Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [80]
“Hey, Champ, what are you doing? Lock your door!” Mr. Ruiz, the super, yelled at him as he swept the floor.
“Nothing to steal,” Danny called back with a laugh.
He ran out of the lobby and his legs tightened up as they pounded on the cement. The cold air hit his lungs like he had inhaled pipe tobacco. He put his head down and ran along the street toward Inwood Hill Park. The first ten minutes of every run was a killer for him. Even when he was young he hated the start of the run. But after ten minutes, even now, when he found his rhythm and groove, it got good. Real good. Running and boxing are what kept him sane all these years and he wasn’t ready to let go of them. If no one else believed in him, Danny thought, at least he did.
At least he did. Those words comforted him as he ran up Dyckman Street. He passed the Alibi Inn and a white-haired man waved to him from the window. Danny smiled and waved back. Everyone in Inwood knew him as “Champ.” He thought not many knew anything about him other than he was a boxer. The furies that drove him. He passed Sherman Avenue and made a right to avoid Pitt Place.
Danny knew that was where the ghosts lived. 209 Pitt Place. The last time he had seen his wife and baby daughter alive was in their tidy two-bedroom apartment there. He was deep in training out in the Poconos when the house was hit by a crew of home invaders. They came for the money they knew he had hidden in the closet. He had made some offhanded comment to a New York Post boxing writer about not trusting banks, and it cost his family their lives.
That the men were arrested, tried, and convicted with life sentences never gave him peace. That he won the fight was no solace. The only time he felt good was when his fists were pounding another man.
He shook his head to chase that ten-year-old memory away. He turned into the park and picked up his pace as he ran up the first hill. A mother pushing a baby carriage smiled at him when he huffed by. He kept going deeper into the park, deeper into his run. Away from the cruelty of life in New York City. Where the streets can snatch your whole life from you for a few thousand dollars. He went faster. His body felt good. He threw a few punches and let out a grunt.
He turned onto a path through the old woods and now ran on the dirt. As he came to the top of the hill, he saw a man standing in a thicket of bushes. The man looked up and Danny knew it was the guy he called the Mad Russian.
The Mad Russian was a local character who once told Danny his name was Yuri and he was once a Soviet botanist, now reduced to manual labor by the cruel capitalistic system of America. He said he came to the park to study the flora and the fauna. Danny waved to the Russian, but the guy looked through Danny like he wasn’t even there.
Just another New York psycho, Danny thought. The city was full of them, and if he kept it up, Danny Stone would join them. Lonely displaced people haunted by their past. The ghosts of your horrors were always chasing you.
He came out of the park and leaned against a stone wall to stretch his legs. It was a good run. Five miles. Good pace.
Good wind. He was still in shape.
Danny walked down 207th Street and grabbed a newspaper and went into the Loco Diner. There, the waitress, Rosa, smiled at him and motioned him to a front table. She yelled to the cook to make an egg white omelet.
“How was the run, Danny Boy?” Rosa said as she put a cup of coffee down in front of him.
“Good. Five miles in twenty-eight minutes.”
“Damn! You can run.”
“You should come out with me sometime.”
Rosa smacked her wide hips. “Not built for running, and I do enough running around here. Now, if you took me to dinner …”
Danny blushed as Rosa smiled at him. They had been doing this for the last year. Two thirty-five-year-old people acting like school