And then things got much, much worse.
In the middle of August, the trash collectors went on strike. Great
mounds of black garbage bags piled up, giving out a sweet, fermented stink.
Rats tore into the bags, and they spilled their obscene guts all over the
sidewalk. The city felt apocalyptic — but somehow it suited my mood.
Maybe I should take my camera and photograph the trash. I could call
the series Civilization and Its Discontents, and the art magazines would
love it and call it a Freudian critique of consumer capitalism.
I had plenty of time for photography because I no longer had a job at
Tiger Corp. I no longer wore my bespoke suits but had reverted to cargo
shorts, ratty T - shirts, and sneakers. In the end, though, photography proved
too demanding. To ke ep sane, I walked: I strode the length of Manhattan,
ten, fifteen miles at a time, trying to deaden my brain. With Farhan away, I
had been able to forget about George — but with her return, I couldn’t help
thinking about his corpse, buried de ep under the ground in Long Island. An
old refrain from childhood started looping obsessively through my head:
John Brown’s body lies a - moldering in the grave, a - moldering in the
grave ...
The corpse in the tune was George, of course — but it was also me.
You see, as soon as Kyle took over as CEO of Tiger Corp, he fired me
and appointed a new suite of executives.
Clearly, Kyle had hired an excellent PR firm, because the business
community quickly acc epted his leadership. The Wall Street Journal ran a
piece talking about how Kyle’s mother, Anna Nowak, had been the
bookke eper during Tiger Corp’s early days and how Kyle had literally
grown up within the company, “imbibing its unique culture.” The Financial
Times named Kyle Nowak the brainchild behind the EB - 5 money - raising
mechanism, which had “re volutionized real estate finance.”
Maryam raged against this coup. She hired lawyers and went de ep into
archaic case law, but the result was always the same: The vote had been
legal, and it was binding. As for me, I walked. Seven, eight hours a day,
thinking furiously, trying to arrive at a solution to my intractable problems.
I felt that I was overlooking something, a vital piece of information that
might help me — but every time I came close, it eluded me, slipped into the
darkness. It was an odd, indigestive feeling.
One scorching afternoon I was walking past Union Square when my
phone buzzed — my mother, calling from Mumbai. Normally I would have
answered, but that day I felt unable to ke ep up a bright, cheerful tone. For
the last year, I’d fobbed off my parents from visiting us, using Farhan’s
disappearance as an excuse — but now that was no longer valid. Ma was
pressing hard. Every day she sent me information on flights from Mumbai
to New York — should they book tickets first class or business? — but there
was no way I could have them staying with us. I’d have died of shame if my
family found out about me being fired from Tiger Corp.
I’d call Ma back later when I had the strength.
Exhausted from the heat, I sank down onto a shady bench in Union
Square. It was a weekday, and the only other people were an old Black man
feeding the pigeons, a white lady in a crooked blonde wig mumbling to
herself, and a homeless man washing his armpits at the water fountain. How
far I had fallen! A few weeks ago, I was the heir apparent to Tiger Corp, but
now I sat, redundant, among the human detritus of the city.
John Brown’s body lies a - moldering in the grave, a - moldering in the
grave, but his soul — I pushed away the odd refrain, willing it to stop. I was
driving myself crazy.
To distract myself, I studied the old Black man sitting across from me.
He was tearing apart a bagel and throwing the pieces to the pigeons, and
there was something familiar about him — dark skin, straw fedora, tan
guayabera shirt, cream slacks, and leather sandals — and for a moment, hope
flared in my chest, but then I looked harder — and of course it was not
Orlando Epps, but some other pensioner.
Epps. He was the loose end.
For the last year, I had assumed that the old man was dead, killed by
George — chopped up and buried somewhere — but what if Epps had sensed
that he was being followed, packed up his stuff, and moved to another
small, cheap apartment? He could be alive, sitting on a park bench
somewhere, feeding pigeons. And Epps had told Farhan — right before he
disappeared — that he had found out something about the Khan family.
“Dynamite,” he’d said to Farhan. “It changes everything.” What had the old
man discovered — and would this knowledge be of any use to me?
An absurd plan began to form in my mind. Epps was a creature of habit,
and he loved funky old diners. What if I were to visit all the old - school
diners in Manhattan — starting downtown — and show the waitstaff a
photograph of Epps? But then a quick search on my phone revealed that
there were roughly five hundred left in the city: Empire, Tops, the Golden,
Soho, Tick Tock, Bel Aire, Ellen’s Stardust, Kellogg’s, La Bonbonniere, the
Westway ...
No, this was a crazy idea. My hopelessness returned, and I slumped back
onto the bench.
But there was one simple thing I could do: pay a visit to the New Yorker
Diner, and maybe — just maybe — I’d find Epps back in his booth by the
window, eating a blueberry muffin. It was worth a shot.
I hurried to a nearby subway entrance, and the tune started up again in
my head — John Brown’s body lies a - moldering in the grave, a - moldering in
the grave ...
The lights were on at the New Yorker Diner, but a large printed sign was
posted on the door: DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY, PRIME LOCATION — and next
to it was a handwritten cardboard message: GOING OUT OF BUSINESS AFTER
SEVENTY YEARS. THANK YOU, NEW YORK.
The first sign was so full of enthusiasm — Build here! Make your
fortune! — while the second one was stoic, full of r epressed pain. I’d seen
similar handwritten farewells all over the city — mom - and - pop
establishments going under after years of rising rents — and I felt a surge of
anger. What would r eplace the diner? Another faceless bank? Another yoga
studio?
Inside, the place was exactly the same: eggs and hash browns sizzling on
the griddle, air thick with the aroma of burnt coffee. Old people sat at the
counter, leisurely reading newspapers, ghosts in their own city. I felt a wash
of sadness, but I knew that I didn’t really care about the diner — I was
feeling sorry for myself.
Epps’s booth by the window was empty. I settled into it, feeling the
cracked vinyl under my thighs. The old man had sat in this very spot for
years, eating his blueberry muffins, making his calls, writing everything
down in his notebooks — and all those notebooks had been taken from his
apartment, most certainly destroyed.
“What can I getcha?”
The waitress was young for the establishment — probably in her
midfifties — with a soft, pretty face and smeared eye makeup. A brass name
tag on her chest said EUNICE.
I ordered a coffee, black, and a blueberry muffin, in Epps’s honor, and
asked if Eunice had seen an elderly Black man in a fedora.
“Nope. I just started. Three months. And now they’re closing. My bad
luck, huh?”
There was laughter at a neighboring table, and Eunice gestured at a table
of bearded young men in beanies, accompanied by women in crop tops and
dad jeans. “Goddamn hipsters. Vultures. Ever since they heard we’re
closing, they’re flocking here.” She snorted and turned back to me. “Sorry,
hon. Anything else?”
I asked her if any of the long - term waitresses were around, and Eunice
said that her mom had arrived, but her shift hadn’t started, and she was out
back, having a smoke. She gestured to a back door. “But I wouldn’t disturb
her. She’s in a bad mood. Permanently.”
As soon as Eunice turned away, I slipped through the back door. It led
out onto a small triangle of space, cut off from the sidewalk by a high
cinder block wall. A few overturned milk crates served as seats, and the
ground was littered with cigarette butts. Eunice’s mother — the same soft
features, topped by a steel - gray bun — was leaning against the wall and
smoking. She glared at me and waved angrily with her cigarette. “No
customers allowed here.”
“Eunice sent me,” I said quickly. “Sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking
for a regular, an old Black guy, Orlando Epps. A former police detective?”
“Not my section. Barb’s section. She was pals with Epps, let him run up
a tab.” She snorted. “And he disappeared without paying it. Barb got into
trouble for that. I think she was in love with him. Said he used to be
handsome back in the day.”
“Oh. Is Barb around? Can I talk to her?”
“Passed away in her sle ep last Christmas. A blessing.” The waitress
nodded vigorously, as if this was a satisfactory conclusion to a long story.
I thanked her and turned away, crushed. I could not fight my fate any
longer.
I was almost at the door when the waitress called out to me, “You here
for the package?”
Package? I turned back. “Yes,” I said uncertainly. “Sure.”
She ground the cigarette under her heel. “You cut it close. We go out of
business next week.”
I followed her back into the diner, and she k ept talking. “A big padded
envelope, that’s what he gave Barb about a year ago, maybe more. Epps
was having his apartment painted, didn’t want to lose these papers — but
why he gave them to Barb, I don’t know. That woman — God rest her soul —
was scatterbrained.”
The waitress led me into a storeroom and turned on a naked overhead
bulb. Wire shelving lined the walls, crowded with cardboard cartons filled
to the brim with junk.
“Lost and found.” The waitress waved at the boxes. “The package is
somewhere in there. Barb says she wrote his name on it ... Okay, I gotta get
to work. Feel free to take anything — we’re going to throw it all out.”
The waitress left, and I pulled a carton off the shelf. It was overflowing
with cheap umbrellas, worn baseball caps, outdated phone chargers, balled
scarves, wraparound sunglasses — all covered with a thick layer of dust that
made me sneeze.
A second carton contained blinding white dentures, a notebook filled
with crudely drawn naked women, a daily planner from 1973, and an
infant’s lacy christening jacket. I searched on, growing frantic. Clearly,
Epps had felt threatened and decided to stash his valuables somewhere safe.
Thank God he was an analog guy, a paper guy. Please let his notebooks be
in there.
An hour passed. I carefully went through ten, twelve boxes, but there
was no sign of a padded envelope. My T - shirt, my shorts, and my face were
smeared with dust, and I couldn’t stop sneezing.
I k ept on looking — and then I was down to the last two cartons.