There was a little vestibule between the outer and inner doors of the building. The lock on the inner door had been broken for months, with a quarter-size hole where the lock housing should have been. Just inside the inner door, spread out in the dimly lit hallway, was a clearly homeless man with terrible body odor and blackened bare feet.
Nate was not surprised. This was just the latest in a string of impositions, hardships, and insults being hurled at the residents by their landlord, among the most notorious in the entire city. The landlord was determined to clear the building of its rent-controlled tenants and convert their apartments to what would be multimillion-dollar condominiums. Nate had moved into the building as a younger man, when the corner was dangerous and trash strewn. By 2017 it was a playground for the rich, and do-gooder old queens like him were just in the way.
He was the building’s unofficially appointed advocate against the landlord’s tactics, and so tasked with dealing with things like this: the landlord’s thugs planting homeless men in the hallways, along with heroin addicts and prostitutes. Nate was well suited to the job. He was a retired social worker and had dealt with vulnerable populations for decades. It was through city social work, in fact, that he had met Mike Carroll, the man who would become his lover not long before becoming a father figure to two young boys in July of 1977.
“Sir,” Nate said, “you can’t be in here.” Age had grayed his hair and stooped him a little, but he was still tall and slim, neat and fastidious, with the same kind face and knowing aura. His voice retained its DJ quality, sonorous and calming.
“Fugginlivehere,” the man mumbled into the floor.
“Sir, that’s not true. There’s a nearby men’s shelter I can point you to up on Thirtieth Street. They’ll assist you, but you can’t stay here.”
“Fugginlivehere,” he said again, slurred really, so the words would have been unintelligible had Nate not just heard them. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
“You need to get up,” Nate said more forcefully. “Get up and get out, or I’ll see to it that you’re escorted out.” He was careful not to threaten to call the police, as he was certain the guy had been allowed in by someone connected to the landlord.
For a moment the man was silent, as if he’d fallen asleep. Then he turned toward Nate, exposing broken teeth behind a leering grin. When he spoke this time, there was no slur in his voice. His eyes, surprisingly alert and cruel, narrowed on the older man. “Back off, asshole. I got a right to be here.”
Nate clenched his fists and gritted his teeth but then slowly unclenched them and grinned back. “Five minutes.” He made a five with his left hand. “I’ll be back.” The lobby was small and rectangular, maybe twenty feet wide, with a brass mailbox panel on the right side and two elevators straight ahead. The guy stretched out across the lobby floor so that his head was just under the mailboxes. Nate walked around him toward the elevators. Just before the elevator bank, on the right, was the door to the stairwell.
“Come back with an army,” he heard. “See if I give a shit!”
The building had two elevators, only one in service. The other, on the right if you were facing them, had been broken for months, with no signs of being fixed. The steel doors on the lobby level were stuck in a partially open position, with a rectangular piece of plywood covering the bottom half of the doorframe. The plywood was screwed into the wall on either side, and blue painter’s tape created a big X over the entire frame. Before the weather turned in April, cold wind whistled up the shaft, blowing hard enough through the lobby that a letter might fly out of a person’s hands at the mailboxes.
Nate stepped into the working elevator and hit the button for the fifth floor. As the car rose with jolts and squeaks, he pictured his fellow residents as the lower floors passed underneath. The widow, Mrs. Horowitz, on the second floor had a hole in her ceiling after “construction” had been started but never completed. On the fourth floor was a Pakistani family with twin toddlers who had been subjected to a rat infestation that began when someone dumped a box of them out of a makeshift trap in the hallway.
Nate wasn’t particularly angry at the homeless guy; he was just a tool in the landlord’s hands. He didn’t know exactly what he would do when he went back downstairs, but he knew he had to return, and with a weapon. Hopefully, he’d only need to brandish it. A tire iron had done the trick the last time he had to chase someone out. There were helpless kids and old people in that building. An aggressive vagrant could be dangerous.