177a Bleecker Street Novels & Stories

Silas had told me to stay out of here, which made it the only room in the penthouse that felt like it held the truth. I pushed the doors open. Unlike the rest of the house, the library felt... lived in. There were stacks of architectural blueprints on a drafting table and a half-empty bottle of 30-year-old scotch on a side table. I walked to the drafting table, looking at the sketches. It was a project titled The Vane Heights. I traced the lines of the drawing, my heart stopping as I recognized the familiar grid of streets. Red Hook. My father’s shop—the one Silas promised to "save"—was right in the middle of a "Demolition Zone" on the map. The two million was a lifeline for the debt, but th

The blueprints were spread out, the address printed clearly at the top. Beatrice walked over to the desk and looked down at the papers. "So," she said, tapping a manicured fingernail on the blueprint, "this is the apartment you are designing for her?" "Yes," I said, walking over. "Zyran bought it today. It’s a rush job, but I’m going to make it beautiful. I want her to feel comfortable." Beatrice read the address on the paper: 1402 Lakeview Drive, Penthouse B. She froze.

I had walked this street so many times I knew where the pavement cracked. Three blocks from the subway, turn left at the coffee shop where the barista always spelled my name wrong, past the dry cleaner with the hand-painted sign, and then there it was, the brownstone with the black door and the brass knocker shaped like a lion's head that Julian had picked out and I had pretended to like. I stopped half a block away and stood there.

“Yes. Your husband wrote, We went to Jerry and Jim’s till Carlo Dellalucci’s lot blew it up; now we go to Dill’s Diner.” “Where’s that?” demands Melissa. “Where do you live?” “Apartment Forty-three-D, West Eightieth Street,” we say in unison. It’s part of the opening titles. “Oh, New York,” she says, as though she’s saying, Oh, the rubbish dump. “Blew up, as in exploded?” chimes in Matt, looking impressed. “Was anyone killed?” “Chief of police,” I say, with a terse nod. “And the ten-year-old daughter he’d only just met, who died in his arms.”

The address Lucas sent on Sunday night was a building on Lexington Avenue, twelve floors, unremarkable from the outside in the deliberate way of buildings that housed things they preferred not to advertise. No signage beyond the street number. A lobby with two security desks and a receptionist who looked like she had been chosen specifically for her capacity to appear neither welcoming nor hostile. I arrived with Lillian at nine fifty-five Monday morning.

Because he thought that was what husbands did. "Okay," I said. "I'll set it up." Saint Aurelia's Cathedral sat on the corner of Bleecker and Ninth. A century of city soot had darkened its stone facade, but the stained glass above the entrance still caught the afternoon light and threw fractured color across the front steps.

“Only if you’re up to it, but there’s something I’d really like you to see.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The building Kim guided Ava to didn’t look like much. It was a non-descript brownstone located on a reasonably busy street in the town’s small business district. The lettering on the glass storefront read “Bright Light Community Outreach.”

OV MIRA The morning sunlight filtered softly through the tall, arched windows of our newly opened office on the third floor of the brownstone. Down below on West 72nd Street, the steady hum of Manhattan life went on, punctuated by the occasional ring of a bicycle bell or the distant thrum of a delivery truck. For three weeks, this room had smelled of fresh paint, wood polish, and the rich aroma of espresso from the machine Sarah had set up in the staff break room. It felt like a sanctuary.

The brownstones were the brownstones of Brooklyn Heights — dark, expensive, lit warmly from within, the windows of his block showing the small intimate evenings of people whose lives I did not know. At seven fifty-nine I got out of the van. At eight oh-one I knocked on the door of a house I had never been inside.

Chapter 89 Alexander Pierce's car slid to a stop outside the modest apartment building in Brooklyn. He checked the address on his phone again, confirming this was indeed where Stefan Rodriguez now lived. The fall from grace had been steep, from a penthouse overlooking Central Park to this brick walkup with peeling paint. "Wait here," he told his driver, stepping out into the brisk afternoon air. The security buzzer was broken. Alexander pushed through the lobby door, grimacing at the smell of old cooking oil and cigarettes that hung in the narrow hallway. Apartment 3B was at the end of the third-floor corridor, its door as shabby as the rest of the building.