City of the Dead

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“But how would I remember the number?”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“The paper, yes. I certainly sold issues of the paper, but whether or not the particular one you’re holding in your hand—”

“Uh-huh?”

“—that I have no way of knowing.”

Flynn stuffs the dog-eared, much-thumbed sheet of the Clintonian back into his pocket. Sighing, he slides wearily onto one of the red Leatherette stools before the soda fountain. “How about a lemon and lime?” he says. “Plenty of ice.”

“Would be a pleasure, Sergeant.”

Mr. Saul Siegel is a big, powerfully built man of seventy some years. He is a splendid, barrel-chested specimen with flowing white hair and somewhat Biblical mien. On the back of his head he wears a black skullcap. Flynn watches him scoop crushed ice into one of those old Coca-Cola glasses held in a steel zarf. Then the old man punches the button of a big, glass syrup dispenser and proceeds to make cold green, bubbly soda.

The vision of the skullcap, the cold green soda effervescing in a zarfed glass, the smell of the old zinc bar, and suddenly Sergeant Edward Flynn is back again, forty years or so, a little boy in Kastle’s candy store on Hester Street, stealing penny candy, while old Mr. Kastle, sorely put upon by young hooligans, cordially looks away.

Yes, Mr. Siegel’s establishment touches a nostalgic chord in Edward Flynn. It is a kind of warm, shabby hole in the wall (no bigger actually than a couple of goodsized closets) with a sliding-window counter that faces out on to the street. Having never been in there before, nevertheless the detective knows it perfectly. There in the back of the store are the same two little phone booths that Mr. Kastle had. And on the back wall is the same floor-to-ceiling magazine rack. On another wall is a glass display case crammed full with cheap toys—kites, model planes, model clay, plastic dolls, toy soldiers, jacks, penknives, packets of foreign postage stamps, and little girls’ tea sets.

By far the biggest allotment of space is given over to the bright old zinc bar with the Breyer’s ice cream signs and the faded posters depicting hamburgers and Coca-Cola. Directly above it, hanging from a long, black string, are innumerable cards of key chains, nail clippers, pipe cleaners, Zippo lighters, pencil sharpeners, rubber bands.

But it is the zinc bar itself that really captures Flynn’s heart, the splendid old bar with its shiny soda spigots, the huge inverted apothecary jars full of vividly colored syrups—the bright-red cherry, the cool green lime, the sunny yellow pineapple, the gorgeous black root beer. And there, too, a big glass cake saver full of cheese and prune Danish. And, wonder of wonders, a counter full of penny candy at the far end—boxes of jawbreakers, jelly slices, red-hots, banana candies, coconut-covered marshmallows, halavah; they’re all there. Even a bubble-gum machine—a colored ball of gum and a tiny plastic toy, all for a penny.

For a man who’s been plodding about all day, badgering a lot of irascible people, it all has a very pleasant nostalgia about it And old Siegel there, with his skullcap and his flowing white hair, looks exactly like the old rebs on Hester Street, with their tall beaver hats, their long, black frock coats, the braided forelocks streaming out from beneath the wide-brimmed hats.

Edward Flynn, as a boy, had a strange awe, a fascination, for these old men, always reading, studying day and night in the synagogue.

Sipping his lemon-lime slowly, he studies Mr. Siegel, hunched over the zinc bar, bifocals perched on the tip of his nose, and reading.

“Know the neighborhood well?” he calls to him.

Mr. Siegel glances over the rim of his bifocals, a question on his face.

“I asked if you knew the neighborhood well.”

“Been here thirty years.”

“Then you should know it.”

“I do—but it’s changing.”

“So is everything.” Flynn smiles. “Trouble?”

“Sure. But at my age, who’s running? Besides, everyone’s got trouble. Right?” Mr. Siegel smiles, and out of that craggy, patriarchal face, something like peace shines.

“Right.” Flynn nods. “What are you readin’, may I ask?”

“The Bible. Sabbath night I read the Bible.”

“What book?”

“Book of Numbers. An ancient book. Old Hebrew laws.” Flynn ponders a moment, then says, “Will you read some to me?”

There is a look of gentle amusement on the old man’s face. “You want me to read you the Bible?”

“Sure—I could use some Bible tonight.”

Mr. Siegel considers that a moment. “Well, if you could use it, who am I to deny it. Any particular passage?”

“Just where you left off will be good enough.”

Mr. Siegel is still smiling. It is an inward smile, as if something had pleased him vastly. Then, propping the bifocals on his nose, he proceeds in a quiet but curiously powerful voice.

“‘And if he smite him with an instrument of iron—’”

“Not in English, please,” Flynn interrupts.

Mr. Siegel looks up again. This time the smile of amusement has turned to one of mild perplexity. “You understand Hebrew?”

“No—I just like the sound. Brings back memories.”

Mr. Siegel shrugs, nods his head, and in the next moment his soft but resonant bass rises and spreads like a shawl over the little store.

Mr. Siegel looks up, that most kindly of smiles beaming upon Flynn.

“Very pretty.” The detective nods appreciatively. “Very pretty indeed. What does it mean?”

“It’s a passage on the Cities of Refuge. The places where a criminal may or may not seek sanctuary. Would you like me to translate it for you?”

“Yes—I’d like that.”

The old man adjusts the glasses on his nose and peers back into his book:

Mr. Siegel closes his book. Outside there is a flash of heat lightning and a distant rumble of thunder. “Rain,” he murmurs quietly.

“Looks like it,” Flynn agrees. “Tell me something. Of all your customers here in the neighborhood, you don’t by chance happen to have a Salvation Army officer?”

“Salvation Army officer?” Mr. Siegel’s eyes narrow and he ponders a bit. “Those fellows in the black uniform with the red collar, the peaked hat?”

“That’s right.”

Mr, Siegel smiles brightly. “I got one of them.”

Flynn’s heart leaps in his chest. “You do?”

“Sure—that’d be the colonel.”

“The colonel?” There’s a moment of silence. “Colonel who?”

The old man stares up at the ceiling trying to recall. “Let me see—takes a Post weekdays, Daily News Sunday mornings. Has it delivered.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“Hold on a minute.” Mr. Siegel goes to the back of the store, disappearing into a back room, only to reappear the next moment bearing a small, gray ledger book. It is one of those cheap paperbound ledgers, full of pink-ruled lines and smudgy inked entries. The old man thumbs through hectically, licking a finger every now and then to make the pages fly more swiftly.

“Ah, here,” he says, halting finally at a page and adjusting his glasses, which keep slipping down his nose. “Colonel Divine,” he announces triumphantly. “Colonel Joseph Divine. That’s the fellow—610 West 49th. Just a few doors down the block here.”

Flynn feels something like butterflies flutter in his stomach, a slow but inexorably mounting sense of excitement. “Can I see that a minute?”

“Sure.” Mr. Siegel hands the detective the ledger book. Flynn scribbles the name and address from it onto his pad. “Just down the block you say?”

“Sure. Old brownstone near the corner. He do something wrong?”

“Who knows?” Flynn shrugs, his face a little flushed. “Can I use your phone?”

“Sure. It’s in the back. Help yourself.”

At the rear of the store Flynn dials the precinct house, arranging to have a squad car meet him at the brownstone on 49th Street. Then he is out front again with Mr. Siegel.

“How much I owe you?”

“For what?”

“The lemon-lime.”

Mr. Siegel, looking more patriarchal than ever, shakes his hoary, white-maned head and dismisses the offer of money with a broad, regal motion of his arm.

After the glass door has closed behind him, with the, sound of little entry bells tinkling out after him into the street, Flynn glances back to wave farewell to Mr. Siegel. But the old man is already hunched over the counter again, elbows on the bar, cheeks resting in either palm,, back deep in his Bible.

Outside in the street it is now thick dusk. The street lamps have just gone on. Children are playing tag around some trash cans on the pavement and young Puerto Rican couples stroll eastward, arm in arm, toward the great Saturday-evening glow of white lights shimmering above the Times Square area. The old sit in the windows and merely watch.

Another long gash of heat lightning turns the sky momentarily white above the river, and in the close, balmy air there is an imminence of rain.

Six ten West 49th Street is a three-story brownstone near the end of the block, quite close to Eleventh Avenue. It is one of those houses built around the turn of the century, in the gaslight era of the city. Once an elegant town house for a banker or a wealthy merchant, now it has been partitioned into a number of small dwelling units (efficiency apartments, they’re called) and has fallen upon hard times.

In the small tiled vestibule downstairs is a narrow wall into which are set eight badly defaced mailboxes. The dim light flickering above them provides scarcely enough illumination for reading the names: Moody—Grayson—Donnelly—Terhune—Horwitz—two more scarcely legible—then, on a neat, elegantly printed little card, the name Divine, apartment 3B.

There is no buzzer so Flynn cannot ring to announce himself. The glass door between vestibule and hallway stands open, its lock having been removed in toto and never replaced. So the detective merely walks in.

Standing in the hallway, he can hear voices behind doors, footsteps, a hi-fi blaring the Eroica, kitchen sounds, people going about supper and life.

Before starting up the narrow, rickety stairs, Flynn’s hand grazes lightly the area where the pistol in its holster rests snugly just beneath his armpit. Outside he can hear the rain starting to drill heavily on the pavements.

Mounting those stairs now, the steps creaking beneath his shoes, he has a strange sense of exhilaration, like a man who’s been climbing a long time, who can see the summit now just a few feet ahead. And there is that heady buoyancy of the second wind. It all has a kind of inevitability about it. Particularly since the name Divine, which appeared on Stanley Charles’s paper-route list, also appeared on General Pierce’s ten-year-old duty roster, the one from the old South Street Salvation Army shelter.

Number 3B is in the far corner of the hall, looking out, Flynn surmises, over the back of the building. The name plate on the door says “J. Divine.” Before ringing, the detective stands quietly outside the door listening for sounds from within. But there are no sounds. Nor does any light appear from beneath the door. He smiles oddly there in the shadows, shaking his head. Then he presses the small white buzzer to the side of the door.

He can hear the sound of the buzzer ringing within, and then a cat meows. Then silence. After a moment he rings again. This time he hears—or thinks he hears—the squeal of springs. Possibly a person rising from a couch or sitting up in bed. Then he hears something like the sound of a throat being cleared of phlegm, followed by the words “Just a minute” pouring muffled through the plaster walls. In the next minute he hears footsteps, then a crack of light glares beneath the door.

He is staring up now at a tall, strikingly handsome man with a shock of iron-gray hair. The rimless glasses from out of which gaze two greatly magnified eyes give him a parsonical look—faintly disapproving.

“Colonel Divine?” Flynn hears his voice coming back at him over great distances.

“Yes.”

“Sergeant Flynn—New York Police, Sixth Homicide Division. I wonder if I might have a few words with you.”