Small Town

Lawrence Block Small Town

THIS ONE’S FOR THE RABBIT

New York City, the incomparable, the brilliant star city of cities, the forty-ninth state, a law unto itself, the Cyclopean paradox, the inferno with no out-of-bounds, the supreme expression of both the miseries and the splendors of contemporary civilization, the Macedonis of the United States. It meets the most severe test that may be applied to definition of a metropolis — it stays up all night. But it also becomes a small town when it rains.

— John Gunther

The city exulted, all in flowers.

Soon it will end: a fashion, a phase, the epoch, life.

The mirror and sweetness of a final dissolution.

Let the first bombs fall without delay.

— Czeslaw Milosz, “The City”

author’s note

Once again, it’s my great pleasure to thank the Ragdale Foundation, of Lake Forest, Illinois, where this book was written.

Between the time my last book was published and this one completed, I lost three dear old friends, and list them now in the order of their passing: Dave Van Ronk, Jimmy Armstrong, and John B. Keane, to whom Hope to Die was dedicated. One of my early books was dedicated to Dave. I never got around to dedicating one to Jimmy. I miss them all.

Earlier, I lost my mother, who came to the end of a good long life two weeks and two days after the twin towers fell. Like my wife and daughters, she read each of my books in manuscript. Thus she had a chance to read Hope to Die, although she died before it was published. This book, then, is the first she won’t get to read.

before...

On September 11, 2001, sunrise came at 6:33 A.M. The forecast called for clear skies and a beautiful day.

At 8:45 A.M., American Airlines Flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles, struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

At 9:05 A.M., United Airlines Flight 175, also bound from Boston to Los Angeles, struck the South Tower.

At 9:50 A.M., forty-five minutes after it had been hit, the South Tower fell.

At 10:30 A.M., an hour and forty-five minutes after it had been hit, the North Tower fell.

At 10:29 A.M., on May 30, 2002, cleanup efforts at Ground Zero were completed.

There was widespread agreement throughout the city that nothing would ever be the same again.

one

By the time Jerry Pankow was ready for breakfast, he’d already been to three bars and a whorehouse.

It was, he’d discovered, a great opening line. “By the time I had my eggs and hash browns this morning...” Wherever he delivered it, in backroom bars or church basements, it got attention. Made him sound interesting, and wasn’t that one of the reasons he’d come to New York? To lead an interesting life, certainly, and to make himself interesting to others.

And, one had to admit, to plumb the depths of depravity, which resonated well enough with the notion of three bars and a whorehouse before breakfast.

Today he was having his breakfast in Joe Jr.’s, a Greek coffee shop at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Twelfth Street. He wasn’t exactly a regular here. The whorehouse was on Twenty-eighth, two doors east of Lexington, right around the corner from the Indian delis and restaurants that had people calling the area Curry Hill. Samosa and aloo gobi wasn’t his idea of breakfast, and anyway those places wouldn’t open until lunchtime, but he liked the Sunflower coffee shop on Third Avenue, and stopped there more often than not after he finished up at the whorehouse.