Howling sirens accompanied East Villagers fleeing into the Astor Place Subway. A lucky few reached the shelter of the tunnel and the rest raised their eyes to the speck falling to Earth. A white flash vaporized the troposphere, as a subhuman scream ping-ponged across the tenement canyon of East 10th Street.
“Dooooonnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaa."
Inside a railroad flat's bedroom a thirty year-old man threw off the pillow over his head and Sean Coll staggered to an open window. Sweat dripped off his face, as he looked down to the sidewalk.
“Dooooonnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaa."
A middle-aged Polish woman fled from a dope-sick junkie mauling a parked car with an iron pipe. Glass shards flew in the sunlight. The beserker arched his face to the broiling sun and emptied the ashes of his soul from his lungs.
"DOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAA."
No woman answered his warbling aria.
A cop car rounded the corner and the heroin addict hid the pipe, but nothing short of an 'officer-down' call was extricating the policemen from their air-con cruiser.
Once the cruiser drifted out of sight, the junkie demolished another windshield.
“Shit."
Sean's Triumph was on deck for batting practice.
He hurried to the kitchen and filled a trash bag with water from the brimming tub.
Fifteen seconds later Sean heaved out the plastic sack out the window. Liquid beads sprayed from its rupturing seams. The bag of water struck the junkie’s shoulder and the impact crushed him to the sidewalk. The plastic shroud fluttered over his fallen body. He lay still. Water dropped from that height might be fatal blow, but junkies don’t die easy. The addict rose to his feet and looked up at the buildings before limping down the block.
Sean flopped on the couch. The floor fan failed to circulate the sullen air and sweat oozed from his body like he was a miraculous weeping statue. Sheet lightning crackled across the sky and the rumbling thunder echoed the tale of Sleepy Hollow, yet no rain fell from from above.
The telephone broke his trance and he grabbed the phone on the third ring.
"Tammi?"
"No, this is Kurt." A man's voice crackled over trans-Atlantic interference.
"Kurt?"
"Do you remember me?"
"From Paris."
The German telex entrepreneur lived in a house near the Eiffel Tower. Kurt showed up at bars and restaurants with beautiful women. Sean had done drugs with him twice.
"How's New York in the summer. Hell, no?"
"Pretty close to it. Only me, the poor, the depraved, and the dying."
"You speak a little German, yes."
"Ich hatte Deutsche im Hoche Schule gelernt.”
His classmates had ridiculed Sean’s reading of Kafka's DAS URTEIL, until the warty Bavarian teacher had snubbed out his Pall Mall and coughed, "Even with his stutter Herr Coll speaks German better than the rest of you hairdressers."
Most of his speech impediments had been cured by therapy and few people noticed the stammer.
"You are Irish, yes?" asked Kurt.
"American and Irish." Ireland granted second-generation descendants citizenship, which was also in the EEC. “Why?”
"Because you need papers to work in Hamburg at my new club BSirs.”
"Isn't that what Alex called his droogies in CLOCKWORK ORANGE."
"The bouncers dress just like them. Your friend, Bertram Bellepas, is the DJ. The city is beautiful. The women more so. You manage the club for two-hundred Deutschmarks a night, plus a one and a half percentage of the gross, which will come to about three-thousand marks a month. A ticket will be waiting at Lufthansa office in New York. I will meet you at the airport. What do know about Hamburg?”
“Only that the Beatles played at the Star Club and sex trade thrives on the Reeperbahn.” Sean swiftly calculated that six months of work would earn him roughly fifty thousand marks or $30,000. Still he had to say, "Ich musste zu denken." “Do you have a better offer?”
"No."
There was only one reason to stay here, but the odds of Tammi coming back the New York were nil and he said, "I'll tell you tomorrow."
"Not coming would be a big mistake.”
“It wouldn’t be my first one.”
“No, and it won’t be your last, but you should come. It’ll be fun. Call me later, but think yes.”
Kurt gave his number and the overseas line clicked dead.
Sean hung up the phone and imagined Bruder Karl hearing that his worst student might be working in Germany. His classmates could go to hell.
After a buttered bagel and coffee at Velseka’s Diner Sean shot hoops in Tompkins Square Park, losing more games than he won.
During the early evening he drank beer on his stoop. Workers walked home from a Nine-To-Fives. He should have been one of them. He had a college degree. His family lived normal lives in Boston. He had no answers to any questions about his deviation from conformity and climbed upstairs to change into jeans and a light t-shirt.
The sun was setting upon his return to street. Sean sat on his Triumph and drove up 1st Avenue to East 77th Street. He parked the bike on the corner and walked halfway down the block. Tammi's name remained on the mailbox. He pressed the buzzer. A glass bottle shattered against the brick wall.
"Bastard. Man. Bastard." A wizened woman in a shroud of garbage bags scrounged through the nearest trashcan for another missile. "I'm the only crazy on this block and you're not crazy. You're only in love with someone who doesn't love you. I've seen you and your whore. She was fucking that Russian and everyone else. All you bastards want is for us to be whores, then you throw us out on the street."
The old woman tore apart her plastic sheath. Her body was encrusted with layers of dirt.. Sean retreated to his motorcycle. The kickstart ignited the 650cc engine and a backfire of flames spurted from the exhaust pipes. Dogs barked inside the buildings and car alarms howled on the street. He revved the motor and raced to 2nd Avenue.
The old woman was right and only one thing could erase her words.
He burned the red light. A newspaper truck missed him by inches.
At 23rd Street he shifted into fifth.
Crossing 14th he spotted a blonde getting into a taxi.
She was the same height as Tammi.
Sean braked to a skidding halt.
A young businessman ran up and lifted her skirt. She laughed, while he forced her into a taxi.
The yellow Checker pulled away from the curb. Sean blasted through the red light.
A siren whooped behind him. The blonde turned and Tammi's mirage dissolved into another woman’s face.
Sean veered over to the curb and pulled off his helmet. Two car doors slammed and footsteps flapped against the pavement. A flashlight beam blinded his eyes and a voice ordered, "Get off the bike."
"What’s the problem?" Sean balanced his bike on the kickstand and lifted his hands.
"You see what I see, Kev?"
"I can't friggin' believe my eyes. Sean Coll in the flesh."
"I told you that was his bike, but you said, "Naw, Seano's in France. Guess you were wrong," the tobacco-harsh voice commented with the pleasure of being right.
The flashlight was shut off and Sean blinked away the shadows. The two NYPD officers grinned like drunken hunters discovering an animal snared in their trap. Kevin Driscoll was thinner than his partner, but still had forty pounds and a few inches on Sean. Neither cop was shy about tossing around their weight.
"Welcome back, Seano." deRocco took off his perforated summer-weight peaked cap and scratched his balding head.
"I'm leaving as soon as I can." Sean had been avoiding deRocco and Driscoll like a disease.
"You believe that, Kev?" deRocco was the brains of the pair.
"Nah, it's bullshit." Kevin Driscoll waved on the gawking drivers and deRocco stepped closer. The smell of whiskey on his breath was not a good sign in hot weather. "Drop yer fuckin' hands. This ain't no arrest. We just wanna talk with you."
"I haven't talked to no one about where you were the night Johnny Fats was killed."
“Frankie, you know this Johnny Fats?” Driscoll slapped the flashlight into his palm.
“Never heard of him.”
"Really? If I had ratted you out, would you be here now? Not a chance and a cop in prison isn't a pretty sight."
"You threatenin’ us?" Driscoll’s hand dropped to his .38.
"Not at all, just that I dis covered the precinct's bagman behind the club. A single bullet hole had perforated his forehead. Somehow a Grand Jury had ruled it 'death by misadventure'. In the ensuing IAU investigation fifteen cops from the Ninth Precinct had been fired without pensions and two imprisoned at Sing-Sing."
"So what?"
“Just I saw you leave with him and I saw him died.”
”We weren’t involved with Johnny Fat’s death." Driscoll protested, not knowing the bagman hadn’t said a single word before his death rattle and deRocco snapped, "Shut up, Kev."
“I buy you’re not killing Johnny, but someone set up the execution.”
“It wasn’t us.” deRocco's eyes blanked out with a cold-blooded gaze.
"Sgt. Ferguson thinks we three know more than we should.”
The IAU sergeant had plenty of theories, mostly of them were on the money.
"That cocksucker." deRocco venomously spat out the words.
Sean smirked, for the precinct cops spread about deRocco's sexual leaning.
"What you smilin' about?"
"Nothing." Cops had a hard job in New York City, however these two were past redemption. “Just I got a phone call today from Germany. They want me to work at a nightclub there. Maybe I should go?”
“And stay away for a while too.” deRocco lit a cigarette. "You're a lucky fuckin' Mick, Seano."
"You want to contribute to my bon-voyage fund?"
“Don’t push it, Seano. Just get the fuck out of town."
"Sure, I'll send you a postcard." The two officers returned to the cruiser and then crossed 14th Street into the Ninth Precinct. Sean had to face the truth that Tammi was gone for good.
"Hamburg," he muttered, tugging on his helmet.
He started his bike and obeyed all the lights to his apartment. By the time he reached East 10th Street, he was thanking deRocco and Driscoll for forcing him to accept Kurt's offer. Maybe the distance of a few thousand miles would help free his soul of Tammi.
Something had to someday.
He only wished it was today.
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