Once Upon A Poet

by H S Peer

  I ordered a rare steak from the secret stash I keep in the kitchen. It arrived as I finished my second Scotch. It was barely cooked, just the way I like it. I sat on my stool until after midnight.

  Then I headed for the diamond district after a stop at home for a Thermos of coffee, a couple of books and some cigarettes. I settled in to watch for police cars. I had an open map of the district next to me and could, if needed, tell the cops I was lost and where I needed to go. They passed like clockwork every half-hour and paid no attention to me behind the wheel. This was a weekend mind you, I’d have to come back one night during the week to check it out again.

  By 6 a.m. I had seen enough. I drove back to my apartment and hit the hay. I dreamt of Amber holding a shotgun against my chest and pulling the trigger before I awoke, sweating and strangely scared. I had to remind myself that Amber had been avenged, maybe not entirely as I hadn’t solved this thing yet, but her killers would bother no one else, ever again. I guess the dream Amber didn’t take any solace from that. After what seemed forever I drifted off to sleep again.

  Chapter 28

  I awoke at 7 p.m. and couldn’t see the point of having a shower. It was Sunday night, and I looked at Sundays as my God-given day off. I lay on the couch and watched old movies until 3 am and then turned in. Tomorrow was likely to be a busy day.

  The phone roused me at 2 p.m. It was Gael asking if I knew anything about the bodies of Pete and Al, Amber’s killers, washed up on the Jersey shore. I told her I didn’t have a clue what had happened. I don’t think she believed me. With the bodies in Jersey, it would be a Jersey investigation, not an NYPD one. That was a plus, I was less likely to be pulled into Jersey to be questioned if it came to that. I didn’t see that happening. The police knew what these guys were and would put it down to a mob hit, something rarely solved, unless someone talked.

  Gael’s call had roused me enough that I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got up, made coffee and picked up the paper off the front porch. There was a small item concerning Pete and Al. The writer speculated another mob war had started. I laughed out loud. Reporters.

  I walked to the Liar’s Breath and went directly into my office. I knew the phone wasn’t bugged; the room had just been swept. I wasn’t too sure about my cell or my regular phone line at home. I Googled Rainbow’s number. A bored receptionist answered the phone.

  “I have a delivery here of Klegg lights and a new camera,” I told her, “Do I deliver them to this address?”

  “No,” she huffed, “All that stuff goes to the warehouse. Have you read the waybill?”

  I ruffled some mail with my hand close to the phone. “Sorry about the mistake but this is the only address listed.”

  No, she just plain sounded pissed off. “Christ,’ she said, “Deliver the stuff to722 Convocation Boulevard. Do you think you can remember that or do you want me to fax you with it?”

  “I think I can manage.”

  “Just have the stuff in Brooklyn before 5 p.m. They don’t accept deliveries after that,” she said and hung up.

  So pleasant, I thought. If the warehouse had been in the city, I would have cruised by and checked it out. It would wait. I flipped through the mail on my desk. It was the usual stuff, advertising circulars from restaurant supply companies, some bills and a card of some sort. There was a Columbia University address label stuck on the corner of the envelope. I knew whom it was from and what it would say but opened it anyway.

  There was a snowman on the front of the card. The inside was blank, save for a small note folded once. It was from my old professor and mentor Dr. Johnston. He sent me a Christmas card every year about this time Come back to Columbia, read the note.

  “Your work on Blake alone warrants a doctorate. Why are you wasting your life, you have so much potential. First the police, now an owner of a sleazy bar? If you had stayed in school, you could have easily been a professor with tenure. Don’t give up on your talents, come back and finish what you started. Please Poet, if that is what you are calling yourself these days, please come back. You will have my unlimited help. Again, in closing, please come back to your family,” finished note. It was the same as it was every year. I knew I wouldn’t go back to school and the Professor knew that too. But at the same time every year, a Christmas card arrived with a pleading letter. Dr. Johnston was nothing if not persistent. If he ever visited the bar, I would see he was taken care of handsomely.

  Sometimes I wish I had stuck with school. I could probably have been happy among the stacks of dusty first editions doing nothing but reading and analyzing. I could have been of the youngest tenured professors in the country. Just think, a whole class there to listen to me lecture on Blake, Wordsworth or Conrad It makes your head spin. Yet, I’d made my choice to be a lone gunman, working without an audience or applause, stealing for a living. The only people that appreciated me were my fence and those who regained the items I stole for them. There is quite a market in which divorced people pay to have certain items stolen back after the paperwork is finalized.

  I went home and dressed for tonight’s activities in dark clothes and running shoes. Then I drove to Brooklyn. It was only 6 pm, but it was already dark. Good for me but I hated it. I like the summer when you could sit out on a patio somewhere sipping drinks as the sun went down around 9 pm. I checked my GPS against the address the snotty receptionist had given me. I was on target.

  The warehouse was in a low, flat industrial building in a business park. It didn’t appear anyone was parked outside of Rainbow’s unit. I saw a couple of people leave businesses, get in their cars and drive away. I waited half an hour and didn’t see anyone else. I made my move. Around the back of the building, by the loading dock, I found the phone lines. I clipped them and turned to the electric meter. After a couple of minute with a socket, I was able to remove it. No phones, no power. In like Flynn.

  Holding my penlight in my teeth, I went to work on the door beside the loading dock. I heard the deadbolt snap open and I pulled on the door. This wasn’t just the place they stored their equipment but the production center where they created the hard copies of films. Along one wall were banks of VCRs with lights glowing. I did a quick count; there were more than 50. In a little office off to one side were two computers hooked up to DVD burners, the expensive ones that burn 10 discs at a time. There was a table in the main room covered with packing materials. Next to it was a stack of cardboard boxes with Rainbow’s logo on them.

  One of these things was not like the other. DVDs I could understand - there had to be some aficionados that bought their porn as a physical hard copy instead of something stored in the digital cloud. But VHS? Did anyone still own a VCR? Maybe some pueblo in Mexico had a village VHS, but in the really, real world, VHS has ceased to be a standard by the turn of the century? I remembered a squib from Newsweek - the last remaining VHS manufacturer closed up shop in 2016.

  I walked towards the front door and found the room they kept the cameras, lights, and equipment in. It was stacked to the ceiling with metal shelving. I took down one the lights, it held the same bulb as I had found in the abandoned building. That was something. There was a desk and a small filing cabinet in one corner. After sitting at the desk, I opened the cabinet.

  The first drawer was full of purchase orders for lenses and various camera parts. I took a glance at each one and replaced them. In the second drawer, I hit pay dirt. There was a file marked repairs, and I read it. What caught my eye was one camera that was repaired at the end of October, around the time Rainbow might have been shooting in the abandoned building in the Bronx. The camera had needed to be cleaned, and the charge had been almost $300. I pocketed the invoice and continued to poke around. Other than another large room full of finished VHS tapes and DVDs I didn’t find anything helpful. I left via the back door, relocked it and headed back into the city.

  I stopped at a little Chinese place I knew and ate spring rolls and Cantonese noodles. It was the best place other than Chinatown to get a fil
l of real Chinese food. I parked my car and hoofed it to the Liar’s Breath. It was dead, being a Monday night and all. I had one drink and was determined to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Then Farrell came in wearing that heavy woolen coat and her gunny trailing behind her.

  There was no small talk. She said, “We’re doing it tomorrow night.”

  “That’s quick, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied, “The cargo ship leaves Wednesday at noon. We have to have the cars there no later than 4 am.”

  “You have the keys?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And one for the alarm?”

  “Yes, that too. Why?”

  “It will make this infinitely easier,” I told her. “This isn’t some little Cracker Jack alarm, it’s state of the art. I have a minute to disarm it. If I don’t have to worry about the key end of it that leaves me more time to work on the alarm box itself. What time do you want to do this?”

  “Two a.m.,” Farrell said.

  “Pick me up at my place at one,” I said.

  “Done.”

  With that business out of the way she and her gunny left. I ordered another Scotch just to soothe my nerves. Farrell seemed to have quite an effect on me, I don’t know why. Maybe it was because she was dangerous and unpredictable? A car thief who carried a gun? Or perhaps the other night had meant more to me than I was willing to admit. The reasons were myriad. I guess it didn’t really matter. After tomorrow night I was sure I wouldn’t hear from her again. She’d get her big score and disappear back into the bowels of Hell’s Kitchen. Her little plan was too big for her to do more than once. She didn’t have the people or the resources.

  I finished my Scotch and tried not to think about her too much. I walked home and crawled under the sheets just after midnight. It was a very early night.

  Chapter 29

  I awoke early Tuesday afternoon, early by my standards. I showered, shaved and made myself presentable. I opted not to wear a suit today but a denim shirt and khakis. I slipped on a pair of oxblood-colored loafers and headed out. My first stop was J&M’s Camera Repair, the place listed on the receipt I had found at the Rainbow’s warehouse.

  It was a small storefront with a neon sign in the window that said, “We Sell Nikons.” Inside was a mix of old and new. There were cameras from the turn of the century and a rack of new digital models. Behind the counter was a rack of film that spanned 20 feet. A bell rang over the door as I stepped inside. A man appeared from the back of the shop.

  “Are you J or M?” I asked.

  “J for Jason,” he said. “M is Marg for my wife.”

  “I need some information,” I told him.

  “I’ll do what I can for you.”

  I pulled the receipt from my pocket and unfolded it. “Is this one of yours?” I asked.

  He put on his glasses and looked over the receipt. “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “You remember anything about it?”

  “Are you a Narc or something?”

  That was unexpected. “Something,” I replied.

  “I was worried this might come back to haunt me,” Jason said.

  “What was the deal with the camera?” I asked.

  “It needed to be cleaned. It was covered in white powder. Not just a little, I mean a ton. I had to take the whole thing down and clean it all.”

  “White powder?”

  “Yes, coke.”

  “The camera was covered in coke?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” he told me, “I thought the powder looked strange. I rubbed some of it on my gums and voila, I knew it was coke.”

  “Any explanation on how this came to be?”

  “No, and I didn’t ask. I cleaned the camera and billed them. I do a lot of work for Rainbow, I didn’t want to ask too many questions. Does that help you at all?’

  “A little, I guess. Thanks for your honesty.”

  We parted, and I drove to the Liar’s Breath for lunch. Today I settled on a toasted club sandwich and a side salad. I figured some vegetables wouldn’t kill me. So Rainbow was involved in drugs. I couldn’t say I was surprised. They were a business on the edge of legality. Who knows where you can end up after just a little push. Did Cindy and Amber find out about this? Is that what got them both killed? The pieces were starting to come together but not fast enough for my liking. I still had no idea who had killed Cindy, who the mysterious Lenny at Rainbow, who greenlighted Amber’s hit, was, and how to spring Bill from Rikers. Like always with this mess, I was at a loss. Mounting evidence but no clear direction to take. I sipped a beer and planned the rest of my day.

  A nap for sure so I’d be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for Farrell tonight, After that, I would double check my equipment and prepare myself for what lay ahead. After I turned the key next to the alarm console, I had sixty seconds to run a patch. The other option was to rush in after clipping the phone lines and finding the cell phone the alarm was using. With that turned off, there would be no way for the alarm to alert the cops. But that was too risky, I’d take my chances with the alarm console. I finished my beer and left the Liar’s Breath for home. After a four-hour nap, I was ready to go again.

  I showered and dressed in Polo jeans and an L.L. Bean flannel shirt. I went to the vault in my basement and retrieved another piece, a compact .45, and an ankle holster. While dressing, I fitted the ankle holster into place on my left leg and taped my butterfly knife onto my right ankle. Some might argue that I was overly sensitive about tonight’s activities. I just wanted to be prepared for every eventuality.

  I slipped on my shoulder holster and checked the contents of the small toolbox I carried when I work. All the pliers, wire cutters and crimpers were in place. And what I needed most, a custom circuit board was still in its protective antistatic bag. I had a developer at IBM make them for me. They were specifically designed for Formosa alarms. I was ready for what lay ahead.

  I still had five hours to wait; it was only just 8 p.m. I made a mental note to wake up at 12:45 in case I nodded off. With time to kill I placed my Casablanca DVD into the machine and watched it, a ritual I’ve followed for too many years to count. I know all the dialogue, all the subtle shadows, and every single plot twist. Even with all that information in my head I still thought it to be one of the greatest movies of all time. When that ended, I tried CNN but started to doze. At 12:40 I roused myself and made my way to the door downstairs. I locked up and waited on the sidewalk.

  Ten minutes later a white Ford van pulled up. The side door opened and for a moment I thought someone was going to whack me. My right hand found the butt of the gun under my left arm. Then Farrell’s gunny from the other night stuck his head out the door and motioned me. I released my grip on the gun and climbed into the van.

  I wasn’t built for comfort. If anything this had been someone’s work van. The floor was dirty, and the paint had scraped away in some places. Sitting on the floor were the gunny and three other kids who looked barely old enough to be out of high school. Farrell was driving. Instead of sitting on the floor I took the empty passenger’s seat. If anyone minded they didn’t voice their opinion.

  During the twenty-minute drive, no one said a word. Not even the radio was on. Everyone had their game face in place, although one of the teenagers looked absolutely pale with fright. One of the kids exited through the van’s rear doors and used a pair of bolt cutters on the chain that barred the way into the lot. He pushed open the gate and Farrell drove in and parked close to the office. Now it was time for me to work some magic. The quicker it went the faster we could all be out there.

  I exited the van with Farrell and her gunny at my heels. At the main set of doors, I paused, looking through the glass. I could see the red-armed light illuminated on the alarm console. I had wished that maybe someone had forgotten to set it tonight, but, no such luck. I turned to Farrell.

  “Give me the alarm key. Unlock the d
oor and close it behind me. Be ready to run if this goes bad,” I said. The key was about two inches long with one of those round heads that makes the lock impossible to pick. I stepped away from the door.

  Farrell walked forward, pushed the key into the lock and turned. You could hear the sound of metal scraping against metal as the deadbolt opened. It was time to go in. I put down my toolbox and opened it. I selected what I needed and slipped them into my pockets. I took the circuit board out of the protective wrapping. Two wire leads were running from it, one green, and one red. At the end of the wires were alligator clips. I was ready. I nodded to Farrell, and she opened the door. I stepped inside.

  The alarm’s warning buzzer started to sound the minute I stepped over the threshold. I walked quickly to the panel and inserted the key. After turning it the red light above it turned to green. I was half done. I turned my attention to the real work at hand. With a prybar, I pulled the console off the wall. I didn’t want to damage it or the wires on the back. I had to use just enough persuasion to get the job done. The mental stopwatch inside my head was ticking. How long had I been in here? Fifteen seconds? Longer? I didn’t pause to think.

  There was a mass of wires running from the wall to the back of the console. I quickly sorted through them and found the two main leads I needed. I clipped the wires from my circuit board to these leads and held my breath. The warning buzzer stopped. Gingerly, I picked up the console face and looked at it. The green ready light was flashing on and off. The board was working. Now the alarm was stuck in a loop. The circuit board reset the console and told it everything was okay. As long as it was hooked up, there would be no problems. I mopped my brow and waved at Farrell and her gunny.

  They hadn’t rehearsed this, I knew. Amateurs never do. The gunny went back to the van to get the drivers. Farrell unlocked and opened the double windows at the front of the showroom used to drive cars in and out. I stood back and watched, my part of this little caper was now over. Farrell kicked open the door to the manager’s office and came out bearing five sets of keys. She passed them out to waiting drivers. There was some commotion as they tried to figure out which keys fit which cars but after a few minutes the engines were humming, and the cars were slowly pulling out through the window.