The Phantom of Manhattan by Frederick Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page B

city authorities, but they pointed out there were five boroughs and virtually no residence records. The man could be in Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island. So I have no choice but to stay here on Manhattan Island and seek this runaway from justice. What a task for a good Frenchman!
    They have records at City Hall listing a dozen Muhlheims, and I have tried them all. If his name was Smith I would go home now. They even have many telephones here, and a list of those who own them, but no Erik Muhlheim. I have asked the taxation authorities but they say their records are confidential.
    The police were better. I found an Irish sergeant who said he would search, for a fee. I know damn well the ‘fee’ went into his trouser pocket. But he went away and came back to say that no Muhlheim had ever been in trouble with the police but he had half a dozen Mullers if that was any help. Imbecile.
    There is a circus out on Long Island and I went there. Another blank. I tried their great hospital called Bellevue but they have no record of a man so deformed ever presenting himself for treatment. I can think of nowhere else to go.
    I lodge in a modest hotel in the back streets behind this great boulevard. I eat their horrible stews and drink their awful beer. I sleep in a narrow cot and wish I was back in my apartment on the Ile St Louis, warm and comfortable and pressed against the fine fat buttocks of Mme Dufour. It is getting colder and the money is running short. I want to return to my beloved Paris, to a civilized city where people walk instead of running everywhere, a place where the carriages drive sedately instead of racing like maniacs and the trams are not a danger to life and limb.
    To make matters worse I thought I could speak some words of the perfidious language of Shakespeare, for I have seen and heard the English milords who come to race their horses at Auteuil and Chantilly, but here they speak through their noses and very very fast.
    Yesterday I saw an Italian coffee-shop on this same street serving good mocha and even Chianti wine. Not Bordeaux, of course, but better than that piss-making Yankee beer. Ah, I see it even now, across this deadly dangerous street. I will take a good strong coffee for my nerves’ sake, then return and book my passage home.

4
    THE LUCK OF CHOLLY BLOOM
    LOUIE’S BAR, FIFTH AVENUE AT 28TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY, OCTOBER 1906
    I TELL YOU GUYS, THERE ARE TIMES WHEN BEING A reporter in the fastest, hummingest city in the world is the greatest job on earth. OK, we all know that there are hours and days of foot-slogging and nothing to show for it; leads that go nowhere, interviews rebuffed, no story. Right? Barney, can we have another round of beers here?
    Yep, there are times when there’s no scandal at City Hall (not many, of course), no celebrity divorce, no bodies at dawn in Central Park and life loses its sparkle. Then you think: what am I doing here, why am I wasting my time? Maybe I really should have taken over my dad’s outfitters in Poughkeepsie. We all know the feeling.
    But that’s the point. That’s what makes it better than selling men’s pants in Poughkeepsie. Suddenly out of left field something happens and, if you’re smart, you see a great story right within your grasp. Happened to me yesterday. Gotta tell you about it. Thanks, Barney.
    It was in this coffee-shop. You know Fellini’s? On Broadway at Twenty-sixth. A bad day. Spent most of it chasing up a new lead on the Central Park murders and nothing. The Mayor’s office is screaming at the Bureau of Detectives and they have nothing new, so they’re in a temper and saying nothing worth printing. I face the prospect of going back to city desk to say I don’t even have a column-inch worth printing. So I thought I’ll go in and have one of Papa Fellini’s fudge sundaes. Plenty of maple. You know the one? Keeps you going.
    So it’s crowded. I take the last booth. Ten minutes later a guy walks in looking miserable as sin.