one’s paying you. It’s not your job anymore. You don’t have to do this.
But the image of Dorrie came back to me, her body resting silently in the still water, her eyes closed, and I could hear her voice, I could feel her arms on my shoulders, her tears on my cheeks. Two days ago she was alive, two days ago she was in the world, and today she wasn’t, and it was because some son of a bitch had decided he liked it better that way. I couldn’t let someone do that and get away with it. I couldn’t. That wasn’t what it meant to be a detective. That’s what it meant to be a human being.
There used to be a big Hungarian neighborhood on the Upper East Side, just below where the Germans settled in Yorktown. Before their divorce, my parents sometimes took me there to visit the pastry shops with their yeasty smells and their glass cases filled with logs of strudel and wedges of chocolate kuglof. It was a small neighborhood now, almost all traces of ethnicity erased, but you could still see the last tenacious remnants clinging to their place in New York history. The Rigo bakery was gone, and so was the Red Tulip, and Mocca, and Tibor Meats, and the hole-in-the-wall newsstand that sold foreign-language newspapers in Hungarian and Romanian and Czech. In their place were a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Pottery Barn, and a Greenpoint Savings Bank. But up north the Heidelberg was still serving wurst and sauerbraten to septuagenarians who whispered behind their hands with Teutonic pride about the Steuben Day Parades of their youth, back when being German really meant something, and in the once thoroughly Magyar blocks below you could still find one bakery bravely turning out dobos torte and kifli and one butcher shop window strung with long links of sausage the color of paprika.
There was also one Hungarian church left, and one dim Hungarian bar. In defiance of long-standing zoning rules they shared a street corner and as I exited the taxi I’d caught outside the Barking Boat I saw a heavy-featured older man leave one for the other. The church for the bar, naturally; he had some sinning to do before he’d feel the need for further repentance.
They might have known Ardo at the church—or for that matter at the bakery or the butcher shop—but it was the bar I went to. There was a small crowd, eight or nine men talking at full volume in a tongue whose every syllable sounded alien, one or two in the corners silently nursing tall glasses of beer. The walls had pottery jugs hanging from nails and the Hungarian tricolor—red, white and green—was draped over a cherrywood highboy. Walking in here you didn’t feel like you were on the upper east side of Manhattan. Except for the backward neon letters spelling “Miller Lite” in the window, you might have been in Budapest.
The heavy-featured man I’d seen on his way in turned out to be the bartender. He was hanging his windbreaker on a hook by the cash register when I took an open stool and signaled with a finger to get his attention. I passed my last two twenties across the bar.
His accent wasn’t Bela Lugosi thick, but it was close. “What you want?” he said. Vot you vont?
“An introduction,” I said. “I want to find a man named Ardo.”
His fingers closed slowly around the money. “There’s many men named Ardo,” he said. “It’s a common name.”
“Only one Ardo someone would pay for an introduction to,” I said.
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“What’s his last name?”
I’d assumed Ardo was his last name. “I don’t know. Some people call him Black Ardo.”
“Ardo Fekete,” he said. He pushed the bills back across the counter to me. “You don’t need no introduction to him.”
“Why not?”
“Young man, I think you should drink a beer and go,” he said. “What you like, Beck’s, Heineken, Miller? Or we got Dreher, you want something Hungarian.” He was trying to sound casual, but his tension was obvious and the accent
But the image of Dorrie came back to me, her body resting silently in the still water, her eyes closed, and I could hear her voice, I could feel her arms on my shoulders, her tears on my cheeks. Two days ago she was alive, two days ago she was in the world, and today she wasn’t, and it was because some son of a bitch had decided he liked it better that way. I couldn’t let someone do that and get away with it. I couldn’t. That wasn’t what it meant to be a detective. That’s what it meant to be a human being.
There used to be a big Hungarian neighborhood on the Upper East Side, just below where the Germans settled in Yorktown. Before their divorce, my parents sometimes took me there to visit the pastry shops with their yeasty smells and their glass cases filled with logs of strudel and wedges of chocolate kuglof. It was a small neighborhood now, almost all traces of ethnicity erased, but you could still see the last tenacious remnants clinging to their place in New York history. The Rigo bakery was gone, and so was the Red Tulip, and Mocca, and Tibor Meats, and the hole-in-the-wall newsstand that sold foreign-language newspapers in Hungarian and Romanian and Czech. In their place were a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Pottery Barn, and a Greenpoint Savings Bank. But up north the Heidelberg was still serving wurst and sauerbraten to septuagenarians who whispered behind their hands with Teutonic pride about the Steuben Day Parades of their youth, back when being German really meant something, and in the once thoroughly Magyar blocks below you could still find one bakery bravely turning out dobos torte and kifli and one butcher shop window strung with long links of sausage the color of paprika.
There was also one Hungarian church left, and one dim Hungarian bar. In defiance of long-standing zoning rules they shared a street corner and as I exited the taxi I’d caught outside the Barking Boat I saw a heavy-featured older man leave one for the other. The church for the bar, naturally; he had some sinning to do before he’d feel the need for further repentance.
They might have known Ardo at the church—or for that matter at the bakery or the butcher shop—but it was the bar I went to. There was a small crowd, eight or nine men talking at full volume in a tongue whose every syllable sounded alien, one or two in the corners silently nursing tall glasses of beer. The walls had pottery jugs hanging from nails and the Hungarian tricolor—red, white and green—was draped over a cherrywood highboy. Walking in here you didn’t feel like you were on the upper east side of Manhattan. Except for the backward neon letters spelling “Miller Lite” in the window, you might have been in Budapest.
The heavy-featured man I’d seen on his way in turned out to be the bartender. He was hanging his windbreaker on a hook by the cash register when I took an open stool and signaled with a finger to get his attention. I passed my last two twenties across the bar.
His accent wasn’t Bela Lugosi thick, but it was close. “What you want?” he said. Vot you vont?
“An introduction,” I said. “I want to find a man named Ardo.”
His fingers closed slowly around the money. “There’s many men named Ardo,” he said. “It’s a common name.”
“Only one Ardo someone would pay for an introduction to,” I said.
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure,” I said.
“What’s his last name?”
I’d assumed Ardo was his last name. “I don’t know. Some people call him Black Ardo.”
“Ardo Fekete,” he said. He pushed the bills back across the counter to me. “You don’t need no introduction to him.”
“Why not?”
“Young man, I think you should drink a beer and go,” he said. “What you like, Beck’s, Heineken, Miller? Or we got Dreher, you want something Hungarian.” He was trying to sound casual, but his tension was obvious and the accent
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