by Ira Gold
IRA grins and pulls a Beretta from his waistband, checks the chamber. He does the same for the Magnum he keeps holstered under his leather jacket. “I’m ready.” He moves his head like a rooster. “Maybe I’ll go to Brighton for some Russian food.” With that he saunters off, and I imagine him wiggling his tail in an attempt to attract an assassin’s attention.
“Man’s crazy,” Moron the mercenary says.
I examine this Moron. He’s as Irish as IRA, though he has none of the Irish madness of which Auden writes so movingly. Heavy bags hang in crescents under his eyes, as if he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in a decade. Gray stubble covers his face. With his hooded look, he appears dangerous but not unreasonable.
I am tempted to ask where he is heading, but he’d never tell me. He waits, as if he, too, wants to talk. But then he crosses the street. I watch as he gets into his car and drives off.
Where am I to go? I cannot chance bringing death and devastation on Judith and the kids. Nor can I vanish and ever hope to return, for Vinnie has been unequivocal about staying local.
Pauli Bones walks out of the club. He nods at me and goes into his pocket. My bowels loosen. I think he’s going to whack me right here. But he pulls out his money clip and peels off a couple of bills. This shocks me so that I don’t even reach for it.
“Take the money,” he orders.
Being a made guy, he could take advantage and forget to pay back small debts to an associate like me. But this is not the first time Pauli Bones has acted decently. I glimpse into his eyes and they reflect nothing, not even insanity. This is as kind and benevolent as Bones will ever get. “Thanks, Pauli,” I say.
“Get the fuck out of here. No hanging around the club.”
17
A Café Runs Through It
For no reason, I walk north.
I turn the first corner and stop. I’m at a loss. A second ago I had a crew, people who I might have killed for and, more reluctantly, died for. Now I’m trapped in a deadly maze. I smell the Minotaur’s foul breath as it seeks to devour me. I need to get off this stinking street.
The day started one hundred years ago, but it’s only seven o’clock. Exhausted, I still schlep the bag I packed that morning. But with nowhere to go, I am condemned to schlep for eternity.
Only one place, one safe haven, occurs to me—Stamm Tisch. I can’t resist even though a person of normal instincts should avoid such places whenever possible. One prefers even the failed corporate bonhomie of a Starbuck’s to the independent coffeehouse that attempts to resurrect the intellectual spirit of pre-war Vienna or 1950s Paris, not to mention the earliest Rationalist gathering places of Baroque Europe. But Stamm Tisch has one advantage. In Sheepshead Bay, such a place had all the cachet of a smelly, demented poet.
Yes, I remember that Ivan thought he had seen me there. But that was a freak occurrence, not to be repeated. He left convinced that even I, despite all my interests, would not be gullible enough to fall for Stamm Tisch’s tricks.
The joint, however, soothes. My father would have loved the atmosphere. Everyone else I know shuns Stamm Tisch as he would any place not directly related to sex, violence, or money. Outside is Islamabad. Inside is as safe as a cave in Bora Bora.
The half-dozen-block walk to the café keeps me on high alert. I duck into alleys if I sense a car slowing. I sniff the air for toxins and run when the street clears of people. Thus, I arrive at the café puffing.
The barista, a chunky woman with dyed blonde hair and dangling pearl earrings, notices nothing amiss. She is this place’s one Lower Brooklyn touch. Sleek, bright-eyed actress types staff Manhattan cafés and size up each patron with the accuracy of seasoned hookers. They stay alert for those in the entertainment industry who might save them from their glamourless existence.
This barista sees me at the counter and decides this is the perfect moment to bus tables. I wait and think of another advantage of Stamm Tisch besides its unholy attachment to the life of the mind that so repulses the local inhabitants. It’s rush hour. The subway disgorges a thousand people every ten minutes. The street becomes so crowded that a carload of gunmen would be hard-pressed to open fire without killing scores of bystanders. Even Vlad does not want the aggravation that would ensue from such a massacre.
The woman finally draws a cappuccino. I take it to a table near the counter, farthest from the window. I wish for some heavy-duty Motrin to stanch the throbbing above my right eyebrow and hope that a shot of caffeine relieves the migraine pain.
Settling in, I begin to believe that I have found the best hiding place of all of Vinnie’s crew. This neighborhood anomaly provides the obscurity accorded to all things even marginally intellectual. Unfortunately, it closes at eight. I have an hour to think of something.
I pull out the book that I grabbed from my shelf—Persian Letters by Montesquieu. Why not? Long ago, my father—never one to talk about his business, gambling, or scholarly interests—mentioned this work as one of his favorites. So I have long been curious to find out why.
I won’t bore the reader with the genius of this book by one of the most erudite Westerners who ever lived, who gave the world the concept of governmental checks and balances, who obsessed over notions of liberty and tyranny with the same force of mind that people today use to strategize about snagging a spot on alternate-side days. He critiqued the vanities, delusions, and pretentions of his society with the satirical force of a Petronius or a Rabelais. I won’t get into his advanced ideas on the rights of women, on economic justice, on limiting the role of religious intolerance (and hence religious leaders) in public life. I can just say that this book is quite appropriate to read in the context of everything else going down. “Letter 48,” for example, suggests taking men as you find them, and when people are said to be good company, often the reason is simply that they have the more civilized kind of vices. Civilized vices. Sweet. Quaint. I need those. Not the savage crushing of the weak, the surprise bullet in the neck so prevalent today in all walks of life. Drunken debates, gregarious gluttony, sordid sex, luscious sloth. Our hyper materialism and focus on the buck makes us lose touch even with simple hedonism.
Montesquieu is my only companion. After reading for about thirty minutes, the pressures of the moment force me to close the book. I need to plot my next move.
I look around. A coed with heavy glasses and earphones chews on a sandwich while she watches something on her iPad. An old lady sips from a paper cup with a raised pinky. And at the table nearest the door, a hard-looking, heavily painted woman reads a newspaper.
I zero in on her. She has dyed her hair albino white and covers her cheeks with so much rouge that it looks as if someone has slapped her around. Her sleeveless gray blouse displays wiry arms and a tattoo of a mushroom (or a mushroom cloud) and I see that she’s not actually reading the paper. She gazes intently out the window, as if expecting someone.
I tell myself not to worry. People use cafés for meeting places all the time. People naturally scan the horizon.
Who is this woman? The rackets, though not on the cutting edge, do reflect the culture at large. Thirty years ago a woman’s only career option would be to run a whorehouse. But today a few have set themselves up as jewel thieves, drug runners, and even hit people.
It takes a great deal of energy to tamp down panic. Even in this neighborhood, with its dearth of bloggers, screenwriters, and social-media types, the café attracts a certain clientele, mostly the very old and students from Kingsborough Community College. Economic necessity forces these women (always women) to live here, and this place alerts them to the world beyond. Their well-proportioned hair and unadorned faces mirror the style of the more naturalistic world to which they aspire.
This woman exudes a Vinnie Five-Five ethos, where a hard, almost shellacked, surface protects her from the vicious blows that injure the naive and unsuspecting.
My nerves tingle. She has fingered me. I had been wrong about Ivan. He hadn’t just wandered by earlier in the
day. He had come looking for me. He knows my weakness for Mittleurope. He sent this woman to watch for me. I need to bolt. Fuck Vinnie Five-Five with his warning to stay close. Away from all this, I stand a chance. Here I’m a dead man.
I am about to charge out the front door and leave Brooklyn to the thugs and yuppies vying for its control.
Then Ariel enters the café.
I want to melt into the walls. Why bring her further into this mess? She grew up here, but she has no part in the action. Maybe her father had pointed to a family down the block and claimed with a sagacious nod that they were connected. Men of his narrow ilk often mistook a Sicilian heritage with membership in the Cosa Nostra.
Few, in actuality, can make it as a mobster. To be a gangster takes perfect self-regard combined with ruthless cruelty and a willingness to annihilate anyone who crosses your path. Only when these conditions are met does a person have any chance to rise in an organization that, like most institutions in our winner-take-all-society, provides a rich and adventurous life to those who climb the ladder and little but heartache to everyone else.
I, in truth, lack the above-mentioned qualities. Ruthless mainly on myself, I loathe my ambivalence. Why hadn’t I left the rackets years ago? I regret not finishing high school. I could have opened a dojo and taught martial arts. I’m good with my hands. Instead, I’m a gangster who vomits at the prospect of real violence. Instead, ashamed and trembling, I cower in my chair, hoping a harmless woman will not notice me.
But Ariel sees me attempting to slither under the table. Her forlorn expression morphs into a delighted smile. She approaches. “Here again? What are you doing? How did it go with, with . . .” She stutters to a stop. She has had another beer or two since I left her. Then she falls into the chair across from me and asks directly, “What’s going on?”
If I tell her about my afternoon, she would crumple in horror. Still, I debate opening up. She’s buzzed and anyway not the judgmental type. And she’d be delighted to hear me speak in sentences like a normal person. I consider a second longer and then answer. “Fuck.”
“You’re such a chatterbox.” She speaks with the abruptness of the oblivious. She seems to have forgotten the situation I’ve gotten into. Or maybe she thinks that since I’m sitting in a café like nothing happened that nothing happened. Alcohol stops the inexorable forward motion of time and fate. She asks me that since I skipped lunch, if I want to have dinner.
Meanwhile, I imagine my slashed and bloody torso resting, headless, in a box.
She stands over me. Will she make a scene if I tell her to get lost? I gulp down the rest of my coffee. “Let’s get out of here.”
On the way to the door, we pass the tattooed woman who doesn’t even glance our way. Outside I’m unable to accept being utterly wrong in my reading of the woman’s intention; I peek into the café’s window hoping to catch her talking angrily into her phone, reporting the arrival of Ariel and my leaving the café without being killed. But she does nothing. Ah, if my certainties have no basis in reality, where does that leave my speculations and educated guesses?
Ariel, in a voice a touch too loud, chirps, “So where are we going?”
I shrug.
“Are you hungry?”
“No.” This bit of truth comes out angry and dismissive.
Ariel finally stops. “If you don’t want company, just say so. Maybe . . . another time.”
Ignoring this, we continue to walk side by side. Even I don’t understand my problem. I like Ariel. More than that. I’m in the mood for her. She’s from another world, one I just know from books. Being sick of women who get off on their connection to the connected had been the first symptom that I was tired of the business. Not to mention that I’d like to fuck Ariel into unconsciousness. I believe this feeling mutual.
Ariel stops in front of a house that lies midway between Avenue X and Avenue Y on East Third Street. The houses on this block, attached and identical, all have high stoops with garages under the porches. Construction workers, small shopkeepers, and lower-level civil servants without the means to escape to Staten Island live here.
“So this is my place. My mom’s place. Thanks for walking me.”
My vision of Ariel’s home differs from the inelegant pile that looms over us. I imagine her in a chic Village brown-stone, an Afghan prayer rug covering her floor and a mural painted by an artist friend enlivening her walls. Colorful pillows on her futon add the final touch. This vision comes to me unbidden. Maybe I should have been an interior designer.
Ariel breaks me out of my reverie when she lunges for an awkward hug. Her head tilts up and my lips graze hers.
She reacts by tightening her grip and squashing her breasts against my chest. Her mouth desperately seeks mine. One of my eyes scans the street for danger. The other I keep on Ariel, who loses herself completely in the smooch. She rubs against me. Our tongues meet, attempt to knot. All this would have been more pleasant if I weren’t afraid of being gunned down.
I pry her legs apart with my thigh. It rests at the base of her crotch until the heat of my flesh penetrates her jeans. She moves her lips away from mine and moans.
Then she softly reengages by standing on her tiptoes and licking my cheek and chin before suctioning against my mouth again.
After a minute I pull away and whisper, “I’ll call you.”
Ariel watches me take two steps before she orders, “Stop. Come inside.”
“Your mother lives here.”
“So?”
“She’ll take one look at me and call the cops.”
As if reluctant to be detained, I take another quick step before Ariel offers, “I’ll let you in the side door. Go to the basement. It’s finished. Mostly. There’s a bed and a bathroom.”
I make no move.
“Since her knee replacement, my mother never goes down, not even to do the laundry.” Ariel speaks urgently, intent on selling me.
I manage to appear undecided.
“She’s also hard of hearing. I use the basement as my office, so she won’t be suspicious if I spend hours down there.”
I come toward her and she grabs my hand and leads me to the side of her house. “I’ll come around and let you in.”
Just being in the alley makes me feel safer. I marvel at the coincidence of meeting Ariel on this day of all days when it has been years since I have met a woman I like. And it’s been forever since an attraction has been this mutual.
Suddenly, the side door flies open. Ariel stands on a landing above a narrow, twisty staircase. I follow her down.
Ivan and the Russians would have no idea. True, Frankie Hog saw her, but he would never believe a woman like Ariel could live on Avenue X. I am safe here. I imagine emerging after years of living underground and finding the whole of Sheepshead Bay a smoldering ruin.
18
Dark Sanctuary
The room is long and low. My head brushes the dropped ceiling. The varnish on the pressed wood panels has faded, giving the walls a yellowish tint. Immediately to the left of the staircase is the washer/dryer. The office that Ariel talked about consists of a desk sandwiched between a deep chrome sink and the closet-sized toilet. Next to that is a stall shower with black and white tiles, cracked and filthy. The room opens into a wider but almost totally empty space. In one corner are some bowed bookcases with rotting paperbacks. In another corner is a bed, its mattress bare.
“When I was a teenager I thought I’d move down here,” Ariel says. “Mostly to escape my younger sister.”
“It’s comfortable.”
“It’s depressing.”
The mind makes a heaven of hell. To me this decrepit cellar smells sweetly of sanctuary. It reminds me of Judith’s basement apartment. I throw my bag on the floor and go to the bed.
Ariel grimaces as I stretch out. “That mattress is kind of grimy.”
I sit up.
“Listen, do you want a drink or something? We have Diet Coke. Or beer? I think I finished the last one.
But I can run out. I also have a bottle of vodka in the freezer.”
“Anything.”
She takes the steps two at a time. Her eagerness to please baffles me. I am an inarticulate punk, on the run from professional punks. Does she perceive life and excitement in this grubby story? What would happen if I started talking? Or worse, if I started discussing the waning of the cultures in which we both live, throwing in a quote or two? I’d lose every bit of dangerous allure. Besides, old habits are hard to break. Refined conversation is like a language I understand perfectly but cannot, or am afraid to, speak.
While she is gone, I explore the basement further. I check out the bookcase. I’m always a little surprised by books that aren’t Penguin Classics. They all seem, somehow, flimsy. Mostly there are mysteries with a smattering of texts that Ariel probably did in school—Oliver Twist, Huck Finn, a collection of Wallace Stevens’s poetry. A pocket-sized paperback of “Howl” catches my eye. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. It might be an indictment of the society, but Ginsberg is also congratulating himself for knowing the best minds. I’d like to see what kind of poetry he would write concerning the minds of Gus Spoleto or IRA.
I go back to the bed, which is the only place to sit down other than in Ariel’s desk chair.
More minutes pass. Did her mother find out about me and tell her how stupid she is to harbor a man hunted by a pack of killers?
War sucks ass. The assassins themselves need to be disgusted by the bloodshed before it stops. That takes awhile. I pace and worry that the tread of my shoes can be heard upstairs.
So I tiptoe over to Ariel’s computer. No password is needed so I get online and start to read the financial news. My father gave me a few shares of this and that, which I’ve added to now and then. Every quarter I collect 200 in dividends. Even gangsters retire. It’s a start, even if it’s a lousy start.
GE down a quarter point. Why, why get out of bed? The market fucks with you worse than the Mafia. Better stick with loan-sharking and drug dealing. Less risk. Still, I read the Bloomberg home page. For making money, stocks hold my interest like nothing but drug dealing.