Most of all, he’s worried about his bags.
The one he’s carrying is okay. It’s the one he checked that he thinks about now. Did they search it? Run it through an X-ray machine? Suppose it’s been stolen or lost? Does he dare put in a claim for it? Is he going to be able to manage it on the train from the plane? Can his back take the weight?
About the only thing he doesn’t worry about is the one thing he should: Rommel. And, in particular, Rommel’s nose. But he has no way of knowing about that.
He tightens his seat belt and prepares for impact.
Bobby Manley is “catching” this afternoon for Delta Baggage Crew 2. This means that his partner, Teddy Siskowitz, will lift each bag as it comes off the unloading ramp of the plane and, in the same motion, toss it to Bobby. Usually, the toss isn’t really a toss at all: The bag is in Bobby’s hands even before Teddy lets go of it. But occasionally, mostly with smaller items, the toss is really a toss, especially with Teddy, who’s got muscles in places where some people don’t even have places, and who likes to show off a lot.
It’s Crew 2, Teddy Siskowitz and Bobby Manley, that is assigned the first run to Delta 562 at Gate D-17. Teddy drives a little tractor that pulls five baggage cars snakelike to the belly of the plane. Bobby walks to meet him. Regulations prohibit anyone but the driver from riding on the tractor or the cars, ever since Walter Mayberry slipped between two of the cars he was straddling and broke his leg.
The walk is a long one, and it’s made worse by Bobby’s hangover. He woke up this morning with a major-league headache, vowing never again to mix rum and vodka, no matter how cool it may seem at the time.
It is this same hangover that has kept Bobby’s sense of balance slightly off all day, as well as his sense of timing. Usually, he and Teddy get a nice rhythm going: As Teddy brings each bag up, Bobby’s reaching for it. But today they’ve been just a hair off at times. It’s cost Bobby a number of close calls and two outright errors, which Teddy has been quick to broadcast to an invisible crowd on his imaginary public-address system.
It just so happens that Bobby makes one more error this afternoon, as they’re unloading Delta 562.
Not only is his timing off again but the weight of the bag surprises him. True, Teddy isn’t supposed to call out “Heavy!” unless the bag is heavy for its size. But for some reason, Bobby just doesn’t expect the weight of this one, and it slips right through his hands, hitting the tarmac with a thud.
“And the big E lights up once again!” Teddy announces for anyone within earshot.
Since it has landed upside down, Bobby has to stoop to roll the bag over before picking it up. But even if he wasn’t tired and hungover, Bobby Manley’s nose is simply too insensitive to pick up the faint odor of Florida Breeze that has just been released by the breaking of a small glass bottle at the top of the black duffel bag.
But that same odor proves to be the undoing of a far more sensitive nose than Bobby’s. While not noticeable enough to arouse the suspicion of Tommy McAuliffe five minutes later, the odor is just strong enough to mask the scent of anything else in the bag, and Rommel obediently stands his ground as it passes him. He will, in fact, suddenly lie down twenty-seven bags later, alerted by the smell of a $5 bag of marijuana inside a backpack belonging to the young man who had sat alongside Michael Goodman during the flight from Fort Lauderdale.
Goodman thanks the flight attendant as he steps from the plane and begins the long walk to the baggage-claim area. Some of the passengers are met by families and loved ones. Little children run forward for hugs and presents, causing Goodman to remember his own daughter and worry about her headaches.
Although he feels a momentary pang of jealousy toward those lucky enough to have people waiting there to meet them, in a sense, he need not: For the truth is that Michael Goodman has a waiting party, too. As Goodman walks, clutching the smaller of his duffel bags tightly against his side, two men fall in behind him at a distance. Their names are Antonio Rodriguez and Sixto Quinones, but on the street, they are known as “Hot Rod” and “Six.” They work for one Pedro Aguilar, who in turn answers to a Mister Fuentes from Miami. They tend to kill people. But not today. Today, they have come to the airport with instructions to meet Delta Flight 562, spot a little middle-aged gringo who’ll be wearing turned-up jeans and carrying a black bag, and follow him to find out where he goes.
By 3:45 that afternoon, as they walk through the terminal, they’ve already completed half of their assignment. Michael Goodman, of course, is totally oblivious to their presence.
He reaches the baggage-claim area, where for the first time, he glances around to see if there’s anyone who looks like he might be a police officer. But Goodman realizes he has no idea what a police officer would look like out of uniform. Would he be a big man, of Irish or Italian extraction? Might he be wearing mirrored, aviator-type sunglasses? Would he look like Clint Eastwood or maybe Sylvester Stallone?
All he sees are people like himself, intent on retrieving their luggage, paying him no attention whatsoever. He decides things are as safe as they are going to get.
There is a ringing noise, and the carousel belt begins to move. Bags appear - brightly colored suitcases, duffels of all shapes and sizes, and cartons wrapped with rope and tape. It isn’t long before Goodman spots his own large, black duffel bag. He lets it go around once, not so much out of caution, but because he’s simply unable to get close enough to the conveyor belt to grab it the first time. The second time by, he pulls it free, noticing as he does so that there’s a wet stain near the zipper. There’s also an odor coming from it, a perfume smell he can’t quite place.
The train from the plane turns out to be a thing of the past. These days, the poor man’s trip to the city starts out with a bus ride. Goodman boards, lugging his two duffels, envious of the business travelers who have only their attaché cases to carry, and, in particular, of the two Spanish men across the aisle, who are empty-handed. One of them is nice enough to help Goodman lift his larger duffel onto the overhead rack, grunting under its weight.
The bus brings them to a place called Howard Beach, which is actually a subway stop and not a beach at all, as far as Goodman can see. He boards the A train, finds a seat. He remembers hearing of Howard Beach. It was where John Gotti lived when he ran the Mafia. He looks around the train for Italian types with pencil-thin mustaches, but sees only blacks, Puerto Ricans, and airport commuters like himself.
The train seems to take forever as it winds its way past Ozone Park, Rockaway Boulevard, East New York, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and then on to Flatbush and downtown Brooklyn, before plunging under the East River and into subterranean Manhattan. Goodman clutches both his duffels in his lap, one on top of the other, the smaller reaching almost to his chin.
At the Broadway/Nassau Street stop, he changes for the Lexington Avenue line, struggling down the connecting corridor under the weight of his bags. He rides the express to Eighty-sixth, where he exits, leaving himself a six-block walk home. He could change once again and take the local to Ninety-sixth, but the four-block walk back would be uphill and more than his back can take.
It’s after five by the time he lets himself into his walk-up studio apartment on Ninety-Second Street between Lexington and Third. He leaves his bags on the floor, bolts the door, and collapses onto his sofa. He is sweaty, exhausted, and in pain. But he’s home.
“We took him home, boss,” the one called Hot Rod says into the pay phone on the corner.
“Good,” comes the reply. “Was he carrying a lot of stuff with him?”
“Yeah, a shitload. Want us to go in an’ get it? We could get in an’ do this guy easy.”
There is a pause, then Hot Rod hears, “No, don’t do nothin’.”
It isn’t simple caution that has prompted the answer, and it certainly isn’t morality. It comes down to a lack of trust, trust being an exceedingly rare commodity in the world of Antonio Rodriguez and Sixto Quinones. Pedro Aguilar, the man on the other end of t
he phone, has no doubt that Rodriguez and Quinones could break into the apartment in a minute, get the stuff, and do the guy without blinking. The problem is that there’s too much product involved to trust them to bring it in. They could skim it, whack it, or even go south with the whole load. No, better to wait, see what Mister Fuentes wants to do about it.
It is only this lack of trust that now keeps Michael Goodman alive upstairs, sprawled out on his sofa, snoring lightly.
Goodman awakes to darkness, and it takes him a moment or two to figure out that he’s back in his own apartment in New York.
He peels his clothes off as he heads to the shower, tripping and stumbling over the larger of two duffel bags he now remembers about.
He lets the shower send its needles of water over his body for what seems like a long time. Maybe he should forget about those duffel bags, he thinks, dump the narcotics into some garbage can before they get him into trouble. No amount of money could possibly be worth risking ending up in jail. Not even 40,000.
He towels off, puts his glasses back on, and stares at his reflection in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. His skin is pale; you’d never know he just got back from Florida. His hair never looks thinner than when it’s wet. He’s taken to fluffing it dry not because curly hair has finally become stylish, but because he looks less bald that way. Somebody once asked him for his autograph before mumbling, “You’re not Billy Crystal, are you?” and walking away.
He dials his mother-in-law’s number. She answers “Hello” in her scratchy voice.
“Hi,” he says. “It’s me. Michael.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m home,” he says. “I’m back.”
“Good. Maybe you can take her for the test tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”
“Sure,” he says. “How’s she doing?”
“So-so.” This is pretty good, Goodman knows. In mother-in-law, so-so means good to excellent, while terrible could suggest anything from a mild cold to a bad hangnail. Dying is where you first begin to get worried.
“What kind of test?” he asks.
“I don’t know, an MRS, or something like that.”
“What time should I pick her up?”
“I gotta leave at eight-thirty.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll be there. Can I talk to her for a minute now?”
“Hold on.”
After a half minute, he hears his daughter’s little voice. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Hi, angel. How you doing?”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be scared.”
“They’re going to put me in a big machine.”
“I’ll be with you, angel,” he tells her. “I’ll take care of you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Are you remembering about the story, Daddy?”
“Absolutely,” he assures her.
It’s only later that it dawns on him that the only reason his mother-in-law’s so anxious for him to take Kelly for the test is that he’ll end up being the one who has to pay for it. His eyes travel to the duffel bags lying on the floor.
He decides that even if he’s going to throw the stuff out, he’s not ready to do it quite yet. So he may as well put it away. And since he’s no doubt looking at big jail time if he gets caught with it, putting it away is transformed to hiding it. But where do you hide three pillowcases full of narcotics in a studio apartment?
He looks around. An amateur, he thinks amateur thoughts: inside the clothes hamper, underneath the sofa, up in the back of his closet, in the oven. He knows just enough to know that those are probably the very first places anyone would look. And yet he can’t come up with anything better.
As a temporary measure, he removes the pillowcase from the smaller duffel and adds it to the two in the larger duffel, which he takes down to the basement of the building. There, each tenant has been given a small storage locker in exchange for a $7.50 monthly increase in rent. The lockers are cages that you can see into. All Goodman keeps in his are a couple of cartons of books and old tax records. To safeguard them, he went out and bought a cheap combination lock, which he keeps set at 0-0-0 so he won’t forget the numbers. He once figured out that if he lives to be seventy-five, the locker will have cost him about $3,000. Now he figures he might as well start getting something for his money.
Back upstairs, he fixes himself an American cheese sandwich, with mustard on one slice of bread and mayonnaise on the other. He pops open a can of Pepsi, sits down on his sofa, and clicks on the TV. The first channel he hits, they’re showing Rocky, the original one, where this down-and-out bum of a club fighter gets given a shot at the heavyweight title, a zillion-to-one underdog. It’s one of Goodman’s all-time favorites, and he’s caught it right at the beginning. He kicks off his shoes and settles back.
Life could be a lot worse, he thinks.
Goodman is up by six. He showers, shaves, and dresses, downs a cup of instant coffee with nondairy creamer and a strawberry Pop-Tart. He’s at his mother-in-law’s apartment a few minutes after eight.
“You’re early,” she tells him.
Kelly comes into the room, still in pajamas. She drags Larus with one hand, rubs her eyes with the other. To Goodman, who hasn’t seen her for a week, she looks tiny and frail.
“Hi, angel,” he says softly. He feels his back twinge when he squats down to be her size, but he deals with it.
“Hi, Daddy,” she says, folding herself into his arms.
It turns out the MRS test is really an MRI. Goodman is allowed to stand off to the corner of the room as they slide his daughter into a tremendous machine that reminds him of a photograph he once saw of something called an iron lung, which they used to put polio victims in. She cries the entire time, not (it seems to Goodman) because she’s afraid of the machine, but because they won’t let Larus into it with her.
Afterward, they tell him the film the MRI machine has made of Kelly’s head will be delivered to her doctor. They’re pleasant enough, but they won’t tell him how it looks, and that worries him.
At the cashier’s station (and Goodman realizes he must have missed that point at which doctors’ offices started having cashier stations), Kelly dries her tears against Goodman’s shirt while Goodman signs a form promising to pay the $1,100 himself if it turns out his insurance doesn’t cover it. He figures that ought to buy him about three weeks.
From there, he takes his daughter for lunch at McDonald’s, where he eats his own Big Mac and finishes most of her Happy Meal. He wonders how long she can survive on french fries and Coke. She looks so pale and thin to him.
He presents her with the plastic dolphin he bought her at the Fort Lauderdale Airport. She seems to like it, but asks him if he can carry it for her. She explains to him that she has to carry Larus, and Larus is very big.
They go to Carl Schurz Park and watch the boats that go up and down the East River. They find a bench to sit on, and Kelly curls up in his arms.
“I’m ready for the story,” she announces.
“Are you certain you’re not too tired?” The truth is, he’s never been a very good storyteller, and he has no particular idea for one in mind.
“I’m certain,” she assures him.
So he does his best.
The Little Princess
Once upon a time, in a far-off kingdom, there lived a little princess-
“Was she a ballerina?”
“Of course she was a ballerina.”
The Ballerina Princess
Once upon a time, in a far-off kingdom, there lived a Ballerina Princess. The name of the kingdom was Yew Nork. It was a kingdom much like the city where we live, except that instead of having tall buildings all around, it had hundreds and hundreds of tall castles. And instead of being surrounded by rivers, it was surrounded by a wide moat. And one other thing: It was a magical kingdom. It was magical because it was a place where things could come true if you wished for them hard enough, and if you tried hard
enough to make them come true.
Now the Ballerina Princess was six years old. She had been born to a beautiful mother and a loving father. But there came a time when her mother had to go away, and of course that made the Ballerina Princess very, very sad.
“Did her mother go to heaven?”
Her mother went to heaven, yes. And that meant that her grandmother had to look after the Ballerina Princess for a while, because her father was so busy with work. But she also had someone else to help look after her. And that was the brave and loyal Prince Larus. So, in a way, the Ballerina Princess was luckier than most little girls, because instead of having just two people to protect her, she had three. And that’s an awful lot, especially when one of them is the brave and loyal Prince Larus.
Even with his eyes closed, he can tell from her rhythmic breathing that his ballerina princess has fallen asleep in his arms. As he looks down at her little face, her tiny mouth slightly open, Goodman aches with worry. The worst part about flying down to Florida was leaving his daughter behind, even for a couple of days. The thought that he might lose her, that she could actually die, is simply too much to imagine.
“Please let my angel be okay,” he says softly. He has always believed, for some reason, that if you give thanks or say prayers out loud, even in just a whisper, it counts more than if you just think the words to yourself.
“Please,” he repeats.
That evening, Goodman drops Kelly back at his mother-in-law’s. She cries when he leaves, and he promises her that it won’t be long before she can come and live with him. His own eyes water as he walks home to his own apartment.
For some reason, Goodman’s key won’t fit into the lock of his door, and he’s forced to ring Tony the Super’s bell on the first floor. Together they trudge up the four flights, where Tony finds he can’t get the master key to work, either. He bends down to inspect the lock.
“Aha!” he announces as he extracts a broken piece of toothpick from the lock. “Here’s the problem.”
Shoot the Moon Page 6