Chase, Manhattan
Tuesday night, at Bouley, in No Man’s Land, a fairly unremarkable marathon dinner, even after I tell the table, “Listen, guys, my life is a living hell,” they utterly ignore me, the group assembled (Richard Perry, Edward Lampert, John Constable, Craig McDermott, Jim Kramer, Lucas Tanner) continuing to argue about allocating assets, which stocks look best for the upcoming decade, hardbodies, real estate, gold, why long-term bonds are too risky now, the spread collar, portfolios, how to use power effectively, new ways to exercise, Stolichnaya Cristall, how best to impress very important people, eternal vigilance, life at its best, here in Bouley I cannot seem to control myself, here in a room that contains a whole host of victims, lately I can’t help noticing them everywhere—in business meetings, nightclubs, restaurants, in passing taxis and in elevators, on line at automated tellers and on porno tapes, in David’s Cookies and on CNN, everywhere, all of them having one thing in common: they are prey, and during dinner I almost become unglued, plummeting into a state of near vertigo that forces me to excuse myself before dessert, at which point I use the rest room, do a line of cocaine, pick up my Giorgio Armani wool overcoat and the .357 magnum barely concealed within it from the coatcheck, strap on a holster and then I’m outside, but on The Patty Winters Show this morning there was an interview with a man who set his daughter on fire while she was giving birth, at dinner we all had shark …
… in Tribeca it’s misty out, sky on the verge of rain, the restaurants down here empty, after midnight the streets remote, unreal, the only sign of human life someone playing a saxophone on the corner of Duane Street, in the doorway of what used to be DuPlex, which is now an abandoned bistro that closed last month, a young guy, bearded, white beret, playing a very beautiful but clichéd saxophone solo, at his feet an open umbrella with a dollar, damp, and some change in it, unable to resist I move up to him, listening to the music, something from Les Misérables, he acknowledges my presence, nods, and while he closes his eyes—lifting the instrument up, leaning his head back during what I guess he thinks is a passionate moment—in one fluid motion I take the .357 magnum out of its holster and, not wanting to arouse anyone in the vicinity, I screw a silencer onto the gun, a cold autumn wind rushes up the street, engulfing us, and when the victim opens his eyes, spotting the gun, he stops playing, the tip of the saxophone still in his mouth, I pause too, then nod for him to go on, and, tentatively, he does, then I raise the gun to his face and in midnote pull the trigger, but the silencer doesn’t work and in the same instant a huge crimson ring appears behind his head the booming sound of the gunshot deafens me, stunned, his eyes still alive, he, falls to his knees, then onto his saxophone, I pop the clip and replace it with a full one, then something bad happens …
… because while doing this I’ve failed to notice the squad car that was traveling behind me—doing what? god only knows, handing out parking tickets?—and after the noise the magnum makes echoes, fades, the siren of the squad car pierces the night, out of nowhere, sending my heart into palpitations, I start walking away from the trembling body, slowly, casually at first, as if innocent, then I break into a run, full-fledged, the cop car screeching after me, over a loudspeaker a cop shouts uselessly, “halt stop halt put down your weapon,” ignoring them I make a left on Broadway, heading down toward City Hall Park, ducking into an alleyway, the squad car follows but only makes it halfway as the alley narrows, a spray of blue sparks flying up before it gets stuck and I run out the end of the alley as fast as I can onto Church Street, where I flag down a cab, hop in the front seat and scream at its driver, a young Iranian guy completely taken by surprise, to “get the hell out of here fast—no drive,” I’m waving the gun at him, in his face, but he panics, cries out in mangled English “don’t shoot me please don’t kill me,” holding his hands up, I mutter “oh shit” and scream “drive” but he’s terrified, “oh don’t shoot me man don’t shoot,” I impatiently mutter “f*ck yourself” and, raising the gun to his face, pull the trigger, the bullet splatters his head open, cracks it in half like a dark red watermelon against the windshield, and I reach over him, open the door, push the corpse out, slam the door, start driving …
… in an adrenaline rush causing panting, I can only get a few blocks, partly because of panic, mostly because of the blood, brains, chunks of head covering the windshield, and I barely avoid a collision with another cab on Franklin—is it?—and Greenwich, veering the taxi sharply to the right, swerving into the side of a parked limousine, then I shift into reverse, screech down the street, turn on the windshield wipers, realizing too late that the blood sprayed across the glass is on the inside, attempt to wipe it away with a gloved hand, and racing blindly down Greenwich I lose control entirely, the cab swerves into a Korean deli, next to a karaoke restaurant called Lotus Blossom I’ve been to with Japanese clients, the cab rolling over fruit stands, smashing through a wall of glass, the body of a cashier thudding across the hood, Patrick tries to put the cab in reverse but nothing happens, he staggers out of the cab, leaning against it, a nerve-racking silence follows, “nice going, Bateman,” he mutters, limping out of the store, the body on the hood moaning in agony, Patrick with no idea where the cop running toward him across the street has come from, he’s yelling something into his walkie-talkie, thinking Patrick is stunned, but Patrick surprises him by lunging out before the cop can get to his gun and he knocks him over onto the sidewalk …
… where people from the Lotus Blossom are now standing, staring dumbly at the wreckage, no one helping the cop as the two men lie struggling on the sidewalk, the cop wheezing from exertion on top of Patrick, trying to wrestle the magnum from his grasp, but Patrick feels infected, like gasoline is coursing through his veins instead of blood, it gets windier, the temperature drops, it starts raining, but softly they roll into the street, Patrick keeps thinking there should be music, he forces a demonic leer, his heart thumping, and manages quite easily to bring the gun up to the cop’s face, two pairs of hands holding it but Patrick’s finger pulls the trigger, the bullet blowing a crease in the top of the officer’s skull yet failing to kill him, but lowering his aim with the aid of the loosening grip of the officer’s fingers Patrick shoots him in the face, the bullet’s exit casting a lingering pinkish mist while some of the people on the sidewalk scream, do nothing, hide, run back into the restaurant, as the cop car Patrick thought he evaded in the alley careens toward the deli, red lights flashing, screeching to a halt right when Patrick trips over the curb, collapsing onto the sidewalk, at the same time reloading the magnum, hiding behind the corner, the terror he thought had passed engulfing him again, thinking: I have no idea what I’ve done to increase my chances of getting caught, I shot a saxophonist? a saxophonist? who was probably a mime too? for that I get this? and in the near distance he can hear other cars coming, lost in the maze of streets, the cops now, right here, don’t bother with warnings anymore, they just start shooting and he returns their gunfire from his belly, getting a glimpse of both cops behind the open doors of the squad car, guns flashing like in a movie and this makes Patrick realize he’s involved in an actual gunfight of sorts, that he’s trying to dodge bullets, that the dream threatens to break, is gone, that he’s not aiming carefully, just obliviously returning gunfire, lying there, when a stray bullet, sixth in a new round, hits the gas tank of the police car, the headlights dim before it bursts apart, sending a fireball billowing up into the darkness, the bulb of a streetlamp above it exploding unexpectedly in a burst of yellow-green sparks, flames washing over the bodies of the policemen both living and dead, shattering all the windows of Lotus Blossom, Patrick’s ears ringing …
… while running toward Wall Street, still in Tribeca, he stays away from where the streetlamps shine the brightest, notices that the entire block he’s lurching down is gentrified, then he dashes past a row of Porsches, tries to open each one and sets a string of car alarm sirens off, the car he would like to steal is a black Range Rover with permanent four-wheel drive, an aircraft-grade aluminum body on a boxed steel chassis and a fuel-injected V-8 engine, but he can’t find one, and though this disappoints him he’s also intoxicated by the whirlwind of confusion, by the city itself, the rain falling from an ice-cold sky but still warm enough in the city, on the ground, for fog to drift through the passageways the skyscrapers create in Battery Park, in Wall Street, wherever, most of them a kaleidoscopic blur, and now he’s jumping over an embankment, somersaulting over it, then he’s running like crazy, running full tilt, his brain locked into the physical exertion of utter, sheer panic, helter-skelter, now he thinks a car is following him down a deserted highway, now he feels the night accepts him, from somewhere else a shot is heard but doesn’t really register because Patrick’s mind is out of sync, forgetting his destination, until like a mirage his office building, where Pierce & Pierce is located, comes into view, the lights in it going off, floor by floor, as if a darkness is rising through it, running another hundred yards, two hundred yards, ducking into the stairs, below, where? his senses blocked for the first time with fear and bewilderment, and dumbstruck with confusion he rushes into the lobby of what he thinks is his building, but no, something seems wrong, what is it? you moved (the move itself was a nightmare even though Patrick has a better office now, the new Barney’s and Godiva stores adjacent to the lobby ease the strain) and he’s gotten the buildings mixed up, it’s only at the elevator …
… doors, both of which are locked, where he notices the huge Julian Schnabel in the lobby and he realizes wrong f*cking building and he whirls around, making a mad scramble for the revolving doors, but the night watchman who tried to get Patrick’s attention before now waves him in, as he’s about to bolt out of the lobby, “Burning the midnight oil, Mr. Smith? You forgot to sign in,” and frustrated, Patrick shoots at him while spinning once, twice through the glass doors which thrust him back into the lobby of god only knows where as the bullet catches the watchman in the throat, knocking him backward, leaving a spray of blood hanging momentarily in midair before drizzling down on the watchman’s contorted, twisted face, and the black janitor Patrick has just noticed has been watching the scene from a corner of the lobby, mop in hand, bucket by his feet, drops the mop, raises his hands, and Patrick shoots him right between the eyes, a stream of blood covers his face, the back of his head explodes in a spray, behind him the bullet knocks out a chunk of marble, the force of the blast slams him against the wall, Patrick dashing across the street toward the light of his new office, when he walks in …
… nodding toward Gus, our night watchman, signing in, heading up in the elevator, higher, toward the darkness of his floor, calm is eventually restored, safe in the anonymity of my new office, able with shaking hands to pick up the cordless phone, looking through my Rolodex, exhausted, eyes falling upon Harold Carnes’ number, dialing the seven digits slowly, breathing deeply, evenly, I decide to make public what has been, until now, my private dementia, but Harold isn’t in, business, London, I leave a message, admitting everything, leaving nothing out, thirty, forty, a hundred murders, and while I’m on the phone with Harold’s machine a helicopter with a searchlight appears, flying low over the river, lightning cracks the sky open in jagged bolts behind it, heading toward the building I was last at, descending to land on the building’s roof across from this one, the bottom of the building surrounded already by police cars, two ambulances, and a SWAT team leaps out of the helicopter, a half-dozen armed men disappear into the entrance on the deck of the roof, flares are lined up what seems like everywhere, and I’m watching all of this with the phone in my hand, crouched by my desk, sobbing though I don’t know why, into Harold’s machine, “I left her in a parking lot … near a Dunkin’ Donuts … somewhere around midtown …” and finally, after ten minutes of this, I sign off by concluding, “Uh, I’m a pretty sick guy,” then hang up, but I call back and after an interminable beep, proving my message was indeed recorded, I leave another: “Listen, it’s Bateman again, and if you get back tomorrow, I may show up at Da Umberto’s tonight so, you know, keep your eyes open,” and the sun, a planet on fire, gradually rises over Manhattan, another sunrise, and soon the night turns into day so fast it’s like some kind of optical illusion …