Shoot the Moon

Chapter Three - My Night In The Barrel

It wasn't until Moustafa Moustafa (driving the cab) and I went careening from Columbus Circle onto Central Park West, that I remembered that Mickey Dolan had failed to show.

I didn't worry about it. It wasn't the first time he'd gone missing. He'd turn up in a month or two. Or he wouldn't.

*****

Even the Architectural Digest Co-op of the Year can be depressing when you're all alone. Maybe especially, since Co-op of the Year has so many rooms, such minimalist decor and such wide-open spaces that one man can kick around and feel mighty sorry for himself. Luckily the dogs were there and needed to be walked and talked. And it was late enough that I could expect to do it unseen.

I took the Daltons out to CPW and walked up and down with them until they had peed on every lamppost as high up as they could reach. I didn't see a person on the streets. It was 2:30 am.

There's a side entrance to our building accommodating a couple of doctor's offices and I sometimes take it. I have the key and it's the kind of little shortcut that gives New Yorkers the illusion that they are winning the race. The side door echoes the brass and marble grandeur of the main entrances, of which there are two. The large brass base plate of the door is embossed with a sheaf of the same vegetable that is the motif throughout 77 Central Park West. This plant appears everywhere in the building, bundled six feet high on the polished elevator doors, and soaring in carved granite up the sides of the building itself. I once asked the name of this imposing weed:

"Ramon, what's that plant?"

"Oh, that. That's Papyrus. You know like from Egypt?"

The elevator man overnight is a nice old Mexican guy with bad ankles called Juan. He was nodding in a chair, his uniform unbuttoned and his cap tipped over his eyes. He snapped awake when he heard me and the Daltons coming. We don't really speak because Juan's English is unintelligible and my Spanish is worse. (Echo seems to have no trouble.) We nod very expressively though. Juan loves the dogs. He pets them and speaks in Spanish and they seem to understand perfectly.

I gave the dogs their nightcap and turned on the shower. I put Brubeck's Take Five in vinyl on the stereo.

I was getting undressed when somebody rapped on the door. I asked who it was and got an answer in Spanish. I assumed it was Juan with a package. Echo is always having things delivered to the co-op (she is a prodigious shopper and catalog junkie) and sometimes deliveries pile up in the parcel room until the staff can catch one of us.

Calling out that I was on the way, I pulled on a pair of sweat pants, flipped the dead bolt -

And got the door in the face, exactly on the cheekbone and the arch over my eye. Right behind it, came two men. I was knocked back, hit the wall and squatted down awkwardly on the floor. Blood was pouring in a hot stream from a cut on my eyebrow and blinding one eye.

The two guys were Hispanic. The first one was about a hundred and fifty pounds, mustache, wearing jeans and a black leather jacket. He had an Indio face and a flattened nose. He looked like Roberto Duran, the boxer.

The second I didn't see so well because the first guy was filling my good eyeball just then. He was pulling back his leg for a kick. I was now collapsed in front of a large bookshelf filled with books and other collectible knickknacks that Echo has taken a fancy to. I reached out and lay my hand on a bronze bust of Franz Shubert. I picked it up and put it in front of my face as a shield. This was good and bad. It was good because Roberto Duran Jr. caught a famous classical musician in the shin. It was bad because I lost my grip and Franz flipped over and hit me on the same spot the door had.