Your Day In The Barrel

by Alan Furst

  “What if you’d seen us decide to try to make out?” “Now that’s a silly question. Smart feller like you can surely answer that one and don’t need no one-eared, just-about-to-be-ex-cop to help you.”

  “Well, thanks for everything, I guess.”

  “Sure you should thank me. If I’d been a straight cop your ass would be in the jail right now and that little girl’d have to find herself another fella. I did you a favor.” And he laughs and stops real quick, ’cause all that swelling and whatever is under the bandages must hurt. He walks us to the door and shakes hands with Villegas and with me and says “Let’s remember our bargain. And don’t have too many hurt feelings, especially you, Tony. Business is business, after all.”

  And we go out into the rain.

  It’s damp inside that Yacht. The refrigerator door is hanging open and some electronic innards are hanging out of where the butterbox used to be. Most of the inside paneling is off and the area behind the dash has been gutted. There’s an alligator clip behind the ignition key and a fat yellow bunch of wires looping down and under. It starts and Villegas waves and yells me back down that dirt road onto the gravel. We caravan into New Jersey at about fifty-five, where Big Dan the Used Recreational Vehicle Man lays 6500 cash on me and I ride the rest of the way into New York in the Nova. R.I.P.

  "The law is strict with man or woman who steals the goose from off the common but lets the greater villain loose who steals the common from the goose.”

  Old English Street Saying

  We spend Sunday moping around Rochelle’s apartment, watching the first exhibition football of the season. We put the 30 keys of grass in a closet, like we are gonna do something with it, but I know I don’t want any part of handling dope right now and neither does Villegas. We don’t exactly say it, but the grass is gonna become Rochelle’s—a reward for being a den mother for a while and for taking care of Anthony. She’s got Nam deserters and draft resisters coming through there all the time, she tells us, and so maybe they can use it—if their heads will stand that. If you got to spend the rest of your life in Canada or Sweden, you might as well get high before you go.

  On Monday, directly to Lieberman’s office. He listens and says nothing for about an hour, his hands resting on top of his desk and his chin down on his hands like a hound by the fire. Villegas and I take turns rifling about the last couple days and when we’re done Tom just shakes and shakes his head like he has something in his ear. I leave out the part about Gulich, and the hole in the tale is obvious but nobody says anything. That has got to stay private forever. Finally he walks over to'the window, and looks out at the Jersey people looking at him and says “Queen Green Bean. Yeck. Didn’t want to renegotiate a contract. Figured if Anthony is out of the way, he’ll have happy Mexicans singing in the fields. No labor problems, new plant, fancy-ass new name, bill-boards. Hmmm.” He picks up the phone and shakes it a little, and finally dials a number. We hear only his side, but it’s enough.

  “Mr. Gelfand please.” He taps his fingers on the desk.

  “Andy? It’s Tom Lieberman.” He lights a cigarette. “That’s right. I knew you’d left the senator. Heard you were with SEC.” He winks at Villegas.

  “Un-huh. Lunch’d be great, I’ll call you next week.” He makes a mouth shape that says “yeah sure.”

  “Right now I need a favor. You got anything on a company called Queen Green Bean?” He looks out the window.

  “Thanks man. Who is the probity honcho on the SEC now?” He gets a felt-tip pen out of his drawer.

  “Well, like a straight arrow with a lot of clout.” He draws a valentine with a bullet through it.

  “N. Hamilton Hart?” He shakes his hand to mean “heavy heavy.”

  “Prefers to be called Ham Hart? I can’t call anybody Ham Hart.” Gives a suffering look at the ceiling.

  “Listen Andy, thanks a million. I’ll call you for lunch next week. G’by.”

  “Okay friends, I was right. Mr. Lavem Stoller has an application before the Securities and Exchange Commission to take his company public, in the growing and canning of vegetables, under the marketing name of Queen Green Bean. So now we are going to see Mr. N. Hamilton Hart and share our interesting new information with him, ’cause if he says “nay,” and never mind the excuse he gives, old Lavem ain’t gonna make it.” He’s on the phone with various secretaries and administrative assistants for the next five minutes. He’s like a great halfback, weaving, dodging, giving a fact and taking it away, implying, asserting, groveling, demanding, flattering, bullying and innuendoing. Anthony and I are completely blown out listening to the performance. When he hangs up the phone, we applaud.

  “Thank you, thank you, my fellow Americans. That is why I get 12 grand a year as a retainer. We’ve got an appointment with Mr. Hart in one hour.” Saying that, he places his hands together like a diver, says “One, two, three, GO!” and leaps off the chair and sheds his T-shirt and khaki’s. It’s like watching Superman. He puts on nylon boxer shorts, high black socks, garters, a brutally white shirt with tiny gold cufflinks and a red and gold silk tie, just wide enough, a dark blue light-weight-wool suit, with vest. He brushes his hair back with two brushes until it lies down in a McNamara sweep. Then he puts both hands in his desk drawer and starts fishing around. A soapstone hashpipe flies out, followed by a peace button, a stack of Polaroid snaps of various naked folks, a button that says “Fly United,” Grover Dill tear-gas pens, assorted roach clips, all inoperative, and, finally, as Tom says “Ah-hah my little beauty, here you are,” a Phi Beta Kappa key and chain that he strings across his vest.

  He gives us a last minute pep-talk, football coach style, and we grab a cab and head down to 2 William Street, enter a lovely funky old Wall Street-type building, ride an elevator run by a man three years younger than God, and pass through various antechambers until we are in the oak and oriental-rugged office of N. Hamilton Hart. Yeeks! N. Hamilton Hart, giving Tom and us firm handshakes and big smiles, is wearing the same suit, and shirt, and Phi Beta Kappa key, and hair-comb and, checking on Tom, smile, as Tom is.

  I don’t say very much, it’s mostly Anthony’s play in here. He talks about the Chicanos in the valley, how the migrants tried to settle there, the bad schools, the nonexistent doctors, the need for lawyers, the union-busting tactics, attempts to raise funds (he leaves out the dealing part), his Viet Nam experience, the GI Bill, the cops rousting and hassling him and his friends.

  It comes out about like a CBS news special. It’s passionate but reasonable, aggressive but proper, miserable but hopeful. He must have absorbed a hell of a lot of liberal news coverage ’cause he’s jumping those hurdles like a born winner.

  Tom doesn’t say much, orchestrates a little, making sure that Anthony hits the facts and suppresses the judgments. Hart is nodding, mouth sympathetic but grim. He knows at least he’s not seeing a delegation of radicals demanding that Wall Street immediately bum itself down. Where I should begin, Tom takes over.

  “Now, Ham, I’m not going to try to get around this. Mr. Levin here, who’s been my client for two years, was apprehended by a local officer for a felony involving marijuana.” One of Hart’s snowy eyebrows does a little dance. “He was, however, not booked, not charged, not permitted to contact his attorney. Instead, he was taken to a motel, handed a pistol, and told to kill Mr. Villegas or he himself would be killed. He came to me instead. Later, he contacted the arresting officer, who informed him that he was acting at the suggestion of Mr. Lavem M. Stoller, president of what is going to be known as the Queen Green Bean company. We feel that this story has a bearing on the disposition of the application for public stock issue by QGB.”

  “Mr. Levin,” Hart is looking right through me under a heavy shelf of eyebrow, "could you, I don’t say you will have to, but could you prove any of this?”

  I pause for a long minute. “I have a tape recording of a conversation with one of the people involved.”

  “I’ve checked on Tom here, and I know who he is. Ne
ither of you stands to gain by this, and the information is pertinent. There are those who think it isn’t, who would exclude all but fiscal considerations from a decision on such a matter, but I’m not one of them. I am, as my daughter tells me,” and his pink face lights up, “one of the, er, ‘heavy people’ on this board.”

  “There is to be no court action on any of this,” Tom says. “But we feel you’ll know how to handle information delivered on an informal basis.”

  “I certainly will. And I thank you gentlemen for bringing it to my attention.”

  “Mr. Hart,” I say, “have you met Mr. Stoller?”

  “I have.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Lavem Stoller? Well, he’s extremely tall, over six feet five certainly, doesn’t have much hair, and what he does have is gray, in a crew-cut. The day I saw him I recall he was wearing a tie with a horse’s head on it. Why?”

  Touchdown, I think, that mean fucker had to see it was done right, had to get right down there with his employees and watch them workin’. Self-made man can’t trust anybody. Can’t delegate.

  I go slow and careful. “Mr. Hart, I don’t know if you’re satisfied or not with what we’ve told you. It’s just an allegation, after all, but if you should see Mr. Stoller again, and if this matter gets brought up at all, even in a very indirect way, you might mention the name ‘Clyde Moss,’ and see what reaction it produces.” “Very well, perhaps I’ll do that. Thank you gentlemen, good day. Tom, you ought to come around more often. We’re always on the lookout for bright young men.”

  “Thanks, Ham, maybe we’ll have lunch sometime.” “Excellent. Just call my secretary.”

  When we get outside, I ask Tom, “Do these lunches ever happen?”'

  “One in ten, baby,” he says.

  Tom goes on back uptown. Villegas and I find a Chock Full O’ Nuts and have coffee.

  “Y’know,” I say, “I ain’t in business any more. This thing killed it. Are you interested in a dealership?”

  “Not after the changes I saw you go through, baby. I’m goin’ back to college. I got problems enough, man, behind this thing. I got a nice old lady back there in town, but I really get into that Rochelle. I don’t know what I’m gonna do about that.”

  “You’ll survive.”

  “So will you.”

  “Hell yes, I always land on my knees.”

  “Funny, you ain’t a dealer any more, Byszka ain’t gonna be a cop any more. Queen Green Bean is gonna have to go back to bein’ Ma ’n Pa produce farm.”

  “I hope we did the right thing with Hart. I think that if the Company had gone public your folks out there in the valley might have had a-better deal, eventually.” “Not really. A scam operator always hurts you in the long run. It just happens. I’ve seen it.”

  I get up to go. “Well Anthony, it’s been nice.” “Thank you ain’t enough.”

  “Don’t mention it. I think that in a few weeks I’m gonna have a house where I actually live and a real name and a telephone, and I expect to see you.” “Beautiful, let’s do it.”

  We shake hands new style, then old style, then new style.

  So many fools these days callin’ each other “brother,” but what else can you call someone who goes through the shit with you? I head uptown for a way, see a cab and get in. The driver says “Where to, buddy?”

  And I think and think and finally give him Lieberman’s office, ’cause I really don’t have anywhere else to go. Suddenly, for the first time in two weeks, I’m a free man. But all I feel is some churning inside, like a runner who wins a race and says ‘okay, so what now?’ Suddenly visions of Europe and North Africa go floating away, and with them, ideas of retirement at thirty-two. Christ, I think, I’m a high-energy person, I got to be wheeling and dealing or I’ll be senile at thirty-five. That’s too young to die. Well, Lieberman is gonna play Maharishi one more time, and then I’m gonna get independent and into some water I can swim in alone.

  Celebrating, Tom rolls up an enormous two-paper J. Congolese buds and flowers. The Jersey cliffs get misty and soft-looking. He clicks on the FM and the Grateful Dead comes twanging out of his studio-size JBL’s.

  Oh, the first days are the hardest days

  “Well,” he says, “Nixon’s in Cambodia, God’s in his Heaven, Tim Leary’s in jail, all’s right with the world. What do you do now?”

  “Not what I was doing.”

  “I kinda figured that. How much money you got?” “Let’s see. Maybe 40 in a safe-deposit box, 10 in California that’s clean, and 6,500 in my pocket. From selling the Yacht. About 34 in my other pocket.” “Hmmm. About 16,500 clean, 73 dirty and a dealership that should be worth something if you can turn it” “I’m a rich man and a poor dealer.”

  “Well, let’s go for a ride. It’s a nice high sort of day, and you can figure out where you go from here. My bill is gonna run about 10 grand, what with the detective and lots of other crap here and there, but with 80 thousand you got a lot of alternatives.”

  We get in Tom’s MGB and cruise uptown until we get to Columbia University. All the folks here are pretty hip. You can see all the 1965 California freak styles coming back at you in commercial versions on fraternity boys. There’s a couple professors walking around and looking spacey the way they do, and lots of seemingly snobby, but really panting, co-ed pussy. Everybody’s got a book or three for a prop. New York could be a thousand miles away from these iron gates. Tom gives me a questioning look.

  “Nope” I say.

  We ride across town and down to East 101st Street.

  Lots of partyin’ goin’ on around the stoops, radios all tuned to Puerto Rican stations. There’s a bunch of folks sitting on either side of a narrow street and drinking beer and rooting and betting like crazy and in the middle of the street two ten-year-old kids in their underwear are beating the shit out of one another. There’s a store front here, under a sign saying “East 101st St. Community Action Program” and inside, several of the folks nod to Tom; there’s some pretty far-out looking, if scroungy, people talking on the telephone and scheming away like crazy. It’s very fast, and stray local people here and there are kind of wandering around. The agency folks appear to have collapsed faces, like people who’ve been speeding for a long time, though if they have it’s from the kind of amphetamine you manufacture in your own head. Tom looks at me.

  “Nope” I say.

  From there it’s just ten minutes down to Madison Avenue in the fifties. This is mustache and sideburn country, flare pants and midiskirts and the odor of best Central American weed. We take a Muzak elevator up to the thirty-eighth floor, and the door opens into a reception room, painted deep, rich blue. On the wall, in white psychedelic “what was that?” script is written: “Floating Blue Elephant Productions.” Under the sign, sitting on a white cube with a larger white cube as a desk, is a guy with the biggest orange Afro I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine how he gets that thing through doorways. He says “Can I help you?” and Tom says “No. Tell Joe Reynolds that Tom Lieberman stopped by.” And to me “Well?”

  “Nope” I say.

  “Fine. Now let’s get down to business.”

  We head downtown, to the Canal Street area, and pull up in front of a very old red-brick building with a rusty fire escape. There’s nobody around at all and our footsteps are loud on the wooden stairs. Panting, we get to the fourth floor where a frosted glass door says “Papanis—Factor.” A fat lady with purple-black hair and glasses on a gold chain greets us: “Mr. Papanis is expecting you?”

  “No” says Tom.

  “Wait here a minute. Who should I say?”

  “Lawyer Lieberman and client Levin.”

  We hear some voices in the next room and a wrinkled man, very thin and pretty old, about five feet three with enormous bags under his eyes, walks out slowly. He extends his hand and says, with precision hiding a faint accent I can’t place,

  “Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Levin, come into my office.” His office is an eno
rmous room with a beat-up wooden desk and a telephone. A radio, about 1950 variety, is playing classical music quietly, and there isn’t a scrap of paper in sight.

  “Gentlemen?”

  “Mr. Levin, my client, wishes to make a loan.”

  He nods. “How much?”

  “Eighty.”

  “I can let you have 65.”

  “Good. Roger, give him $40,000.” I look at Liberman, shrug, reach into my pocket and hand it out. It’s gotten to be a reflex over the last few days. I count it and hand it to Mr. Papanis who lets it sit on the desk. “And the rest?”

  “Roger, bring 40 more by tomorrow afternoon.” I swallow once and nod dumbly. He continues, “Mr. Papanis, in receipt of your eighty, is going to lend you 65 for the business of your choice. His money is clean, you can tell IRS about it tomorrow if you want, they’ll only gnash their teeth a little bit. He is not going to ask for repayment of his loan.”

  “Is there any way for me to know that?”

  Mr. Papanis smiles a very tired old smile. “I have been in business forty years. I am here six days a week from ten in the morning until six in the evening. If you know who to ask, you can find out that I am an honest man. If you don’t, you had better complete some transaction as quickly as possible.” They both smile.

  “Mr. Papanis is not going to give you any money. Some time in the next few days you’re going to buy a business, any business. Mr. Papanis will legally lend you the money to buy that business, but it will go directly to the owners.”

  “Business? What business?”

  “Well,” says Mr. Papanis, “a restaurant is always nice. A prosperous one. People enjoy eating a good meal out.”

  “A restaurant?”

  “What kind of food do you enjoy eating, young man?”

  “Chinese food,” Mr. Papanis presses a button on his desk and says, into some intercom system that I can’t see, “Sophy, please call Mr. Soong and see what restaurants he has for sale. Range around 65. Tell him it’s for a client of mine, something nice for a beginner.”