Assistant District Attorney Greenbaum had me in his office. I was trying to make a point to him about his investigation into the arson and murder. I told him about the picture that had blown up on my feet a couple days after we put up the tepee and the rest of the story: how I found out that a photographer "artist" was displaying a "stolen" photo of the tepee at a gallery; how I had gone to the gallery and taken measurements of the print and matting and then enlarged my found print and put it into the correct sized matting; how Ivan and I went to the gallery and did the ol' switcharoo; how it stayed there for the run of the show; how the photographer got back not the photo he had taken and tried to sell for $400, but a photo of the same place from a different perspective and time. ADA Greenbaum was smiling as I confessed to him all this. I said "Now, you can imagine how the photographer felt when he found that photo instead of his. He would have thought some kind of magic and voodoo were happening, at least momentarily. He would never find out what really happened. So more than likely he would be plagued with doubts and paranoia. He would exhaust rational explanations every time he reflected on it. But of course it wasn't magic. I'm not a magician. The magician was the person who blew that print up to my feet two years ago."
Greenbaum lost his smile and then gave a nervous laugh. Later on he would target and intimidate me with his arson and murder investigation to the point where I no longer knew who were the police and who were the criminals. To be fair, he didn't know either. It was obvious that nets were going over other nets at the time. That's always the case, or at least the fear: No one is safe. Anyone can be set up, dealt from a cold deck.
A District Attorney has quite an array of weapons in his arsenal. We were two hunters, predators pitted against one another. Graffiti began appearing all over the Lower East Side. "White Boy Represents." "White Boy Rules." "White Boy Avenges." The suspect for whom the police were searching was known as White Boy. Meanwhile, Internal Affairs and a special commission created by the Mayor had the whole Fifth Precinct under investigation. After I escaped a half dozen set-ups, some imagined, some real, the remnants of my sanity were held together only by certain talismans and knots I had inherited from Mr. Lee. But I was able to keep the secrets I knew to myself. I found some children's drawings in the trash and started painting and altering them. One a day keeps the doctor away. Until I healed. Scarred. The final one had a tree in it. I wrote GREENBAUM into the trunk and branches, baum being German for tree. I watched as a light breeze carried the drawing along the sidewalk on Canal Street, hoping one of the collectors of such objects would find it. A year later, Greenbaum convicted someone for ordering the fire, but "nobody" was convicted for actually setting it.
I have learned how to tie a knot. I use it sparingly. It is placed around the neck, the same place where the "Crack Smile" appears. Even the Suicide King fears this knot, because it speaks of a Death he knows nothing about. I weep not out of fear or moral trepidation when I place this knot around the neck of "nobody," but out of a love so scarred and strong that it feels like avenging hate.
I once believed theater was graced with a boxing ring. Referees and doctors, angelic metaphysicians who guarded the perimeter. The street fight and war were kept at bay because ours was the holy catharsis of such. But theater is just one more player at the table. And grace, like luck, is too pure a force with which to gamble.
After the shantytown was bulldozed, the City put a cyclone fence all around The Hill. Gabriele and I climbed over it one night and planted a white pine where Mr. Lee's hut was, where he was. It lived the first year, graced us with hope, then it died.
