it wasn’t flaming garbage.”

“I heard it was molotov cocktails.”

“It was a bag of trash.”

“Whatever. I still think The Fire This Time works.”

“Maybe they’ll riot.”

“A Shooting on 174th Street.”

“A Killing on 174th Street.”

“Maybe we should get someone to write a sidebar over the weekend. To get the black angle.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, what about our boy Malefi?”

“He hasn’t been returning my phone calls lately.”

“Why not?”

“Too busy?”

“What, busy changing his name again? What about the guy who wrote the graffiti piece two weeks ago. We put it on the cover. Is he …”

“You mean is he …”

“Yeah, is he black, Afro-American, what do you think I mean?”

“No. He’s a professor at NYU.”

Jimmy Banks looked over at J. J. had his arms drawn around his knees in a cannonball position. “You,” Banks pointed. “What’s your name?”

“J. Sutter,” he answered. “I’m the intern, I’m Winslow Kramer’s intern.”

He embraced his legs tighter. “He asked me to come in case you needed to know anything. About the piece.”

“Intern,” Banks said, nodding and looking down at his desk. “It’s probably too late for a sidebar anyway.” He nodded some more and then abandoned his thought. “Everybody put your thinking caps on or else it’s Bloodbath on 174th Street.”

“I still like Of Race and Rent.”

“Maybe we should just go with Bloodbath on 174th Street.”

“Anyone else? Okay, Bloodbath on 174th Street it is.”

“Bumpurs Bumpurs Bumpurs.”

T
he individual who wishes to purchase a gun in the state of Maryland must endure a seven-day waiting period, and for some this may be the most difficult part of the application process. The ten-dollar application fee, which is forwarded to the Superintendent of the Maryland State Police, should be no hassle; excavation in the living room couch may cover the deficit if the applicant is a few coppers short. Scribbling in the lines and scratching the X’s across the boxes regarding name, address, occupation, place and date of birth, height, weight, race, eye and hair color and signature will be a small hurdle, but most of this information has probably been memorized over time, and the gun dealer may be able to provide aid without breaking any laws. The section regarding a history of crimes of violence (the usual: abduction; arson; burglary in the first, second and third degree; escape; kidnapping; manslaughter, excepting involuntary manslaughter; mayhem; murder; rape; robbery; robbery with a deadly weapon; carjacking or armed carjacking; sexual offense in the first degree; and sodomy; or an attempt to commit any of the aforesaid offenses; or assault with intent to commit any other offense punishable by imprisonment for more than a year) may knock out a few. Checking the wrong box next to questions regarding one’s status as a habitual drunkard; addict or a habitual user of narcotics, barbiturates or amphetamines; and spending more than thirty consecutive days in any medical institution for treatment of a mental disorder or disorders (unless there is attached to the application a physician’s certificate, issued within thirty days prior to the date of application, certifying that the applicant is capable of possessing a pistol or revolver without undue danger to himself or herself, or to others), may cause the individual to be turned down, unless fate intervenes and the application is reviewed by the State Police around quitting time or just before an office party celebrating the retirement of a valued member of the department, someone perhaps named Sal. The individual must be twenty-one or older, no excuses, and fugitives from justice will be denied permits for obvious reasons. This is all laid out in Article 27, Subsection 442
of Maryland’s gun legislation. The application does not include Rorschach tests, questions about whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, or the proclivity to hold mock trials, while dressed in one’s underpants, in which the worthiness of the human race is weighed by a jury of the individual’s stuffed animal collection. There are a lot of questions that are not asked in the gun dealerships of the state of Maryland, but for some the hardest part of the application may be the seven-day waiting period. It may be hell for some.

Once the individual has the new gun in possession, he/she may maintain it for use in his/her residence or business. The new gun owner may feel an urge to walk around town packing heat, but this is a real no-no. The individual can’t just walk around with a gun in his or her pocket; there are laws against that. It may be transported to a gun shop for repairs, from place of legal purchase, to a formal or informal target shoot, sport shooting event, for hunting and trapping, to dog obedience training class or show, or organized military activity, and the weapon must be unloaded and placed in an enclosed case or holster, with the ammunition maintained in a separate, closed container. But walking around with a gun? That’s reserved for officers of the peace, and employees of security or detective firms, and requires a permit. The application for a carry permit is a bit tougher, at times a head-scratcher.

West Virginia is a popular gun-running state, on a per-capita basis, in the top five, based on how many guns bought in the state are traced to out-of-state crimes per one hundred thousand population in the originating state. Eventually people who want to buy guns in West Virginia for export get to know the shortcuts and just jet over the state line, slap down the cash and cross back over the state line. The number of out-of-state guns used in crimes within the borders of West Virginia is comparably small. And yet it does happen from time to time. At the most unlikeliest of times, at the hands of the most unlikeliest of people, it happens.

Learned people keep track of the numbers, draw up studies, make arguments. In this landmass of numbers, riven by valleys of rarity and tormented by summits of likelihood, there are landmarks. An out-of-state gun used at a public event in a lethal fashion, unclassifiable as a crime of passion or monetary gain, by an individual who does not fit the standard profile of a perpetrator of a violent crime. Such events skew. They draw more media attention than the routine gas station robbery or umpteenth depredation against the dignity of the humble convenience store. The public is inured against such mundane crimes. They yawn. But in the case of the spectacular crime, soul-searching may be initiated, becalmed dinner conversations snap sail at the
mention, suspicious appraisal of one’s neighbors occurs up and down the rows of the planned community. Such a case will be a landmark in a stream of statistics and stand apart for a time. A blip on the graph. But once the names have been removed, the particularities expunged in the name of scientific method, such a case may indeed skew, but be consumed into the mean nonetheless. Statistics will swallow the aberration, if the aberration can endure the seven-day waiting period.

T
he place mats of Herb’s Country Style aspire to the perspectives of mountain divinities, bought in bulk and fixing a century of scrabbling human achievement in its just form on the diaphanous paper. The map is rough drawn, poorly reproduced, wholly sketch. Squiggly indecisive lines worm among straight, rivers contend against manmade roads and routes. Pamela can easily pick out the friends of this establishment. Their names are bold on the map, two buildings down from Herb’s the Coast to Coast Offers Free Continental Breakfast In-Room Coffee 25” Remote TV Pool; Magnificent Bluestone Dam Tours Available a little south of here, past where two rivers diverge. The edificial advertisements of local big-guns row along the bottom of the paper, landmarks on the avenue, granite enticements distinctly detailed. Appealing to the practical and fit and promising all sorts of adventures in the New River Gorge National Park, Lowell Hardware in the Historic District Carries All Your Camping Needs (And Some You Don’t Know About), while the McKeever Lodge in Pipestem whispers luxury into the ears of the less rugged, announcing All Sorts of Special Themes and Menus, such as Seafood, Italian and Western, to be digested in the 25 Fully Equipped, Deluxe Cottages. The final advertisement perches on the right corner, oldestyle letters urging her to visit John Henry Monument and Big Bend Tunnels. A Summers County Favorite.

In the upper left adjacent to a brown coffee cup eclipse a harpoon called N jabs away from her. She doesn’t see her motel. Route 3 trudges east and off the map into mottled formica terrain. She moved her plate because she didn’t want to look at it. She cleaned her plate except for two hashbrown kernels at the edge of a pool of ketchup. Pamela can’t eat them because they remind her of the fight outside her apartment building the week before and look like knocked-out teeth. No point trying to figure out the cause of it: two crack-heads fighting over God knows what, and once the puncher saw the damage he’d inflicted on the punchee, he helped his friend to his feet to hoof it out
of there before the cops arrived. When she left her apartment to come to Tal-cott, the dried blood was still visible on the pavement.

Herb’s Country Style is situated in a locale more peaceful than her neighborhood—no ambulance wails, no crack vials or needles glinting, no homeless living or dead to step over—but despite those leagues the universal coffeeshop protocols are still enforced, even out here in international waters. The waitress keeps her java refills coming as they settle into tacit exchanges of cupfuls and murmured gratitude, and when J. sits down in Pamela’s booth the waitress follows standard operating procedure. She asks, “Separate checks?”