“Be grateful we don’t have to fill out a report, list the titles of the books.”
“The alleged books.”
When we rejoined the others Wally was holding an oversize T-shirt to his chest, modeling it for us. “What do you say?” he demanded. “Is it me? Do you think it’s me?”
“I think it’s the Joker,” Jimmy diSalvo said.
“That’s what I think,” Wally said. He looked at the two Africans, who were smiling uncertainly. “I think it’s a violation, is what I think. I think we got to confiscate all the Batman stuff. It’s unauthorized, it’s an illegal violation of copyright protection, it’s unlicensed, and we got to take it in.”
The two vendors had stopped smiling, but they didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of what was going on. Off to the side, the third man, the fellow with the scarves and purses, was looking wary.
“You speak English?” Wally asked them.
“They speak numbers,” Jimmy said. “ ‘Fi dollah, ten dollah, please, thank you.’ That’s what they speak.”
“Where you from?” Wally demanded. “Senegal, right? Dakar. You from Dakar?”
They nodded, brightening at words they recognized. “Dakar,” one of them echoed. Both of them were wearing Western clothes, but they looked faintly foreign — loose-fitting long-sleeved shirts with long pointed collars and a glossy finish, baggy pleated pants. Loafers with leather mesh tops.
“What do you speak?” Wally asked. “You speak French? Parley-voo Français?”The one who’d spoken before replied now in a torrent of French, and Wally backed away from him and shook his head. “I don’t know why the hell I asked,” he said. “Parley-voo’s all I know of the fucking language.” To the Africans he said, “Police. You parley-voo that? Police. Policia. You capeesh?” He opened his wallet and showed them some sort of badge. “No sell Batman,” he said, waving one of the shirts at them. “Batman no good. It’s unauthorized, it’s not made under a licensing agreement, and you can’t sell it.”
“No Batman,” one of them said.
“Jesus, don’t tell me I’m getting through to them. Right, no Batman. No, put your money away, I can’t take a bribe, I’m not with the department no more. All I want’s the Batman stuff. You can keep the rest.”
All but a handful of their T-shirts were unauthorized Batman items. The rest showed Walt Disney characters, themselves almost certainly as unauthorized as the Batman merchandise, but Disney wasn’t Reliable’s client today so it was none of our concern. While we loaded up with Batman and the Joker, Eddie Rankin looked through the cassettes, then pawed through the silk scarves the third vendor had on display. He let the man keep the scarves, but he took a purse, snakeskin by the look of it. “No good,” he told the man, who nodded, expressionless.
We trooped back to the Fleetwood and Wally popped the trunk. We deposited the confiscated T’s between the spare tire and some loose fishing tackle. “Don’t worry if the shit gets dirty,” Wally said. “It’s all gonna be destroyed anyway. Eddie, you start carrying a purse, people are gonna say things.”
“Woman I know,” he said, “she’ll like this.” He wrapped the purse in a Batman T-shirt and placed it in the trunk.
“Okay,” Wally said. “That went real smooth. What we’ll do now, Lee, you and Matt take the east side of Fifth and the rest of us’ll stay on this side and we’ll work our way down to Forty-second. I don’t know if we’ll get much, because even if they can’t speak English they can sure get the word around fast, but we’ll make sure there’s no unlicensed Batcrap on the avenue before we move on. We’ll maintain eye contact back and forth across the street, and if you hit anything give the high sign and we’ll converge and take ‘em down. Everybody got it?”
Everybody seemed to. We left the car with its trunkful of contraband and returned to Fifth Avenue. The two T-shirt vendors from Dakar had packed up and disappeared; they’d have to find something else to sell and someplace else to sell it. The man with the scarves and purses was still doing business. He froze when he caught sight of us.
“No Batman,” Wally told him.
“No Batman,” he echoed.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Wally said. “The guy’s learning English.”
Lee and I crossed the street and worked our way downtown. There were vendors all over the place, offering clothing and tapes and small appliances and books and fast food. Most of them didn’t have the peddler’s license the law required, and periodically the city would sweep the streets, especially the main commercial avenues, rounding them up and fining them and confiscating their stock. Then after a week or so the cops would stop trying to enforce a basically unenforceable law, and the peddlers would be back in business again.
It was an apparently endless cycle, but the booksellers were exempt from it.
The court had decided that the First Amendment embodied in its protection of freedom of the press the right of anyone to sell printed matter on the street, so if you had books for sale you never got hassled. As a result, a lot of scholarly antiquarian booksellers offered their wares on the city streets. So did any number of illiterates hawking remaindered art books and stolen best-sellers, along with homeless street people who rescued old magazines from people’s garbage cans and spread them out on the pavement, living in hope that someone would want to buy them.
In front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral we found a Pakistani with T-shirts and sweatshirts. I asked him if he had any Batman merchandise and he went right through the piles himself and pulled out half a dozen items. We didn’t bother signaling the cavalry across the street. Lee just showed the man a badge — Special Officer, it said — and I explained that we had to confiscate Batman items.
“He is the big seller, Batman,” the man said. “I get Batman, I sell him fast as I can.”
“Well, you better not sell him anymore,” I said, “because it’s against the law.”
“Excuse, please,” he said. “What is law? Why is Batman against law? Is my understanding Batman is for law. He is good guy, is it not so?”
I explained about copyright and trademarks and licensing agreements. It was a little bit like explaining the internal-combustion engine to a field mouse. He kept nodding his head, but I don’t know how much of it he got. He understood the main point — that we were walking off with his stock, and he was stuck for whatever it cost him. He didn’t like that part but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Lee tucked the shirts under his arm and we kept going. At Forty-seventh Street we crossed over in response to a signal from Wally. They’d found another pair of Senegalese with a big spread of Batman items — T’s and sweatshirts and gimme caps and sun visors, some a direct knockoff of the copyrighted Bat signal, others a variation on the theme, but none of it authorized and all of it subject to confiscation. The two men — they looked like brothers, and were dressed identically in baggy beige trousers and sky-blue nylon shirts — couldn’t understand what was wrong with their merchandise and couldn’t believe we intended to haul it all away with us. But there were five of us, and we were large intimidating white men with an authoritarian manner, and what could they do about it?
“I’ll get the car,” Wally said. “No way we’re gonna schlep this crap seven blocks in this heat.”
With the trunk almost full, we drove to Thirty-fourth and broke for lunch at a place Wally liked. We sat at a large round table. Ornate beer steins hung from the beams overhead. We had a round of drinks, then ordered sandwiches and fries and half-liter steins of dark beer. I had a Coke to start, another Coke with the food, and coffee afterward.
“You’re not drinking,” Lee Trombauer said.
“Not today.”
“Not on duty,” Jimmy said, and everybody laughed.
“What I want to know,” Eddie Rankin said, “is why everybody wants a fucking Batman shirt in the first place.”
“Not just shirts,” somebody said.
“Shirts, sweaters, caps, lunch boxes, if you could print it on Tampax
they’d be shoving ‘em up their twats. Why Batman, for Christ’s sake?”
“It’s hot,” Wally said.
“ ‘It’s hot.’ What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means it’s hot. That’s what it means. It’s hot means it’s hot. Everybody wants it because everybody else wants it, and that means it’s hot.”
“I seen the movie,” Eddie said. “You see it?”
Two of us had, two of us hadn’t.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Basically I’d say it’s a kid’s movie, but it’s okay.”
“So?”
“So how many T-shirts in extra large do you sell to kids? Everybody’s buying this shit, and all you can tell me is it’s hot because it’s hot. I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to,” Wally said. “It’s the same as the niggers. You want to try explaining to them why they can’t sell Batman unless there’s a little copyright notice printed under the design? While you’re at it, you can explain to me why the assholes counterfeiting the crap don’t counterfeit the copyright notice while they’re at it. The thing is, nobody has to do any explaining because nobody has to understand. The only message they have to get on the street is Batman no good, no sell Batman. If they learn that much we’re doing our job right.”
Wally paid for everybody’s lunch. We stopped at the Flatiron Building long enough to empty the trunk and carry everything upstairs, then drove down to the Village and worked the sidewalk market on Sixth Avenue below Eighth Street. We made a few confiscations without incident. Then, near the subway entrance at West Third, we were taking a dozen shirts and about as many visors from a West Indian when another vendor decided to get into the act. He was wearing a dashiki and had his hair in Rastafarian dreadlocks, and he said, “You can’t take the brother’s wares, man. You can’t do that.”
“It’s unlicensed merchandise produced in contravention of international copyright protection,” Wally told him.
“Maybe so,” the man said, “but that don’t empower you to seize it. Where’s your due process? Where’s your authority? You aren’t police.” Poe-lease, he said, bearing down on the first syllable. “You can’t come into a man’s store, seize his wares.”
“Store?” Eddie Rankin moved toward him, his hands hovering at his sides. “You see a store here? All I see’s a lot of fucking shit in the middle of a fucking blanket.”
“This is the man’s store. This is the man’s place of business.”
“And what’s this?” Eddie demanded. He walked over to the right, where the man with the dreadlocks had stick incense displayed for sale on a pair of upended orange crates. “This your store?”
“That’s right. It’s my store.”
“You know what it looks like to me? It looks like you’re selling drug paraphernalia. That’s what it looks like.”
“It’s incense,” the Rasta said. “For bad smells.”
“Bad smells,” Eddie said. One of the sticks of incense was smoldering, and Eddie picked it up and sniffed at it. “Whew,” he said. “That’s a bad smell, I’ll give you that. Smells like the catbox caught on fire.”
The Rasta snatched the incense from him. “It’s a good smell,” he said. “Smells like your mama.”
Eddie smiled at him, his red lips parting to show stained teeth. He looked happy, and very dangerous. “Say I kick your store into the middle of the street,” he said, “and you with it. How’s that sound to you?”
Smoothly, easily, Wally Witt moved between them. “Eddie,” he said softly, and Eddie backed off and let the smile fade on his lips. To the incense seller Wally said, “Look, you and I got no quarrel with each other. I got a job to do and you got your own business to run.”
“The brother here’s got a business to run, too.”
“Well, he’s gonna have to run it without Batman, because that’s how the law reads. But if you want to be Batman, playing the dozens with my man here and pushing into what doesn’t concern you, then I got no choice. You follow me?”
“All I’m saying, I’m saying you want to confiscate the man’s merchandise, you need you a policeman and a court order, something to make it official.”
“Fine,” Wally said. “You’re saying it and I hear you saying it, but what I’m saying is all I need to do it is to do it, official or not. Now if you want to get a cop to stop me, fine, go ahead and do it, but as soon as you do I’m going to press charges for selling drug paraphernalia and operating without a peddler’s license — ”
“This here ain’t drug paraphernalia, man. We both know that.”
“We both know you’re just trying to be a hard-on, and we both know what it’ll get you. That what you want?”
The incense seller stood there for a moment, then dropped his eyes. “Don’t matter what I want,” he said.
“Well, you got that right,” Wally told him. “It don’t matter what you want.”
We tossed the shirts and visors into the trunk and got out of there. On the way over to Astor Place Eddie said, “You didn’t have to jump in there. I wasn’t about to lose it.”
“Never said you were.”
“That mama stuff doesn’t bother me. It’s just nigger talk, they all talk that shit.”
“I know.”
“They’d talk about their fathers, but they don’t know who the fuck they are, so they’re stuck with their mothers. Bad smells, I shoulda stuck that shit up his ass, get right where the bad smells are. I hate a guy sticks his nose in like that.”
“Your basic sidewalk lawyer.”
“Basic asshole’s what he is. Maybe I’ll go back, talk with him later.”
“On your own time.”
“On my own time is right.”
Astor Place hosts a more freewheeling street market, with a lot of Bowery types offering a mix of salvaged trash and stolen goods. There was something especially curious about our role, as we passed over hot radios and typewriters and jewelry and sought only merchandise that had been legitimately purchased, albeit from illegitimate manufacturers. We didn’t find much Batman ware on display, although a lot of people, buyers and sellers alike, were wearing the Caped Crusader. We weren’t about to strip the shirt off anybody’s person, nor did we look too hard for contraband merchandise; the place was teeming with crackheads and crazies, and it was no time to push our luck.
“Let’s get out of here,” Wally said. “I hate to leave the car in this neighborhood. We already gave the client his money’s worth.”
By four we were back in Wally’s office and his desk was heaped high with the fruits of our labors. “Look at all this shit,” he said. “Today’s trash and tomorrow’s treasures. Twenty years and they’ll be auctioning this crap at Christie’s. Not this particular crap, because I’ll messenger it over to the client and he’ll chuck it in the incinerator. Gentlemen, you did a good day’s work.” He took out his wallet and gave each of the four of us a hundred-dollar bill. He said, “Same time tomorrow? Except I think we’ll make lunch Chinese tomorrow. Eddie, don’t forget your purse.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Thing is you don’t want to carry it if you go back to see your Rastafarian friend. He might get the wrong idea.”
“Fuck him,” Eddie said. “I got no time for him. He wants that incense up his ass, he’s gonna have to stick it there himself.”
Lee and Jimmy and Eddie went out, laughing, joking, slapping backs. I started out after them, then doubled back and asked Wally if he had a minute.
“Sure,” he said. “Jesus, I don’t believe this. Look.”
“It’s a Batman shirt.”
“No shit, Sherlock. And look what’s printed right under the Bat signal.”
“The copyright notice.”
“Right, which makes it a legal shirt. We got any more of these? No, no, no, no. Wait a minute, here’s one. Here’s another. Jesus, this is amazing. There any more? I don’t see any others, do you?”
We went through the pile without finding more of the shirts with th
e copyright notice.
“Three,” he said. “Well, that’s not so bad. A mere fraction.” He balled up the three shirts, dropped them back on the pile. “You want one of these? It’s legit, you can wear it without fear of confiscation.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You got kids? Take something home for your kids.”
“One’s in college and the other’s in the service. I don’t think they’d be interested. ”
“Probably not.” He stepped out from behind his desk. “Well, it went all right out there, don’t you think? We had a good crew, worked well together.”
“I guess.”
“What’s the matter, Matt?”
“Nothing, really. But I don’t think I can make it tomorrow.”
“No? Why’s that?”
“Well, for openers, I’ve got a dentist appointment.”
“Oh, yeah? What time?”
“Nine-fifteen.”
“So how long can that take? Half an hour, an hour tops? Meet us here ten-thirty, that’s good enough. The client doesn’t have to know what time we hit the street.”
“It’s not just the dentist appointment, Wally.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t think I want to do this stuff anymore.”
“What stuff? Copyright and trademark protection?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the matter? It’s beneath you? Doesn’t make full use of your talents as a detective?”
“It’s not that.”
“Because it’s not a bad deal for the money, seems to me. Hundred bucks for a short day, ten to four, hour and a half off for lunch with the lunch all paid for. You’re a cheap lunch date, you don’t drink, but even so. Call it a ten-dollar lunch, that’s a hundred and ten dollars for what, four and a half hours’ work?” He punched numbers on a desk top calculator. “That’s $24.44 an hour. That’s not bad wages. You want to take home better than that, you need either burglar’s tools or a law degree, seems to me.”
“The money’s fine, Wally.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
The Night and The Music Page 11