Dark Maze

asked.
    “I am, but I don’t know why.”
    “What does it matter?”
    I mounted the palomino behind Ruby. The carousel operator called out, “All aboard?” I nodded to him, he smiled and clanked a bell and slowly we began to turn.
    Protected from the rain, we moved with the sweep of handsome wood horses, hand-carved by great artisans long since dead and gone—and forgotten by most. Our horses galloped as if soldiers’ spurs were dug into their flanks, as if in battle against new marauders who had come to destroy Coney Island.
    They galloped and galloped, round and around, carrying only Ruby and me. And turn after turn, there was the patient carousel operator and his smile. He nodded at me, turn after turn, as if he knew me.
    The latest downpour of rain had finally cleared the streets. Nobody was willing to cope with this day, with the chancey April weather.
    But we kept galloping, Ruby and I and our painted horses.
    The organ played “By the Sea” and the horses lifted and fell.
    And lifted and fell.

    So, what’s this Sweet Land of Liberty going to give to the next generation?
    A dream? A promise?
    That’s what we got, ain’t that right?
    Damn straight.
    But I ask you. What about the next generation? Ho, ho, they got some kind of a new deal creeping up on them, hey?
    Used to be, work made money. Now it’s only money that makes money. You want to know what I say about that? I say it’s un-freaking-American!
    It’s killing us!
    Ain’t that what I been warning them all of these long goddamn years I have sacrificed myself to observing what I seen here in the Land of Our Pilgrims’ Pride? Ain’t it?
    Ain "t a guy with true love in his heart got the responsibility to observe like I have done? And make the people see what I seen?
    Don’t that at least deserve some respect?
    Oh, but they don’t see. No! They don’t want to see. Consequently, this is how so many great artists ain’t so respectable.
    And where’s that leave me?
    Well, sir, you know the old saw: you always kill the ones you love. ...

    After I put Ruby on the Manhattan-bound train, I waited out what I hoped was the last of the unrelenting rain in a little bar on Surf Avenue that did not have a single drop of Johnnie Walker red for sale. I drank coffee and ate a cheese sandwich with a pickle, which I suppose would have made Ruby happy.
    I also spent some money on the juke, which was good and heavy on Billie Holiday tunes like “My Sweet Hunk of Trash,“ “Do Your Duty,“ “In My Solitude,” and “Gimmee a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer.”
    Dusk came early, and with it a swirling front of cold wet ocean wind. I walked briskly along Surf Avenue in the direction of the Seashore Hotel, but a quick step did not prevent my shivering in the damp evening breezes blowing up off the beach.
    As I had requested, the Coney Island precinct station house had the hotel staked. A blue-and-white Brooklyn cruiser was parked in the west alley alongside the hotel; two uniforms sat inside, with a stained paper bag from Dunkin’ Donuts propped open on the dashboard between them. Over on the east end, across the street, was a black unmarked car with exhaust smoke pluming out from the tailpipe. I assumed there was a cop or two on footpost out back and somebody up on the roof.
    I stepped into the lobby, which was smaller than my apartment. It looked bigger, though, because there was only
    one chair in the place. A prostitute in a red wig sat there smoking with her skirt hiked up almost to her waist. The ceiling was low and full of buzzing fluorescent lights that bathed everything in a harsh shade of white that reminded me of refrigerator frost. There was a sour smell of dirty laundry that seemed more or less permanent. And a teller’s cage against the back wall, near the stairway. Over the cage was a white steel sign with a bullet hole and brown lettering: IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME NOW.
    The pross looked me over as I crossed through the lobby toward the cage. There was a young fat guy wedged inside with a till, a radio and a board full of mail and key slots. He had pale waxy skin, curly orange hair and a thick wart on his lower lip. He was listening intently to Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s call-in show.
    He switched off the radio and said to me in a tired-out tone, “Rates are twenty-two fifty a night plus tax—or by the week starting out at a hundred, plus your linen charges. Cash only, in advance.”
    I took out my wallet and showed him the NYPD