Weegee on the Beat
by Stephen Benz
© Weegee Archive/ICP
Ceaselessly prowling the streets during the graveyard shift,
[Weegee] took thousands of photographs that defined Manhattan
as a film noir nightscape of hoodlums and gangsters,
Bowery bums and slumming swells, tenement dwellers
and victims of domestic brawls, fires and car crashes.
He gave it its enduring nickname, the Naked City.
— New York Times
1.
Welcome to the Lower East Side, where paddy wagons prowl and shadows scurry about in a panic. The precincts of Cain’s mayoralty. A photo worthy of page six is all the redemption tonight’s victims will get, three stooges who turned traitor and tried the midnight dodge to no avail. The fat one sang for his supper and ended up with a splintered bone in his throat. Number two over there must have been your typical choir boy until he hit the wrong note. Bad day to put off confession, buddy boy. As for the third, he was clearly off key from the get-go. Time for his mug shot; the crime photographer leans in.
2.
One night it’s a sheikish fellow in a black suit, patent leather shoes, pearl-gray hat; the next it’s a darling blonde in panties and bra splayed on a flophouse floor, ready for her glamor shot. Bookies, madams, racketeers, call girls, pimps, petty chiselers, gamblers, con men, jewel fences: all dead and littering the gutter alongside the likes of Mad Dog Coll, Legs Diamond, Spanish Rose, Waxey Gordon and Dutch Schultz. Here’s the morgue wagon come to haul them off: the one strangled in a bathtub, the one machine-gunned in a telephone booth, the one spilling his guts in the gutter, the one slumped in the doorway of an Italian café, the one trussed up with piano wire, the one bleeding out in a baby carriage, the one doused in kerosene and set on fire, the glamor puss, the sailor boy, the little piggy who went to market and took a blow to the brain.
3.
Every murder’s a masterpiece in the making, the influence of the old masters evident in lighting, palette, and perspective. Consider this moribund tableau: a modern-day Holofernes sans Judith, more blood and darkness than even Caravaggio could imagine, ready-made for exposure. The detectives circle the mise en scène admiring Judith’s knifework then light up their cigars in the corner, pleased the night has produced legitimate entertainment and much relieved the rain has tapered off. Look at the way the arm of Holofernes falls meekly across the discarded blade, his hand still clutching—what? A feather? A flower? A coil of Judith’s hair? Hard to say, moisture having tampered with the scene. Can’t catch a break, the lead detective says. Here’s more of the goddamn rain we didn’t need.
4.
What drove this dim-witted trinity down the turncoat path and brought them screeching to betrayal’s usual dead end? Mere boys, innocent looking in spite of bullet holes and initiation scars. What skullduggery lured them into the ambush, the double-cross, the whirligig of time? The camera insists on knowing. Maybe it was maternal neglect or cronyism, maybe seductive advertising, the false pretenses of this brave new world. Or was it merely a misunderstanding, a translation that missed the mark not long after the immigrant boat came to dock? Whatever, it harbored a malicious force not even the courage of callow youth could withstand. These boys had their catechism down cold, no doubt, a severe nun whacking them into obedience right on up to dropout day when they skipped into the soda fountain for a malted and left with a syndicate switchblade and payola. They abruptly ignored the street map marking the straight and narrow; they raced right past the stations of the neon cross in favor of a via more dolorosa by far. The lurker in the shadows promised blood money, and off they went, packet in hand, la-di-da, executing each of the assigned tasks to perfection. They couldn’t resist the canard that led them here, their picture-perfect rendezvous with Mister Doom.
5.
No more sparkle left in this sweetheart, such a pretty thing, hot off the griddle. Impulsive acts got her nowhere, capricious attempts to climb the spiral only confirmed the dread she was at pains to conceal. With a trip of the trigger came a crackle of light quickly suppressed. Turn and turn again she could not find her way out of the whorl, fully subsumed in the vortex that impelled her fall.
6.
Across the street, evangelists are handing out pamphlets to a curious crowd. The police scanner has conjured a body in the gutter: tomorrow’s frontpage photo. A stray dog makes off with the victim’s boot clenched in its jaws. The morgue crew waits at the threshold of an abandoned warehouse. Lovers shiver behind barricades. There are angels in the looming facades, a mournful Mary etched on the spiritualist’s window. Drunks in a vacant lot serenade the scene and the beat cop waves his nightstick: Is it a threat or is he keeping time? The peep show girls wander past, bound for Hanson’s, a cup of coffee before bed. The priest who appeared out of nowhere to administer last rites is some kind of crank or quack spouting the wrong words, more Ogden Nash than scripture. Even the humorless detectives find it funny and some wise acre says, You’ll never get that in a picture.
7.
Every threshold means a new enigma. A trapdoor ushers in pain’s next level. Blind alley, dumb luck: what he never knew made all the difference once he reached the lightning round. Snap out of it, jackass: last words he heard before the ether hour.
8.
Here’s another who hurtled along, assuming the right of way, impotent to alter the fateful course. All his velleities were distilled in the flash of the moment, the dead-of-night crackup that snapped him out of both delusion and reverie. The one startling instant— the only one he would ever know— of feeling fully alive. It was all in front of him, careening headlong, an ineluctable collision with being, time, nothingness— an elusive brilliance, blinding, confrontational, exposed. Raptured in his own wreckage.
9.
Baby doll here made misadventure her stubborn bent; no easy rationale could subdue the demiurge that had her dumbly groping the blistered walls of this, her vice chamber. She did not want to escape—stuck fast in her desire, remorse readily stifled. If she could speak for herself she would say hindsight was a critical waste of time, a lost cause once the spike came on, the ragged rush, her skin turning to striped pelt as she assumed the unadulterated persona that was her greatest gift.
10.
Looks like this bozo misread the signs. Well, mister, you know what the tabloids say: It’s a politicized environment and backlash is always lurking unseen but ready to roil, all the unstable forces triggering the ripple effect. You start off everybody’s friend, the new guy, potential ally. It’s all about lending support, running cover, taking the hit. Ingratiation greases the slippery slope, fortune’s wheel the operative paradigm. The ride up is one quick whoa-ho-ho; and then the downfall, swift and certain. Stepping over your remains, the henchmen won’t break stride as they leave the scene. Sorry, pal, you’re the dawn patrol’s sticky business now.
11.
What did this dupe learn when his hour was up, his unlucky number drawn? How bones break and rattle. How the body frazzles and collapses in a burst of light. How wounds expose the soul, a gruesome sight the medics rush to conceal. It’s too late now for further lessons. He knows nothing of the photographer’s smirk, the detective’s stifled yawn, the dazzled crowd blissfully applauding his melodramatic demise. The all-too-eager witnesses have a story to tell but they too are blind to the impervious moral. It’s midnight in Manhattan, the show must go on. Tomorrow’s illustrated edition will reveal the glitter in flecks of blood, the glower in the pronouncement of death: valuable knowledge and hard-earned at that. But for this fella, overexposure suggests God’s peace was way past understanding.
12.
The eyewitnesses stare from behind barricades. He fell in with the wrong crowd, someone tells a head-heavy detective taking notes. Meaning? Meaning he was keen for the big break, thought he could play both sides. It’s trouble waiting to happen when you’re in that deep. A sparkle in the rubbish pile, a light winking in the third-floor walk-up, a bombshell’s slender fingers touching your thigh. The moment you think you might have it all, the rope snaps, a thousand pinpricks light up the brain, the bottom feeders scuttle through the muck to pick apart the residue. You start knocking on doors in this part of town, you find out quick what’s in store—a dead-end ride, a freefall out into nada, a question with no good answer.
13.
All the dicks circle up to ponder the imponderable: what happened before what happened happened? There’s grist for your mill, salt for your wound. Lucky stiff: he can’t be bothered with riddles. The conundrums won’t trouble his eternal peace. He’ll just go on grinning, the death mask everyone will ponder on tomorrow’s front page. This is comeuppance writ large, the way-hey-hey and hootchie-coo, death’s two-timing jitterbug. Your basic memento mori cracked open on the sidewalk, gaping wound displayed for a gaping crowd desperate for small-hour entertainment. It’s the decisive moment, folks, the greatest show on Earth right here in Gotham, Everyman’s psychodrama captured in the camera’s wide-eyed stare.
Stephen Benz has published four books of essays, including Reading the Signs and Topographies (both from Etruscan Press). He has also published a book of poems, Americana Motel (Main Street Rag Publishing Co.), along with essays in New England Review, Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, and Best American Travel Writing. He lives in Albuquerque, where he teaches at University of New Mexico. You can find out more about Benz by visiting his website: stephenconnelybenz.com.
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