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“Two hundred million.”
“Phew. That’s a relief. I thought you said two hundredbillion.”
“Looks like your sense of humor isn’t on paid leave. What’re you doing?”
A pause as dense as Emery’s. “I’m not prepared to answer that at this point in time.”
No idea what that sentence meant, nor was Rhyme inclined to find out.
“I have a question. What size shoe do you wear?”
“Is this like a dog whistle?”
“A what?”
“A question that’s really about something else.”
“When I ask a question, Pulaski, it’s about the question. What size?”
57.
THERE SHE GOES,another part of history.
He was eighty-eight years old, Simon Harrow was. His head bald, his spine curved. But on the whole, pain free—just those humid days of summer and spring … The remedy to the condition? Don’t leave the house on humid days of summer and spring.
Just sit on his balcony and gaze out over downtown Manhattan.
There she goes, being destroyed by the developers.
He was looking at a patchwork of construction near the Holland Tunnel, that artery that led from the city, under the broad and regal Hudson River into New Jersey’s industrial heart.
His own turf was for the time being safe from the wrecking ball. The ancient apartment in SoHo was rent-controlled, much to the dismay of the landlord, who sent the superintendent of the red-brick complex around occasionally to “see how he was doing,” meaning to find out if Harrow had conveniently died, allowing the man to elevate the rent to the stars.
Harrow, however, was determined to remain alive for hischildren, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his parrot, Rimbaud … and the landlord himself.
Love was the motive for the first categories. Spite for the last one.
His coffee, cooling, theNew York Timessitting folded upon his lap, he scanned the construction site. Demolition was done and a new series of buildings was beginning to emerge, though the job was on hold temporarily, thanks to some crazy man attacking job-sites.
His opinion about the end of yet another neighborhood in Manhattan—in this case the southwestern edge of SoHo—was by no means negative. Some had called New York City a living, breathing creature, but Harrow didn’t think of the place in such a limited way. He considered the five boroughs an evolutionary tree, many species appearing and adapting to the times, or, if not, vanishing.
Natural selection urban-style.
This was one neighborhood that had been transformed significantly. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, South of Houston had grown from sooty industrial to professional and chic and artsy.
Change …
One of the most significant had been what he was looking at now: the Holland Tunnel, which had required a massive redevelopment of the neighborhood to make way for the ventilation towers and approach routes.
His eyes rose to the entrance. His father had been a boy when the tunnel opened in the late 1920s, and Harrow Senior had grown fascinated with the project the way other boys then loved dirigibles and cowboys and the Dodgers. The man regaled his son with stories about the tunnel’s creation. Shields, like massive tin cans, dug through the earth beneath the river from both sides of the adjoining states. Those moving from New Jersey east were faster,as they had to push through ground that was mostly mud, the consistency of toothpaste. The sandhogs—tunnel workers—from the New York side had to contend with rock. Because of concerns about water and mud seeping into the tunnels during construction, the working areas were kept under high pressure and the sandhogs had to go through decompression after their shifts like scuba divers so they didn’t suffer from the bends.
While Harrow was not troubled about the concept of a city molting its old skin, he wasn’t pleased that one of the buildings going up nearby would cut off his view of the Palisades.
On the other hand, it might be residential, and the thought of what he might catch a glimpse of around a swimming pool made up for the altered vista of nature.
“Let’s hope for residential,” he said, sipping more cool coffee.
Rimbaud, sitting on a nearby perch, did not weigh in, occupied, as he was, with feather preening.
