by Rob Sedgwick
Post-divorce, in her new life with Ben, Mom could sit around all day and become a lady who does lunch, but instead she gets her ass back into school and within a short period becomes a top-notch therapist who works with children with learning disabilities. When she is brought a painfully shy six-year-old whose parents have been told their child has tested as severely learning disabled, she evaluates the child herself, looks rules and the proclamations in the eye, tells them to fuck themselves, and determines he has social anxiety disorder but that he is also a genius.
When she walks into a restaurant, she usually goes straight to the table she wants and sits down. If a maître d’ or waiter says the table is reserved, Mom will give them a smile that could peel paint off an ancient radiator and says, “Not now it’s not.” If they persist, she cheerfully gets up and says, “That’s it, we’re leaving,” always making them feel they’ve blown the opportunity of a lifetime.
I follow in her wake, an obedient duck.
18
The clanging of my grandparents’ ancient and superbly made rotary telephone, which was dense enough to crack coconuts, roused me from the most important vodka and orange juice in history. It startled and beckoned my central nervous system just like the opening bell of the Central Park Carousel. The reception was so clear it sounded as if Warren Levi was sitting on my bed.
“Hey, Rob—it’s Warren. How’d you sleep?”
“Okay.”
“Great. Meet me at 26 Federal Plaza at ten thirty. I’ll be outside waiting for you.”
The morning of my release, I was up and back on the clock. No longer cocktail hours. I was to meet my lawyer to cut a deal with the district attorney. I brushed my teeth, threw some water on my face, and couldn’t believe this was happening.
I put on some clothes. Tybalt wasn’t there, so I didn’t have to walk him.
I took the elevator downstairs.
Should I bring my gun?
Ha ha, silly me. There was probably a metal detector. I would get caught and sent back to prison.
Also, I didn’t have a gun.
Me and my stupid thoughts. I knew I would have to focus. I had to be more solemn. Too much monkey business.
26 Federal Plaza. Nothing peppy about this building. It was as serious as cancer and government sanitized. Warren, mild but hardly meek, was there to hand-hold.
We went through a metal detector and up the elevator to the seventh floor. First we met with my pretrial probation officer, PO George Durst, a huge fat man whom I’d be visiting every two weeks for the next year.
Then off to see the prosecutor.
As we entered the government-allocated, regulation-sized, antiseptic office, I took a moment to take in the “other side,” and there he was in the personage of Brad Fine. He was the geeky guy, my nemesis who wanted me put away—who would get me, sooner or later.
We were about the same age. He was a schnook. Jordan warned me to watch it because Fine seemed like he was probably “the type of guy in high school who picked his nose and ate it, chewed his fingernails to the bone, was most likely picked on, and now was on the warpath to get everyone back.”
Jordan was right. I could feel that Fine hated me from the second he laid eyes on me.
It was a weird relationship because, on the one hand, he was the enemy, but on the other hand I had to confess to him about everything I did and knew. Whenever I talked to someone intimately about myself, I would always fall in love with what I was talking about, how it sounded, and would always feel somehow closer to whomever I was talking to, like they understood and empathized with me deeply. And he seemed to be asking sincere questions, and because of that sincerity, some part of me actually liked him. But there was still his schnookiness, the pageboy haircut, the Walmart suit, the fact that I was taller than him, blonder than him, that I had a cannon arm, could chuck it at least sixty yards and could get laid pretty much whenever I wanted—at least, he thought I could. So I knew that ultimately he was plotting his revenge. Even though we were trying to cut a deal, he would want me to do time.
Also there was good cop Andy Barton and bad cop Ralph Scott.
“You look better than you did last night,” Andy said. “How’s your dog?”
This made me overflow with fellow feeling. I wanted to hug him.
“Oh, he’s fine, thanks. And thanks for not shooting him. I mean, I don’t know what I would have done if you shot him. Probably something not great…”
Warren gently patted me on the chest as a way of saying stop talking, so I wrapped it up.
“But thanks for asking. I think he’s fine, thanks.”
Oops! Don’t say “Fine”! Don’t antagonize the already miffed prosecutor.
Andy said, “You remember Ralph Scott.”
Ralph said, “Yeah, you look a whole lot better than you did last night.”
“Yeah, I feel a whole lot better, thank you.” I echoed Ralph Scott’s words, trying not to do anything he could take as a slight.
“Okay, guys,” Brad Fine said, as he attempted to take control in his drab blue, untailored, and amateurish suit with his Beatles bangs bouncing into his eyes under his glasses. “Let’s get this thing started.”
These fuckers don’t tell me what to do—I tell them what to do. Okay, so I went to Dartmouth. Sue me. I wanted to go to Yale, but they wouldn’t take me. Boola Boola! Now I have to do this until they court me for the private sector. In the private sector, I will be desired. I will be sexy. I will make tons of money. Not like the shit I make now. Women will want me. My suits will be happy, not drab.
Warren Levi had a secret smile on his face. He knew what Brad Fine was thinking in his off-the-rack threads. Warren’s suit gleamed sharp as a tack. And Warren had the easy, quiet confidence of knowing he worked for one of the top criminal law firms in town and made a small fortune.
“I completely agree,” he said, trying to make Brad feel better. “Rob has come here to cooperate fully with both you and the Drug Enforcement Agency. So, let’s begin, if that’s what you want.”
“Yes. It is what I want. Rob, why was everything in your apartment?” asked Brad.
I’m so sensitive and malleable when I’m being interrogated. All of a sudden I forgot how to spell words like doughnut and our. I couldn’t remember who Thelonious Monk was. I was underwater. What were they thinking? What were they saying? Weird circles and shapes ran through my brain. I was trying to focus on their court and business-speak, but I just felt bewildered and inadequate. Who would ever want to marry me, give me a mortgage, call me Mr. Sedgwick? I was about to say something I shouldn’t. Thank God Warren was there to shut my endless flapping trap.
“Hold on a minute.”
Warren was the smart guy in class who was friends with me. We turned away from Fine and the others for a solo confab.
“Okay, now why was everything in your apartment?” Warren breathed a lot when he was asking me about salient points.
“It’s really my grandparents’ apartment. And I soiled it.”
How would Steve McQueen have acted in this situation?
“Yes, you have soiled it, but luckily they’ve decided not to rope it off for further examination. You can still live there. But didn’t you realize that if you were caught, it would look as if you were the kingpin?”
“What’s a kingpin?”
“The boss, the guy, the man in charge, the person for whom the bell tolls. Jesus, Rob, I’m sorry, but what were you thinking?”
I didn’t know. I was too dazed to be thinking. I was hoping Warren didn’t think I was always so stupid, that he would somehow forgive me. I felt this overwhelming need to connect with him in an arena that I excelled, in which I was impressive.
For a small window there, I was a terrific tennis player.
Would Warren want to play sometime?
It’s such a convenient ga
me for social intercourse.
—
I’m sixteen, in my tennis prime, winning the boys’ tournament at the Murray Bay Golf and Tennis Club in Canada 6–0, 6–0. I kick ass. My trophy is a pewter mug.
I’m not getting high yet or drinking; I can really focus. My groundstrokes are killer; I can pass from both sides easily. My forehand is a ton; I can do anything with it. I get so low on my backhand I can rifle it inside-out deep from the baseline or blast it cross court to the tape and leave an opponent swatting at air, turning his head in wonder. Things are pretty nifty for a while. It even gets me laid for the first time, behind a tennis court. She is a thirteen-year-old swimmer from Jersey with a beautifully lithe and athletic swimmer’s body. I come like lightning.
I suppose the decline of my life paralleled the decline of my tennis career, and by the time I started working with Jordan, my game was slovenly at best. I no longer owned any actual tennis whites.
—
Warren was still waiting for my answer.
“I didn’t know,” I said. “Jordan said it would all work out, that it was only pot and that we would be under everybody’s radar.”
“Didn’t you think he was setting you up to take the fall if something went wrong?”
“No.” In addition to my refreshing ignorance, I was loyal and trusting to a fault.
“The problem now is, they think you’re the main guy—the protagonist in this play, as it were.”
“As it were”—something Linus would say at his grandparents’ house overlooking the Hudson during cocktail hours. So civilized, limpid.
“But I’m not. It’s Jordan’s deal through and through.”
I wasn’t that fucking stupid. Well, maybe I was, but my deep sense of injustice was getting a little piqued there. The good thing about my anger is that it brings out the fence-swinging proletariat in me and I don’t feel confused anymore.
Warren, sensing that I was getting a little miffed, settled me down.
“All right, let’s just go in there, and you tell them about Jordan and anyone even remotely connected to this—and remember, it’s like you can’t be a little bit pregnant, you tell them everything, otherwise they rip up the deal and you’re looking at five years minimum. And if you feel even the slightest hiccup about something, you call timeout and we come out here, capisce?”
“Yeah, I fucking capisce. Let’s go.”
I love it when I feel tough, resolved. It makes me feel manly. Of course, it’s a simpleton’s notion of manly, sans complexity, self-reflection, depth, and empathy, but at least it’s direct, pure. It wipes away any possibility of flip-flopping, and simpletons can in fact get a lot done. And often triumph.
For two hours, I blabbed about everything I knew. I blabbed about Seth and his speech impediment; about Jordan and his Shaft jacket and Bronco; about how I wanted a Shaft jacket and Bronco; about Diego Robles, the Mexican gangster; about Hector, about whom I knew nothing; about Jim the driver; perhaps even Soupy Sales.
Also, Barry Lombardi.
I hadn’t had much to do with Barry, but I knew he dealt in even more volume than Jordan. Where we were only doing about a quarter ton a month, he was doing about half a ton. He was big doings. He looked like Tiny Tim if Tiny had tiptoed to the dark side.
Barry went to high school with Nikko and Jordan. In science class, he would raise his hand as if to ask a question and when called upon would clutch his head and say his brain hurt. Presumably this was from the science lesson, possibly from life. In crowded elevators, he would cower in the corner and whimper like an abandoned puppy. He would routinely light his farts on fire.
Months after that day at 26 Federal Plaza, I was at a bar in the East Village.
Night, winter, lots of snow.
The place was really gross, reeking of bad booze and cigarettes. There was enough graffiti on the walls that it could rub off on you. A guy who was sitting next to me at the bar said hello. I remembered we’d gone to high school together, his long hair and pimples, but not his name. He remembered mine, said his name was Adam Roth, and that he’d heard about my situation.
How did he know about my situation? I hadn’t seen him since high school. Then I noticed Jordan outside the window, wading through the snow like a wobbly Abe Lincoln on his way to school. What was he doing there? What’s with these coincidences? I was getting very jumpy.
All of a sudden, Adam pulled back from the bar. Revealed was an evil Tiny Tim–like character whose face was caked with hatred. Looking straight ahead, not looking at me, the face said,
“Rob, it’s Barry. Remember me?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard that you flipped and I think you are a fucking asshole. We’re going to take care of you.”
Adam Roth leaned forward again, blocking my view of Barry. The whole thing played out as if choreographed. I didn’t imagine Barry meant “take care of” in any happy sense, and I got the fuck out of that bar.
There was a collective “Hmmm?” from Andy Barton, Ralph Scott, and Warren Levi.
“We didn’t know anything about this Barry Lombardi.” Brad Fine was actually almost smiling, a happy undertaker. “It’s a good piece of information, very helpful.” He had great teeth. They were long. They were sharp and white.
Warren nudged me from under the table. Bingo.
Continued cooperation looked good.
We stood to leave, all shaking hands. Andy Barton (the good cop) gave me his beeper number. “It’s a unique situation, because with you guys it’s only pot and there were no firearms, but you never know.”
Brad Fine didn’t like Andy Barton’s overture—not the overture itself, but the kindness with which it was extended. It would no doubt be noted in the Book of Brad Fine.
—
Later that night, I ended up at 101st and Broadway, at Brats.
An utter shithole. But it was my shithole.
My friend Moss, the guy with friends in high places at the Post House, was behind the bar. He and I hung out and drank together constantly. Tales of his strength belittled Samson’s. While arm wrestling a friend of his named Sonny, Moss pushed so hard he snapped Sonny’s forearm in two. Sometime after the incident, all joshing and feeling badly, he asked Sonny if he wanted to go lefty. He could be seen wandering the wide boulevards of upper Broadway, an obscure volume about economics that he was actually reading under his arm, happy to discuss theory and practice with anyone willing to listen to him talk. He protected me as an older brother would.
He was also terribly sensitive. When I called to tell him about my bust, he ran right over to my apartment.
“Could you end up going away?” he asked, almost squealing.
“Yeah, maybe.”
He looked like a child near tears. “Well, what the fuck am I going to do then? Can’t they just put some bars on the windows, and we can hang out here? We can order out.”
He would routinely fuck women in the bathroom of the bar. He would also do his military presses there, using the women as weights, lifting them over his head. He maintained this would accentuate his deltoids and improve his rebounding skills.
At the bar that night, I was the hero, the king, the go-to guy. I learned that many of the guys had either done time, had serious legal situations, or were active hoodlums. They slapped me on the back and bought me drinks. We were all brothers. Their rap sheets were impressive: drug dealers, a thief of fine gems, a thumb-breaker, a hit man—five years for armed robbery, two and a half for grand larceny.
“But I was only in for a day and a half,” I said, still hoping to be part of their team. “You guys did real time.”
“You were inside, right?” said the five-years-armed-robbery guy in coke-bottle glasses. “They shut the door, right? You couldn’t get out, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know.”
I suppose I did.
Jordan walked into the bar. It was his hangout as well when he was uptown, but I knew he was probably there to see me. He didn’t look so great. We weren’t supposed to see or talk to each other; our phones were tapped, and we were under surveillance.
Jordan sat down and ordered a drink from Moss, who gave him one on the house. Moss offered his condolences in the manly way that manly men do. Jordan tipped his head in thanks, then motioned me over.
It was a long five steps. I felt like I was on stilts and about to tip over.
He didn’t look at me, but said, “Meet me in Riverside Park tomorrow, around your place, about eleven.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you then.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to see each other or anything.”
“I’d show if I were you.”
He shot his drink, dragged himself up from the barstool, and shuffled out.
At ten thirty the next morning, Tybalt was trying to hustle me up from my Cuervo hangover to go out. I pressed the cassette player on my bureau and out came Miles Davis’ “Flamenco Sketches.” Tybalt rolled over onto his back, spread-eagled on the floor, his ears pert and antennae straight, his entire being riveted to the music. He did this with pieces he particularly liked. Of course he had heard this piece many times before, but this was the first time it took hold of him.
When it was time to go, he insisted on staying. I had to drag him out of the apartment snarling, and he even snapped at me. How dare I interrupt his meditation of this brilliant mournful jazz? When I finally got him out of the apartment and we headed toward Riverside Park, he seemed to be turning the muffled but searing trumpet phrases around in his head, replaying them, haunted by them.
We found Jordan on a park bench, smoking by himself. He looked even worse than I did.