Tepper Isn't Going Out: A Novel Read online

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said.

  “I’m not going out,” Tepper said.

  “Daddy, it’s me—Linda,” his daughter said.

  “I recognized you. One of the advantages of having only one daughter is that remembering her name and what she looks like is not difficult. Are you looking for a spot?”

  “Of course I’m not looking for a spot, Daddy. Be serious.”

  “If you are, it’s good here after six. But I’m not going out.”

  “Daddy, I wasn’t looking for a spot. I was looking for you.”

  “What have you done with my grandson?” Tepper said. “Did he run away from home? Have you put him in foster care?”

  “I think he’s planning to wait until he’s old enough to read the street signs before he runs away from home,” Linda said. “Is that what you’re doing, Daddy, running away from home?”

  “Oh, no. I’m just parking, Linda. Later, I’m going back home.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Linda said. “You go from the office to the garage that you pay for by the month, you get your car out, and you park it where you have no particular reason to be?”

  “Well, now I’ve got a dollar and a half invested in this spot,” Tepper said. “So there’s good reason to be here at least until I get my money’s worth. I read somewhere that the aggregate value of unexpired time left on meters people drive off from, just in New York alone, is the equivalent of the gross national product of something like thirty-eight different countries. I’ll admit that it’s hard to figure out what you’re supposed to make of that statistic. I mean, it’s not as if we could help the economy of those countries by staying longer at the meters. But there it is.”

  “Daddy, I’m not sure I understand what you’re doing here,” Linda said. “I mean, I remember when you used to keep the car on the street and switch it from one side of the street to the other every night, because of the alternate-side parking rules. I remember when I was a little girl sometimes Mom and I would have to wait dinner for you while you looked for a place to park that would be legal for the next day. And then you’d come in and you’d say, ‘Guess what? A beautiful spot!’ That was nice. You managed to keep the car on the street, and every night you had a little victory. Or maybe I just remember the victories. Maybe there were nights when you looked and looked and had to give up.”

  “That’s one of the odd things about alternate-side parking,” Tepper said. “There isn’t exactly any way to give up.”

  Even so, he sometimes missed those evenings circling the blocks of the Upper West Side. Most of the neighborhood was governed by alternate-side parking regulations, for street-cleaning purposes, and he knew from long experience which sides of which streets said, NO PARKING 8AM-11AM MON-WED-FRI, and which said, TUES-THURS-SAT, and which said, improbably, MON-THURS or TUE-FRI, and which, just to keep you on your toes, said, 11AM-2PM instead of 8AM-11AM. What he often had trouble keeping in his mind was which day of the week the next day—the relevant day—would be, and he was in the habit of repeating it, half under his breath, as he searched for a spot regulated by a sign that did not mention it.

  As he moved down the street, looking for a spot that alternate-side parkers call “good for tomorrow,” he’d say “Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday” over and over, almost as if he were chanting some sort of mantra. He’d listen intently for the sound of an ignition being turned. He’d glance quickly from side to side, hoping to spot the flicker of a dashboard light that would indicate someone had just opened a car door and might be about to pull out. There were nights when he was totally confident of finding a spot. There were nights when he could almost imagine himself with a large tattoo on his arm that said, BORN TO PARK. There were nights when he knew that it was only a matter of time before he’d slip into a NO PARKING MON-WED-FRI spot, emitting, as the car came to rest against the curb, a final “Tuesday!” loud enough to startle passersby.

  “But then you were finding a parking spot because you needed one,” Linda was saying. “You don’t need a spot on Forty-third Street. You don’t even need a spot near home, Daddy. You keep the car in a garage now.”

  Tepper thought about that. “I suppose you could say that getting the garage meant that I finally figured out how to give up, for good.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Daddy. You just found better things to do with your time than circling block after block looking for a parking space.”

  Tepper was silent for a while. Then he said, “I suppose your mother sent you.”

  “Well, she did call,” Linda said. “She asked me what she should do and I asked Richard and Richard said she should give you some space. But I thought I’d just come over and see if you were okay.”

  Tepper chuckled. “Well, you can tell Richard that I’ve got a space here,” he said. “But I’m not going out.”

  “Daddy, you can’t expect Mom to understand what’s going on when you say, ‘I think I’ll go park on Forty-third Street for a while.’”

  “I always like her to know where I am. Otherwise, she worries.”

  Behind the narrow lane left by their two cars, a Toyota slowed to a stop. The driver honked his horn. Linda didn’t seem to hear. Tepper gave the Toyota a backhand flick. The driver shrugged, and moved carefully past Linda’s Volvo with five or six inches to spare on either side.

  “Daddy, I don’t want to be pushy or anything,” Linda said, “but what if I asked a fairly direct question: What, exactly, are you doing here?”

  “I was reading the Post,” Tepper said.

  Neither of them said anything for a few moments. The only sound was the idling of the Volvo’s engine. “Daddy,” Linda said after a while. “You’re not trying to relive those days, are you? I mean the days when you used to look for a beautiful spot every night, while Mom and I got dinner ready.”

  “You mean like some old duffer who keeps thinking of the glories of his high-school football triumphs and ends up drunk late at night on the football field of his youth?”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “Sort of. Except not drunk.”

  “Linda, let me explain something to you,” he said. “It’s something we probably should have gotten straight a long time ago. The parking I did then was alternate-side parking. This is meters. This is an entirely different situation.”

  “Do you know what Aunt Harriet told Mom?” Linda asked.

  “I can imagine.”

  “She said that you’re subconsciously punishing Mom for all those nights she goes off and plays bridge.”

  “Listen, her partner has always been Aunt Harriet,” Tepper said. “I figure that was punishment enough.”

  Linda laughed. Then she grew serious again. “Daddy,” she said, “you’re not having some sort of midlife crisis, are you?”

  “Well, I’m sixty-seven years old,” Tepper said. “So the math alone makes it unlikely, I think. It’s much more likely that I’m just sitting here reading the paper.”

  “Daddy, what should I tell Mom?”

  “You could tell her that I’m on Forty-third Street, parking,” Tepper said. “But, of course, I’ve already told her that. Maybe you could say that you’ve confirmed that I’m on Forty-third Street, parking. I don’t like her to worry.”

  3. Il Duce

  AS MIKE SHANAHAN APPROACHED CITY HALL, HE WAS struck again by the extraordinary precautions Frank Ducavelli had taken against an eruption of what the mayor always called “the forces of disorder.” Although the closest City Hall had come to being stormed during the Ducavelli administration was a gathering of a few dozen noisy but peaceful citizens protesting the closing of a city day-care center in the district of a councilman who had defied the mayor, a forbidding steel fence had been erected at the perimeter of the lawn. Just inside the fence was an eight-foot field of concertina barbed wire. The graceful old building was beginning to look like the temporary headquarters of an invading army during some particularly nasty war. Shanahan, of course, knew it as the headquarters of a prosperous city
that was, though eternally contentious, relatively peaceful—a city that had been spared the most serious turmoil of the brutish century that was drawing to a close.

  He arrived at the narrow opening where visitors who had successfully made their way past a metal detector could pass through a turnstile onto the grounds, once the policeman who controlled the bar of the turnstile from an adjoining booth was convinced that all of the criteria for entry had been satisfied.

  “Hiya, Eddie,” Mike Shanahan said to the policeman, as he got out the picture ID that showed him to be a consultant to the mayor’s office.

  “How you doin’, Mikey,” the policeman said. The bar remained across the turnstile.

  “You want to let me in, Eddie, so I can serve the people of this great city to the best of my ability?”

  “We got a security check goin’ today, Mike,” the policeman said.

  He began typing with two fingers on a computer keyboard in order to bring Shanahan’s security form up on a monitor that only he could see.

  “Didn’t we have a security check yesterday?” Shanahan asked.

  “That’s right. So far, we’ve had a security check every day this week.”

  “The mayor particularly worried about the forces of disorder this week?”

  “You got it,” the policeman said. “Okay. Here we are. Grandmother’s maiden name?”

  “Eddie, listen: We grew up together. You actually knew my grandmother. Do I really have to tell you her maiden name every day?”

  Eddie waited at the computer. Neither he nor Shanahan said anything for a few moments. Finally, Eddie said, “It’s a job, Mikey.”

  “Houlihan,” Shanahan said. “My grandmother’s maiden name was Kate Houlihan.”

  “And an old dear she was, too,” the policeman said, smiling at the memory. “I can still taste those molasses cookies of hers.” He asked Shanahan four more questions that were answered correctly, and then pressed a button to lower the bar on the turnstile. “Take her easy, Mikey,” he said, as Shanahan walked toward the building.

  Shanahan, showing his pass two or three more times to people he’d worked with for three years, finally made his way to the mayor’s outer office, where Teresa, a secretary he’d slept with off and on for a period of four months earlier in the administration, informed him that any visitor to the mayor’s office was now required to peer into a machine that would determine by the iris of his right eye whether or not he was who he said he was.

  Shanahan looked at Teresa for a while without saying anything.

  Teresa broke the silence. “If what I am witnessing constitutes being rendered speechless by news of this security device,” she said, “you should know that being speechless is not a valid excuse. You still have to look into the machine.”

  “Do you have reason to believe I’m not me?” Shanahan asked.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re you,” Teresa said. “How many people could look that much like the farmer driven out of Ireland by the potato famine? But if you don’t let the machine check the iris of your right eye you can’t go into the mayor’s office.”

  Shanahan looked at the machine, which hadn’t been there the day before. “How do you know what the iris of my right eye is supposed to look like?” he said.

  “We got a baseline for everyone when you took your picture for the photo ID at the beginning of the administration,” Teresa said, brightly. “Remember that second shot that seemed like a real close-up?”

  “But that was three years ago,” Mike said. “You mean the mayor was this worried about the forces of disorder three years ago?”

  “Just look into the machine, willya, Mike? I’ve got a lot to do today. I’ve got you down here for ten o’clock. He’ll be with you as soon as he’s through with the parking commissioner.”

  Shanahan stared into the iris-identification machine, which gave a satisfying buzz signifying a matchup. Then he sank down into a chair next to Teresa’s desk. She didn’t look up as he muttered, “The mayor was thinking of this sort of thing three years ago.” Three years before, in winning a campaign for City Hall against Bill Carmody, Frank Ducavelli had struck Mike Shanahan as relatively rational—tightly wound perhaps, maybe a bit moralistic at times, maybe a little too convinced of the uniqueness of his own level of rectitude, but basically a sensible man who had some good ideas for the city.

  A moderate level of rationality had been what Shanahan was looking for in a mayoral candidate to work for. He had become tired of mayors like Bill Carmody who felt they had to be characters. Carmody had been frank about his efforts to be colorful. “People realize that a city like this is basically ungovernable, so they figure at least they might as well have a little entertainment,” he’d once told Shanahan. “I don’t know why I use the word ‘govern.’ What they really expect of a mayor is to get the garbage picked up and avoid subway strikes. This requires what the seminar people call public policy decisions? I don’t think so, Michael. The public policy regarding garbage is to pick up the garbage.” Among other eccentricities, Carmody wrote and sang songs with urban themes but country rhythms—cowboy laments on subjects like subway breakdowns or deli lines. He liked to describe himself as La Guardiaesque. In the Daily News, Ray Fannon, taking advantage of the fact that of one of the city’s three airports had been named after the Little Flower, once wrote in his column, “Mayor Carmody is not La Guardiaesque and he’s not Kennedyesque. Newarkesque he may be.”

  Shanahan, who had been in New York politics all of his life, mostly as a pollster, hadn’t been certain that Bill Carmody was wrong in his analysis of the state of urban management. But it had seemed too early to give up on the possibility of governing a modern American city. In Frank Ducavelli, Shanahan had seen a man of enormous energy who obviously would never give up. He hadn’t realized that in electing Ducavelli to replace Carmody the city could be going from a mayor who burst into song at City Hall ceremonies to a man who would try to pass an ordinance prohibiting singing on the public streets. Mayor Ducavelli, as it turned out, saw singing on the street as behavior that might seem trivial at first glance but could actually jar open the gates to the forces of disorder. Shanahan had once read a theory that every presidential administration makes you nostalgic for the administration that preceded it. He wondered if the theory could be extended to City Hall administrations.

  “I now remember a part of that novel I’d forgotten,” he said, out loud. “Those naval officers on the Caine had great contempt for the first captain they had, because he was lackadaisical, sloppy, all that. They were very relieved when he was replaced by a captain who did things by the book . . .”

  “What are you muttering about there?” Teresa said.

  “. . . replaced by Captain Queeg.”

  A light flashed on Teresa’s desk, and she said, “The mayor’s ready for you now.” At that moment, the parking commissioner, a nervous-looking man named Mark Simpkins, came out of the mayor’s office and rushed past them, apparently too distraught to note their presence.

  “He must have confessed that he took that helping of strawberries from the officers’ mess,” Shanahan said.

  “What?” Teresa said.

  “Here I go,” Shanahan said, and entered the office. It was a large, paneled office, furnished with comfortable-looking leather chairs and, at one end, a conference table. There was a huge desk near one wall, but the mayor was not sitting behind it. He was pacing up and down, usually a sign that he was upset about something. In recent months, Shanahan had always found him pacing in front of his desk. Frank Ducavelli was, as it happened, a rather awkward pacer. In general his movements seemed jerky; Ray Fannon had once written that the mayor in movement “showed signs of having studied under the same ballet master as Richard M. Nixon.” Ducavelli was in one of his trademark blue suits, which, like Nixon’s suits, were often spoken of as looking as if the hanger got left in.

  “Simpkins should have nailed those Ukrainians by now,” Mayor Ducavelli said as Shanahan entered. “He t
reated them with kid gloves. You can’t handle people like that with courtesy. They’re animals. They have no respect for order. They’re corrupt and despicable. Simpkins has to think of a way. We’ve got to nail those Ukrainians.”

  Ukraine was among the worst offenders when it came to parking tickets ignored by United Nations diplomats, all of whom claimed diplomatic immunity, and, for reasons nobody on the City Hall staff fully understood, the mayor had singled out the Ukrainian delegation as the prime target for his retaliation. To the mayor’s frustration, though, a way to nail the Ukrainians had not been found. For a while, Ducavelli had put his hopes in a plan devised by the city attorney, Victor Hessbaugh. Under Hessbaugh’s scheme, the city would haul away illegally parked cars of Ukrainian diplomats and claim that what had to be paid to get them back was a hauling and storage fee rather than a fine, and thus was not covered by the diplomatic immunity treaties. The Ukrainians had gone to court, bolstered by an amicus curiae brief from the counsel of the U.S. State Department, and a federal judge had granted them a restraining order against the mayor and his agents, ruling that the hauling and storage fee was simply a fine masquerading as something else. When the restraining order was handed down, the mayor had thrown what Teresa referred to as “one of his hissy fits.” Shanahan had been in the office at the time. First, the mayor began carrying on about the judge, shouting, “The man’s absolutely out of his mind” and “The judiciary has crumbled” and “The man has absolutely not a scintilla of understanding of the law.” Then he started on the Ukrainians. “This is war!” he shouted. “This is war!”

  After the mayor had calmed down enough to allow a word or two from others, Shanahan had offered some words of restraint: “Even if the behavior of the Ukrainians justifies an armed response, Mr. Mayor, I think I should remind you that Ukraine still has any number of nuclear weapons left over from the days of the old Soviet Union, and the city of New York, where people like to say that absolutely anything is available if you’re willing to pay for it, has no nuclear weapons at all.” That court decision had been a year and a half ago. Shanahan had let himself believe that Mayor Ducavelli was no longer carrying a grudge against the Ukrainians—wishful thinking, he now realized, since he had learned long ago that the mayor’s grudges were permanent.