32
A small newsstand stood on the corner of Madison and Fifty-fifth. No business. A thin Guatemalan shivered inside the booth and rubbed his hands together in their mittens. A small battery-powered TV sat atop a stack of unsold tabloids. John Walsh walked angrily toward the camera. “Tonight on America’s Most Wanted, we’re on the lookout for a merciless serial killer who has been terrorizing south Florida and leaving a trail of bodies from Tampa to the Keys…”
The clerk turned up the volume on his little black-and-white set as a stretch limo rolled by on Madison Avenue. Sam sat in the backseat, turning up the volume on the little color TV flush-mounted in the wet bar.
“…We’re going to get a rare glimpse inside the twisted mind of a psychopath with some astonishing footage that will be shown for the first time anywhere right here on America’s Most Wanted!…”
Sam listlessly resumed watching TV with her chin in her hands. Her friends were acting like such fools. Look at them, standing up through the moon roof, whooping, hollering and dancing with that Serge guy, their hair blowing in the cool night wind below the skyscrapers.
“Hey, Sam,” Paige shouted down through the opening in the roof. “Why don’t you join us?”
“I’ll take a rain check.”
“…In the next few moments, you will hear the actual voice and see real footage of the suspect from a chilling videotape seized by police in Miami. Pregnant women and those with heart trouble are asked to leave the room…”
“Come on, Sam!” “Yeah, come on, Sam!” “Don’t be a party pooper, Sam!”
“Oh, all right!”
Sam stood up and stuck her head through the moon roof as the image on the TV set switched to a thin, fortyish man sitting on a stool in front of a sky-blue portrait-studio backdrop. There was a banner over his head: SOUTH BEACH DATING SOLUTIONS.
An off-camera voice: “Ready anytime you are.”
The man cleared his throat. “Hi. My name is Serge. Serge… uh… Yamamoto. And I’m looking for that special gal out there who enjoys quiet evenings, walks on the beach, fine wine, good conversation, fact-finding missions and exhaustive library research…. You must be fun-loving, have a sense of humor, an open mind, incredible stamina and experience at rapidly loading cameras and firearms under hectic conditions…. Smokers okay, no hard drugs….
“I’m thirty-five, keep myself in reasonable shape. A spiritual army of one. No hangups that I’m comfortable talking about. Hobbies: genealogy, first editions, conch-blowing, my prize poinsettias, celestial navigation for the car, warning the populace about the impending social collapse. Scotch: Dewar’s.
“Turn-ons: women who use big words, women who wear glasses, women who work in libraries and state forests, women who perform in theme park marine mammal shows, bedroom role-playing involving the first territorial congress.
“Turn-offs: women who react to big words like somebody cut the cheese, women who change the color of their hair, women who change the size of their breasts, women who want to change you, women who know the names of MTV personalities, women who go to bars in groups complaining about men while hoping to be approached by them.
“Turn-ons: growth-management plans, no-wake zones, the annual return of the white pelican, the tangy scent of the orange blossom, Spanish doubloons, Saltillo tiles, Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
“Turn-offs: the unexamined life, deep-well injection, people who call radio shows and say ‘Mega dittos,’ politicians who pretend to like NASCAR for votes, stupid Floridian jokes, stupid Floridians…”
Off-camera voice: “Okay, that’s enough.”
“I’m not finished.”
“That was great. You’ll do fine.”
“But I have more to say. I have to present the whole picture.”
“Please get up. We have to start filming the next guy.”
“No!”
Two men appeared from behind the camera and approached. “Okay, buddy, on your feet.”
Serge pulled a pistol from his waist and coldcocked one over the head, dropping him to the ground in front of the stool. He pointed the pistol at the other one, who raised his hands.
“Get back there and keep filming until I say to stop.”
“You got it.”
Serge tucked the gun away and sat back down, an unconscious man at his feet. “…So if you’re searching for that special someone, if you’re tired of the bar scene, generously misleading personal ads and blind dates that turn into restraining orders, look no further….”
The limo beat a red light at Thirty-eighth Street, a tight cluster of people sprouting through the moon roof. “And there’s the Chrysler Building,” said Serge. “The spire contains the penthouse where Walter Chrysler once lived, lucky bastard, except he’s dead….”
Maria chugged a plastic glass of champagne and swayed. “Isn’t he the best tour guide ever?”
Teresa blew a paper noisemaker, which unrolled and hit Sam in the side of the head.
After a quick series of stops on Serge’s A-Tour of New York, the limo pulled up outside the GE Building. Serge jumped from the backseat. “To the Rainbow Room!”
They took the elevator to the exclusive bar on the sixty-fifth floor, facing the Empire State Building. “I saw them film Conan in this building. O’Brien, not the barbarian. And once I sat next to Katie Couric at the table right there. Scorcese opened his 1977 opus New York, New York in this room with Tommy Dorsey on the bandstand…. Let’s go!” Serge heading for the elevators.
“We just got here,” said Teresa.
“We just ordered,” said Maria, holding up a full beer.
But Serge was off to the races. The women chugged a few sips and ran after him.
“…And this is Sparks Steak House. Paul Castellano got whacked right there…. Back to the limo!”
They stopped at the corner of Broadway and Fifty-fourth; Serge ran down some stairs to a basement.
“And this is Flute, used to be a speakeasy. The acerbic writer Dorothy Parker came here all the time. Now that was a broad! Used to answer her phone: ‘What fresh hell is this?’”
“I was just about to say that,” said Sam. Teresa elbowed her.
“Back to the limo!”
“Slow down!” yelled Teresa. “Do you always move this fast?”
“No. When I’m alone, I move faster,” said Serge. “Like when I came to see Conan last year. I arrived four hours early and still almost missed it. As usual, I built in a vast cushion of time because I always have a lot of anxiety that I’ll be late. I didn’t plan on the museums.”
“The museums?”
“East side of Central Park, Museum Mile. You got the Met, the Frick Collection, National Academy of Design, the Museum of the City of New York, the Whitney, Cooper-Hewitt. I knew they were nearby. I just thought I had the willpower.”
“But you just couldn’t resist?” said Sam.
Serge nodded. “Which still wouldn’t have been a time problem until I remembered the Museum of Natural History was on the other side of Central Park. That’s where they have the Star of India, the world’s largest sapphire, stolen in 1964 by flamboyant Miami Beach playboy Jack Murphy, portrayed by Robert Conrad in the delightfully campy Murph the Surf. After the arrests and a lot of negotiation, an anonymous phone tip led detectives to an outdoor bus locker in Miami, where the sapphire was recovered and later put back on display. The caper is so carved into my brain that I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see the gem in person. I made good time crossing Central Park to the museum, but then more trouble. To get to the gem room, you have to go through the Hall of Biodiversity. I really got hung up in there. Thousands of species on display, bacteria to great blue whales, phylums and families, marsupials, nocturnals, a rainbow of butterflies, blind fish from cold depths with no light, eels with scraggly teeth, bugs the size of your head, birds that can’t fly, squirrels that can, some shit with webbed toes and all these eyes, something else with dangling prongs sticking out its forehead. Then the other rooms, ancient civilizations, Neanderthals, dinosaurs, geological forces, continental plates, the stars and the cosmos, and finally, the Big Bang Room. My time-management was shot; started looking bad for Conan. Then, complete panic. My consciousness was expanding, id shrinking, the exhibits making me feel utterly insignificant, that life was a mere flashbulb going off, and I had a sensation of falling, trouble breathing, and I realized what it was. All this knowledge and awareness — I was getting closer to God. Which can be stressful. Takes a lot of intellectual curiosity and courage, and also you’ll get a bunch of heat from religious types because it involves evolution and science, which actually only points all the more to the existence of a deity, unfortunately not the kind you can use to boss others around….”