177a Bleecker Street Novels & Stories

“It was the name we gave the boy when he was born. Then Dr. Hansen must have changed it.” “Let’s not stray from the topic,” Mark interrupted. “Where is that apartment?” “On Atlantic Avenue, I don’t know the name or number of the building, but it’s the only small diagonal to the subway station. The apartment is 6-B on the sixth floor. If the elderly are there they may help her, and if they are traveling she also has access to it because she takes care of it. If she was at home this morning, it means she shouldn’t be taking care of it.”

1:30 PM. The apartment on Pierrepont Street was entirely devoid of criminal history. It was a classic brownstone fourth-floor walk-up, featuring wide oak floorboards that had been scrubbed clean, large bay windows that let in the pale, silver sunlight of the New York afternoon, and a small kitchen that smelled of fresh paint and linseed oil. There were no hidden compartments behind the linen presses, no secondary copper loops running through the molding, and no high-fidelity surveillance nodes hidden inside the smoke detectors.

A beautiful pounding, but definitely in need of recovery time. I look up at the brick apartment off of Broadway Street in the heart of Southie and brace myself because I smell the Orc.

The plasters have left the walls a long ago and most of the doors are either fixed or hanging on the hinges. "Which apartment number, Brady?" I ask Brady in a whisper. "Apartment number- 17, Boss." He tells me and it doesn't take me a minute to locate the last apartment on the first floor. The noises coming from the neighbors, both drunken husbands yelling on wives and children screaming in front of the television. The air only reeks of grease, alcohol and tobacco. How can someone live with families in such shitty place and what future these kids will have? "Oh..stop..you animal..ahh..You're hurting me now." A woman moans while the bed is slamming against the wall.

The days were getting cooler as fall wound down to winter. Gabe lived a short distance away at 400 Fifth Avenue, a sleek, modern residential development, while Jace lived on the Upper West Side closer to Mia—she was convinced she was why Jace had never moved closer to his office. And Ash lived at 1 Morton Square, which overlooked the Hudson River.

I have spent the past week trying to scrub the existence of Elias Arden from my brain with an iron sponge and is I have to face him now, I’m not sure if I have enough composure left to stand on his doorstep without it showing, and showing it is not something I am prepared to do right now. I close my eyes for a brief moment, take a deep breath and start walking again. I’ll deal with it if it happens. Crane Street is in the part of the lower east side that sits just past the point where the neighborhood stops pretending to be transitional and settles into what it actually is, narrow buildings close together, the kind of street where the trees are small and the gutters collect things, and every

“Say that again.” “She’s staying at a small apartment complex on the west side of the city. Quiet neighborhood. 1420 Evans street Third floor. Unit 3B." I was already grabbing my keys, the phone pressed to my ear with my shoulder as I shrugged into my jacket. “You’re sure it’s her?” “Yes, sir. Positive.” Adrian had barely put the car in park before I slid into the backseat, voice sharp. “West side. 1420 Evans Street. Step on it.”

I begged after pressing the bell so many times that I had to bang on the door of our unit in an apartment building in the Brooklyn area, about fifteen minutes from Maureen's college on foot. I turned away from the door of the unit, looking out the window which was getting busier by the evening. Although our apartment was an old building, the surrounding access was mostly newer buildings such as the laundromat across the street and several fast food restaurants. After taking a deep breath and rolling up my shirt sleeves, I banged on the door again and pressed the bell repeatedly. "I've had enough, Fatty." I couldn't care less about the strange looks of the other residents crossing the stairs.

“How could I not?” “Stick to Blake, sweetie,” he replies. Feeling all fuzzy in my belly, I nod and glance out the window. “My apartment’s on Thirty-Seventh-street–” I start to call out to the driver, but when I see where we are, I realize we’re not only nowhere near my place, but we’re headed in the complete opposite direction. I turn and look at Blake. “We’re not going to my place, are we?” He shakes his head. “No, we’re not.”

he said, already moving toward his jacket on the back of the chair. She stood. "Where are we going?" He picked up his keys. "We," he said, "are going to fetch your attacker." The row of apartments was in Bermondsey. Three storeys of weathered brick, built for function rather than beauty. The kind of place that had stood quietly for decades, its walls holding hundreds people in it literally. The problem now was, the narrow street outside was packed with motorcycles. Dozens of them. Some squeezed tightly against the curb, others tucked beneath balconies or beside overflowing bins. There were so many that, at first glance, they all blurred together.