But Raul is not so sure that these are normal circumstances. For one thing, he knows that Mister Fuentes was very displeased about Raul’s being late picking up the car and enraged that twenty keys disappeared as a result. Although Mister Fuentes seemed to believe Raul’s story about being drugged and ripped off by the chiquita, you could tell he didn’t think it was much of an excuse.
Raul had been able to provide a detailed description of the guy who returned the car, and that was good. Mister Fuentes had gotten Johnnie Delgado to call some people in New York, and they’d succeeded in spotting the guy as he got off the plane. At the time, Raul had thought that was good, too. Now he’s not so sure: If they’re sitting on the guy up there, then it figures they don’t need Raul anymore to point him out. And that could be very bad.
Raul knows this can be a cruel business, in which people tend to have exceedingly short memories. Do the right thing fifty times, they take you for granted. Fuck up once, and right away it’s, What has Sheraton done for me lately?
So Raul wakes up early this morning. He knows he’s got a decision to make: Does he go see Mister Fuentes and face the music, however bad it is, or does he split for a while, disappear until they recover the twenty keys, everybody’s happy again, and they all forget about his little fuckup?
By 7:30, he’s still sitting up in bed, but already he’s smoked eight cigarettes. Smoking helps him at times like this, when he’s got to think hard.
* * *
Goodman notices that he’s the only one in the subway car who isn’t black or Hispanic. He knows that wasn’t the case when he got on, though he vaguely remembers a lot of white people getting off at Ninety-sixth. He also notices - not for the first time - that people who ride the subways tend to be short, like he is. He wonders if anyone’s ever done a study on the subject. And if he’s right, if there is a correlation between shortness and subway riding, what’s the cause-and-effect relationship? Does being underground stunt your growth, as it seems to in the case of a mole or a groundhog? Maybe being deprived of sunlight? You never see a giraffe underground, do you?
He feels better when the train suddenly emerges from the darkness in the Bronx. He stays on past 149th Street, having decided to get off at Yankee Stadium. He can’t remember the last time he was there. His father used to take him to ball games when he was a kid, but that seems impossibly long ago, as if in a different lifetime altogether. In this life, for as long as he can remember, all Michael Goodman has done is work. And now, out of a job for three weeks, here he is, trying to find work again.
Russell Bradford finally gives up his battle to fall back asleep. He dresses without showering and doesn’t bother with breakfast: Despite the fact that he’s had nothing to eat in twenty-four hours, food is the last thing on Russell’s mind.
He knows he’s already taken the money from his grandmother’s purse, but force of habit compels him to check it anyway. Finding it empty, he silently curses, then feels bad because he knows Nana’s always been good to him, up to now.
Before leaving the apartment, he tiptoes into the room where his two younger brothers are sleeping. On the floor, in a pile of comic books and video-game accessories, he finds a black plastic water pistol, designed to look like an Uzi or a Mac-10. He picks it up and stuffs it into the waistband of his jeans, covering the handle with his T-shirt.
The walk from Yankee Stadium to 155th Street takes Goodman only five minutes, and he spots the sign for the Bronx Tire Exchange. He’s expected it to be an office building of some sort - not fancy, but at least an office building. After all, they’ve advertised for an accountant. So he’s somewhat surprised to see that instead it’s really nothing but a big garage that spills out onto the sidewalk. In addition to the sign giving the name of the establishment, there are numerous other signs, some attached to the brick front of the building, some wired to the metal bars that cover the windows, a few even standing on the sidewalk or in the street itself.
TIRES NEW & USED RECAPS FLATS FIXED WHILE “U” WAIT BEST PRICES IN THE CITY TIPS ACCEPTED
Although it’s barely 7:30 in the morning, it seems like rush hour at the place. Three cars are jacked up out in front, another four or five inside. Most of them are taxis - not the yellow cabs you see in Manhattan, but the “car service” ones, the gypsy cabs that service the outer boroughs, where the yellow drivers are afraid to go. The employees working on the cars are all black or Hispanic, and most of them seem to be little more than high school age. They wear grimy jumpsuits that look like they’ve never been washed. They work quickly, using what look like electric drills attached to air hoses to remove and replace the lug nuts on the wheels.
Goodman wanders inside, where the noise from the compressors and drill things is even louder. He asks one of the employees where he can find Manny.
“Jes look for a doughnut, man. He be sittin’ on it.” When Goodman looks puzzled, the man points toward a door. A handwritten sign has been taped to it long ago.
OFICE YOU KEEP OUT!
Goodman knocks, gets no answer. Knocks again, more loudly.
“Yeah?” comes a gruff voice.
“I’m here about the job,” Goodman tells the door.
“Wha?”
“The job,” Goodman repeats. “The accounting position.”
Nothing happens for a half a minute. Then Goodman hears locks being slid open, and the door swings out, hitting him squarely in the shoulder.
“Careful!” says the man who’s responsible for the door swinging. “I’m Manny.”
Manny is half human, half black bear. Goodman has never seen a human being with so much hair on his body. His arms, his neck, his chest, his shoulders - he wears a sleeveless undershirt, as though he’s proud to display his pelt - are covered with thick black hair. The back of his hands are hairy. He has hair sprouting from his ears, from his nostrils. The top of his head is bald, but it’s fringed with more of the same black hair, which seems to grow like some weed straight out of a science fiction movie.
“C’mon in,” Manny says.
Goodman enters and waits while Manny resecures three dead-bolt locks.
“Have a seat.”
The room is loaded with clutter, but Goodman sees only one chair, and that’s occupied by what looks like a tiny white inner tube. He moves toward it.
“Not there! That’s my doughnut.” Manny ambles over to it. “Know what a sebaceous cyst is?”
“No,” Goodman says, not sure he wants to, either. He remembers being told yesterday that Manny was having a boil lanced. That’s good enough for him.
“Sa fuckin’ pain in the ass, is what it is!”
Manny lowers himself gingerly onto his doughnut. He points to the other side of the desk, where there is indeed a second chair. This one contains a stack of tire catalogs, magazines, and loose papers. The stack is probably no more than two feet high.
“Put that shit on the floor,” Manny tells him.
Goodman complies, locating a bare spot only with some difficulty.
“Whadjousay your name is?”
“Goodman. Michael Goodman.” Though he’s sure it’s the first time he’s said it.
“Right. Goodman. You come in two aftanoons a week, Monday and Thursday, one to five. You can use my office right here, plentya privacy. Twenty-five bucks an hour, cash. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Come in Thursday. That way, Marlene’ll show you what to do. That’s her lass day. Stupid broad got herself knocked up. Tell you the truth, I’m supprised she could figger out how to do it. Okay?”
“Okay what?”
“Okay Thursday?”
“Okay.”
Michael Goodman has a job.
Raul Cuervas has a problem. He smokes twelve more cigarettes while he tries to think of places to go where Mister Fuentes and his people won’t be able to find him. But with no friends or family, and no money to speak of, he realizes that Mister Fuentes and his people are Cuervas’s only people, too: He has no one else to t
urn to, no place to hide.
So he showers and shaves and dresses, and prepares to take his chances with el viejo. He will acknowledge that he made a mistake. He will humble himself and ask forgiveness. Surely his record is such that he’ll be given another chance.
Instead of heading down to 140th Street, where he’s known, Russell Bradford walks north towards 150th. He’s never done anything quite like this before. Sure, he’s done a little boosting from cars from time to time. He’s shoplifted. He’s even sold a little crack when somebody’s given him some on consignment.
But his situation is different now. A couple packages of frozen meat or a Blaupunkt tape deck aren’t going to do it this time. What he needs is cash, and he needs it fast.
Almost involuntarily, his hand moves to his midsection, where he feels the outline of the gun beneath his clothing. He no longer regards it as a toy. He thinks of it as real. It’s going to help him get paid, get what he’s entitled to for all he’s had to put up with.
He reaches 150th Street, continues walking uptown. He imagines he’s a panther out looking for prey. Nobody ever blames the panther, after all, do they? He’s just out there doing what comes naturally, doing what he’s got to do to survive. Why should we think of people as any different?
Rather than retracing his steps back up to 161st Street, Goodman decides to walk down to the 149th Street station. As he walks, he replays in his head the interview - if you could call it an interview - with Manny. Four hours at twenty-five an hour is a $100; double it and it comes out to 200 a week, cash. Cash is good: It means no withholding, no taxes. But it also means no benefits: no health insurance, no workmen’s comp. And while it’ll pay the rent and put some food in his refrigerator, it sure isn’t the answer to Kelly’s MRI bill or the rest of Goodman’s mounting debts. But they say beggars can’t be choosers, and Goodman was coming pretty close to being a beggar. So he’s grateful to have the job, and for the moment it takes his mind off everything else. Which is a mistake, because, as he nears 150th Street, he forgets to pay attention to his surroundings.
Halfway between 151st and 152nd, Russell Bradford spots an elderly black woman pushing one of those fold-up grocery carts. The cart’s empty, so he figures she’s headed to the supermarket. That means she’s got money on her.
Russell sizes her up. She’s got a purse slung over one shoulder. He could grab it before she’d even know what’s happening.
But something makes Russell hesitate. The woman reminds him a little bit of Nana, and that causes him to hesitate - not so much because of the resemblance, but because he remembers that Nana generally uses food stamps to shop with. He doesn’t want to risk everything for a handful of fucking food stamps. He lets her pass by him.
Closer to 152nd, there’s a wino going through someone’s trash. Russell figures the guy probably doesn’t have a dime on him; he walks by him.
Then he sees the white dude. This guy is made to order. He’s short; he’s got narrow shoulders, glasses. He’s wearing a sport jacket and a tie, like this is fucking Wall Street or something. Dude doesn’t look like he ever gets his hands dirty. And on top of everything, he looks like he isn’t even paying attention to what’s going on.
Russell does a quick check across the street, then up and down the block: nobody but the old lady and the wino. There are some kids up ahead, but they’re all the way up at 153rd, playing some game on the sidewalk. Couldn’t be better.
He waits till the guy’s almost alongside of him before he says something to him.
“Hey, man, you got the time?”
The dude stops, startled by Russell’s voice. Almost involuntarily, he raises his left hand to look at his watch.
“Five after eight,” he says.
“Nice watch, man,” Russell tells him. The truth is, Russell can’t tell a Rolex from a Timex. The dude doesn’t say anything.
“Think you could help me out with a little change?” Russell asks him.
This seems to make the guy uncomfortable. He starts looking around. But, of course, there’s no one there.
“I’m afraid I don’t have any change,” he says, and then adds, “sorry.”
“Any folding money?”
“Sorry,” he says again.
“Me, too,” Russell says. And to show how sorry he is, he reaches to his waistband and lifts the bottom of his T-shirt just enough to reveal the handle of his gun.
Goodman’s first thought upon seeing the gun is that he’s about to lose control of both his bowels and his bladder at the same time. So intense is his concentration in attempting to keep this from happening that he’s unable to react to the situation in any other way: Not only does he say nothing; he can’t even begin to think about speaking.
“Putchya hands down,” the kid says.
“What?”
“Your hands. Put ‘em down.”
Goodman looks, and sure enough, he’s raised both hands slightly, the way a stagecoach passenger might once have signaled surrender to the bad guys in an old Western. He tries to lower them, but they won’t go all the way down.
“Give it up,” he hears the kid telling him. “Your money, your wallet, your watch. Whateva you got.” As he speaks, the kid glances around nervously, up and down the block.
For Goodman, everything seems to be happening in slow motion. Gradually, he regains control of his sphincter muscle and mastery of his urinary function. He wants to speak, wants to assure the kid he’s ready to give up everything. But still he can’t get his voice to cooperate.
The black kid doesn’t seem to know what to do with Goodman’s paralysis. He starts looking up and down the block and across the street. Goodman follows the kid’s glances, trying to see what he’s looking at. When he sees nothing, he suddenly thinks, This kid is as scared as I am. It is that realization that manages to break the spell for Michael Goodman and liberate him from his paralysis. Intellectually, he knows he should be afraid for his life; but in spite of himself, he begins to feel like he’s in a movie scene, that all this is happening to some different person and that he’s just an observer, watching it all from someplace else.
“You heard me, man!” he hears the kid say. But while the kid tries to make it sound menacing, to Goodman it comes out plaintive, as though he’s now being begged for his money.
Goodman the accountant does some quick calculation. He figures he has maybe $12 on him, give or take a token. He knows he should give it up - he’s always reading about people getting killed over pocket change. But no sooner does he think that than his mind starts wandering to the gun. Something about it didn’t look real. And why isn’t the kid pointing it at him? He’s reminded of one of those drawings in a magazine or comic book, where there are all sorts of mistakes you’re supposed to find: What’s wrong with this picture?
So he lies. “I’ve only got $2,” he says. “The watch cost me four bucks on Canal Street.” That much is the truth.
Goodman waits for the kid’s reaction. He expects disbelief and anger. He’s prepared to be hit, to be searched, to be commanded to turn his pockets inside out. But none of these things happens.
Instead, the kid says, “Fuck,” as if he’s just scratched the coating off an instant lottery game and lost. He doesn’t seem angry at all, or even particularly surprised. Mostly, he seems tired all of a sudden.
So Goodman says, “Sorry.”
The kid seems to shrug his shoulders ever so slightly.
“Is that real?” Goodman asks, gesturing toward the kid’s waistband, where the gun is again covered by the T-shirt.
“Uh-uh,” the kid shakes his head from side to side.
“Looks like a water gun.”
The kid doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, looking like he’s liable to start crying at any moment. For the first time, Goodman notices how thin he is. He wonders when the last time was the kid had something to eat.
“You hungry?” he asks the kid.
“No.”
“Sick?”
&nb
sp; “Sorta.”
“Anything I can do to help you?”
The kid smiles and does something that comes out like half laugh, half snort. “What I need, man, you don’t got.”
And slowly, finally, it dawns on Goodman: This kid is a junkie.
Suddenly, there is a single blip of a siren, and both Goodman and the kid turn their heads toward the street. A police car pulls up to the curb next to where they’re standing. The words 40 pct are stenciled on the side. Two uniformed officers step out. One is a white male, the other a black woman. They approach, each resting a hand on a holstered gun. It is the white male who speaks.
“Everything all right here?”
It is clear to Goodman that the question has been directed to him. And it’s just as clear that he can have the kid arrested with as little as a shake of his head, silence, or even sufficient hesitation. But he hears himself speaking.
“Yes, sir” is what he says. “Everything’s fine.”
The officer is apparently less than convinced. Gently, he manages to place his body between Goodman’s and the kid’s; just as gently, he steers Goodman away from the kid, until Goodman realizes that the four of them are now standing in pairs: the white officer with Goodman, the black officer with the kid.
“What’s going on here?” the officer asks him.
“I was just asking him directions to the subway.”
“A little bit out of your neighborhood?”
Goodman notices how young the officer is, wonders if he can really be twenty-one.
“I work up here,” he tells him.
“Where?”
“The Bronx Tire Exchange.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“Manny.”
“Tell him Brian says hello, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And be careful around here.”
“I will be,” Goodman says. “Thanks for stopping.”
“No problem.”
Goodman watches as the officers get back into their car and pull away from the curb. He hears the kid say something, but it’s said so quietly, it takes him some time to realize it was “Thank you.”
Shoot the Moon Page 8