Less Of Me

by Edward Goble

  Chapter 10

  Albert Martin, the slightly built nephew of the man his father prayed that he would grow to be like, leaned against the building across from the entrance to Martin’s Deli. It was raining and he was anxious and miserable, his clothes damp and smelly from a day and a half on the street. He watched the door of the deli from the shadows, waiting for all the customers to leave and for his uncle to close the store and lock up for the night. His plan was simple, reason with the old man. The package had come, it had been signed for, and it was his - his property, easy as that. “Hand it over, it’s not rocket science,” he muttered in the direction of the restaurant.

  In his mind, it had been the perfect plan, he would borrow the money to buy the weed, repackage it and resell it at retail markup. There were plenty of people he knew that wanted to buy. Then, pay back the loan and pocket the profit. Easy money. He stood to make four grand. It all had to be turned around in three days, which should have been cake. He didn’t anticipate spending the first day and a half talking his uncle out of the package. “What an idiot!” Albert was growing angrier with his uncle by the minute. This first brick was a test to see if he could deliver sales. His connection said they always started a new guy this way, “Get the money for a key, use the profit to buy two more, turn those into four more, and so on. Before you know it, you’re driving a Hummer.” The hard part was the first one. Albert didn’t have two thousand bucks and didn’t know where to get it. When he told the friend that he needed to come up with some fast money, the guy told him about a company that made short terms loans, and that they had helped guys like Albert get started in his own business. Albert called Allied Finance and talked to a man named Johnny.

  “Hey, uh, a friend said you do short term loans.”

  “Sometimes,” Johnny said. “What kind of loan we talking about?”

  “Business. A business loan.”

  “We’ve done some business loans.”

  “Uh, I need two grand, as soon as possible. It’s for some, uh...”

  Johnny cut him off, “Hey Bud—We don’t do business over the phone, see? Why don’t you come by the office? We’re over the bakery at Sixth and Market.”

  “Yeah, uh, I’m on my way.” Albert hopped a bus downtown and found the bakery. There was a stairway entrance to the right of the bakery that led to a dingy hallway of closed doors. Most of the doors were unmarked, heavy brown wood doors with old white glass and grungy brass knobs. Room 201 had a piece of copy paper taped to the door sideways that said “Allied Finance,” and Albert opened the door without thinking much else about it. He stepped in to a room that was empty except for a desk, a coat rack, and three chairs. There were large dirty windows that faced the red brick of the multi-story building next door making the light that fell into room 201 dull and lifeless. The only art on the four smokey white walls was an old garage-sale landscape that could have been hanging in the same spot for forty years. The high ceiling boasted three working florescent tubes and an old fan that circulated the thick second hand smoke. The desk held an ashtray and a big calculator, the kind that prints out numbers on a wide roll of tape. A sharply dressed older man in a suit was sitting behind the desk carefully shaping the ash of his cigarette in the tray while the other man sat in one of the other chairs with one of his bulky arms draped over another. They didn’t stand or greet Albert when he entered.

  “Uh, Johnny?” Albert said as he closed the door behind himself, “I, uh, called about the loan? The business loan?”

  The large man stood and started toward Albert. When he got uncomfortably close he bent his neck slightly, his beady black eyes twelve inches from Albert’s face and asked, “You a cop?”

  “What?” Albert said. He didn’t expect that. “No. Me?” he started to laugh to break the tension when big Johnny spun him around like a top and pushed him against the wall by the door.

  “Mind if I pat you down?” Johnny said, not really as a question, as his boxing glove sized hands deftly moved down Albert’s body, head to toe. He ended by giving Albert a little shove in the back and left the kid facing the wall as he turned to retake his seat. “He’s clean,” Johnny said to the other man while he extracted a small bottle of hand sanitizer from his bomber jacket. He squirted some into a palm and rubbed his hands together furiously. “Can’t we hire somebody else to do that?” he said to the man in the brown suit who smiled and squinted through his own smoke in the direction of their guest.

  “So, my young friend,” the man in the suit finally said. “Welcome to Allied Finance. How can we help you today?”

  Albert briefly considered running, but it was a finance company, for cripesake, it had to be on the level, right? So he turned back toward the desk and said, “Well, I,” he glanced at Johnny, feeling somewhat violated, took a deep breath, “I need a loan, just a short term loan, just a small one.”

  “Well I am not so sure we can help you, my friend, but we will try, right Johnny?” Johnny didn’t even shrug. “Now, sit down and tell me how I can help.”

  The man in the suit cut Albert off again when he tried to say what he wanted the money for. “We are not in the business of telling people how to spend their money or what to spend their money on, son. It’s your life. We just need to know how much you need and when you expect to pay it back,” he said, still smiling.

  “Okay, well, I need two thousand, uh, today, if possible. And I can pay it back on Monday.”

  “That is a short term loan. We like those kind.” The man in the suit mashed the butt of his smoke in the ashtray and retrieved a one-sheet contract from the top drawer of the desk. “If you could take a minute and fill this out for us,” Suit-guy asked, pushing the paper and a pen across the desk.

  Albert quickly filled out the form and pushed it back across the desk. Suit-man sat motionless as Johnny reached across and pulled the paper back to himself and scanned it. He took out his cell phone and started dialing the numbers Albert had written down. He called information for the apartment complex, confirming his residence and made a call to the Deli owners Albert gave as a “relative living in the area.” Johnny didn’t ask about Albert, he just hung up when a lady answered, “Marteen’s deli.”

  “She said Marteen,” Johnny said, looking at Albert.

  “Marteen, right. That’s how it’s pronounced. But you spell it Martin.”

  “You go by Martin?”

  “Yeah, just because I got tired of correcting everyone, you know?”

  The man in the suit leaned forward and interlocked his fingers on the table in front of him and said, “Well, Mr. Martin, or Marteen, I think we can do business.”

  Albert smiled and said, “Thanks, great, I...”

  The man cut him off again. “Wouldn’t you like to know the terms of the agreement?”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” Albert said, straightening up and trying to look more business like.

  “We loan you two thousand dollars today, Thursday. And you pay back twenty five hundred on Monday. That’s one hundred in interest per day. Does that seem reasonable?”

  “That seems outrageous, actually,” Albert couldn’t keep him self from saying.

  “And you are certainly able to walk out that door and obtain other financing, that is your option. You are in control of this part of the process,” the man said kindly, trying to help Albert understand that he didn’t have to do this.

  “No. Uh, I guess five hundred in interest would be cool. Yeah, that’s fine.”

  “Now then,” the man said without changing his expression of graciousness, “if for some reason the loan cannot be repaid by this time Monday, the amount increases by $500 per day, interest. So, at noon Tuesday, your amount due becomes $3000. At noon Wednesday, the amount due becomes $3500, and so on. Are we clear on that?”

  “Wait a minute...” Albert began.

  “Now, my friend, these are your terms. You said you could repay by Monday. Is that not true? Were you not planning to pay the loan back on time?”


  “No, of course, I am. It’s just that...”

  “Well if you are planning to pay us back, $2500 on Monday, then we have no problem, no problem at all,” the man in the brown suit smiled, larger this time and sat back in the old swivel chair.

  Albert did some quick math. He already had ten people willing to pay retail for the pot. All he had to do was buy it, have it delivered, re-pack it, deliver it out, and have this dough back by Monday. He’d still make thirty-five hundred - over three grand in one weekend. He was blinded by the profit potential. “Yeah, okay, I can make it.”

  The man tapped some numbers on his calculator and finally pressed the biggest button on the lower row causing the tape to chatter and roll. He tore off the paper and showed Albert that there were two copies. “Duplicate tape. Nice, huh?” He was visibly pleased with the technology. He slid the calculator tape in front of Albert and, with a ballpoint pen, leaned over the desk and pointed out the numbers, upside down, for Albert to review and drew a line at the bottom with a crude ‘x’ which was where Albert would need to sign his life away.

  “Here is the two thousand, right. Then $2100--interest begins when you leave this room, see. So, say you want to pay back this evening, fine. Bring $2100 and we’re golden. Clear?” He waited for Albert to respond, but the boy’s eyes were glued to the adding machine tape. Here is Monday, $2500. Easy. Now, Tuesday, see, the total is $3000 and Wednesday is $3500, and so on.” Suit-man straightened up and waited for Albert to look up from the tape.

  “I need to know that you completely understand the terms of this agreement, Mr. Martin.”

  Albert nodded, “Yeah, I’m good. I get it.” He signed the bottom of the tape and passed it across the desk. Suit-man retrieved both copies and handed Albert back the yellow copy.

  “Now, see,” he explained. “We both have a copy. This is the contract. We all know the terms. Everyone’s happy? Yes?”

  Albert nodded again. The man in the suit reached in to a drawer and retrieved a small green cash box. He handed it across to Johnny who opened it and counted out twenty crisp one hundred dollar bills. Johnny handed the stack to Albert who thumbed through it quickly, not wanting to offend the big guy by recounting, and shoved it into his jeans.

  “Mr. Martin, Allied is a business built on trust, yes? We have given you this money, with no collateral other than this little slip of paper. It was your decision to take out this loan, and now it is your responsibility to pay it back. I think we have been very clear on this point, do you agree?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be back Monday with $2500, you can count on it,” he stood and extended his hand. Johnny stood as well and shook Albert’s hand and walked him to the door. He had his sanitizer out before the boy reached the staircase.

  “Kids these days,” he said as his boss smiled and lit up another smoke.

  Albert left the room and grabbed a bus cross-town to his contact. One of the safeguards of the distribution network was that there was never a direct exchange of cash for product. The distributor would meet with the buyer, make a call and have the product delivered to an address given, and then, when the product was signed for, the cash would change hands. It was a process that had effectively helped this distributor fly under police radar for over a decade of business in the city. On Friday morning, as Albert sat with the distributor, the phone rang.

  “Bueno. Gracias,” the distributor said, clicking the cell phone shut. “The package has been signed for at Martin’s Deli, as you instructed.”

  Albert handed over the cash and ran to a pay phone to call his uncle. The line was busy, and then there was no answer. He finally got through to Uncle Albert Friday afternoon. The old man either didn’t know what he had, or he did know and, for some reason, didn’t want Albert to have it.

  “Jesus!” Albert said out loud as he kicked against the building and watched inside the deli, trying to will everyone to leave so his uncle would close the store. He looked at his watch every two minutes, realizing that he would have to work all night to get the stuff ready to deliver, then deliver all day Sunday and Monday and get the money paid back by Monday afternoon. It would have been easy if he had gotten the product on Thursday like he should have. “Dammit!” The younger Martin was getting more nervous as the seconds clicked past. He should have had the package delivered somewhere else, or warned his uncle ahead of time about a private delivery. He’d been too anxious and it cost him a day and a half - so far.

  Finally the last couple exited the deli, the bell’s catching Albert’s attention from his perch in the shadows across the street. A minute later Uncle Albert pushed through the saloon doors and, wiping his hands on his apron, began his closing routine of flipping the sign, locking the door and bussing any remaining tables. He would then flip the chairs up onto the tables and dust mop the floor. Twice a week he would wet-mop.

  This evening as he flipped the sign and thumbed through his key ring, looking through his bifocals for the door key, the door swung open and in rushed his nephew Albert who had made it on a dead run across the street the moment the sign was turned.

  “Albert, what in the...”

  Albert pulled to door shut behind him and faced his uncle, his eyes red from a lack of sleep, his hands nervous and shaky. He grabbed the keys from the older man and rummaged through them till he found one that would fit the door and locked it. His uncle had stepped backwards in to the deli with a frustrated and disappointed look on his face. He wanted to talk to his nephew about the package. He hoped to talk some sense in to the boy.

  “Uncle Albert, where is it?”

  “Sit down Albert, let’s talk.”

  “I don’t have time to talk Uncle Albert, where is it!” he demanded, tears forming in his eyes. He didn’t want to be firm with his uncle, but he was growing desperate and the old man didn’t seem to understand.

  “Albert, I’m not going to lie to you, I opened the box.”

  “Why?!”

  “It was addressed to me! For God’s sake, Albert! What did you think I would do?”

  Albert knew he screwed up. He rubbed nervous fingers against his eyes and forehead in an attempt to refocus and think. “I tried to call. You knew it was mine…”

  “Why us, Albert? Why bring your aunt and I in to your troubles? My God... If your father...”

  “You weren’t supposed to open it, see? Just give it to me and I’ll go, okay? Just give me the damn box!”

  “I can’t do that, Albert. You made me an accomplice in this by sending it here. I signed for the delivery for crissake.”

  “You aren’t a part of anything! You’re just an old fool who opened someone else’s mail! You don’t understand what’s going on, Uncle. I have to have that box! It’s not an option, this is no game!”

  Mr. Martin pulled out a chair and sat down, crossing his arms. He would talk reason to the younger man—he loved him too much. “Albert, let me help you. Do you need money? Is that what this is all about?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Albert said. How could an old man understand the money that could be made by selling a few bricks of weed every month? It was nearly harmless, only illegal by some technicalities and a few votes. It was just a short-term thing, just something he needed to do to get on his feet, get going in the world. “Damn it!” he finally said and started running toward the saloon doors. He slammed through them and ran up the back stairs to the apartment. He burst in, surprising his aunt who was setting the table for a late dinner with her husband. The old man lagged ten steps behind.

  Mrs. Martin was frozen at the table, holding a knife and fork in her hand, too startled to speak.

  “Where is it, Auntie? Where is my box?” Albert demanded. By the time the old man made it up the stairs Albert was in the kitchen, opening cupboards, he was growing desperate, he tossed boxes of crackers and pasta onto the floor, he rummaged through drawers.

  “Albert, stop!” his uncle ordered him.

  Albert ran down the hall and entered the bedroom; he tossed t
he covers and shoved the mattress. He dove on to the floor and looked under the bed. His uncle grabbed at his hand as he reached for his aunts chest of drawers. Albert swung wildly, avoiding being grabbed and shoved his uncle against the door. “Where is it!” he demanded again. He slung open the accordion doors of the closet and began pulling boxes off the shelf, shoes and hats spilled out on to the floor.

  “It’s not here! Albert, listen to me! It’s not here!” Mr. Martin shouted. Albert pushed passed him and tore apart the hallway closet, rooting around towels and blankets. He was enraged and could hardly hear his aunt and uncle pleading with him to stop and talk to them. Maria was standing near the front door and Uncle Albert was still trying to harness the stronger young man by grabbing his arms and hands. Albert would flail and hit his uncle wildly, forcing him back, demanding the location of his package.

  Suddenly, Albert thought of the storeroom and ran for the door. Uncle Albert, reading his mind, shouted after him, “It’s not down there, it’s not here!”

  Albert pushed passed his aunt, still standing like a statue in the doorway, unable to understand what was happening before her eyes. She fell back as he shoved past her and wasn’t strong enough to catch herself on the doorframe. She tumbled down the steps behind her nephew. As he turned the corner to begin the first floor search, he saw his aunt slam in to the brick exterior wall at the bottom of the stairs. Albert glanced back at her, and then looked at the top of the stairs where his uncle stood, momentarily frozen in time.

  “Maria!” the old man shouted, running down the steps to aid his wife who lie motionless on the concrete floor. “Why? Why Albert!” he cried as he descended the steps.

  Albert started to run back to aid his Aunt, his mind was whirling, he needed the dope, he had to find it. But his Aunt... He ran from the back room and twisted the ring of keys that hung in the locked front door. He ran out on to the sidewalk and stopped to look back. He turned to run then he started back in to help his Aunt, then turned again. He grabbed his head with both hands and screamed, “Aaarrrghh!” How could things get so screwed up! He turned and ran wildly down the side street and in to the foggy night.

  The sound of the ambulance broke the stream of consciousness in which Andy was floating as he watched Rance Broadback drive through the cool Kentucky night, looking for clues in the little town of Rose Park. He looked up from the iBook and consciously clicked Apple-S to save his work. The light from the emergency vehicle reflected through his dark house. He rolled his desk chair back and went to follow the siren and lights. By the time Andy got to the window the ambulance had come to a stop in front of Martin’s Deli. Andy froze. These were times when creativity was a liability. In the time it took to pull on his hat and coat and lace up his Nike’s, his mind had sent forth no less than a dozen scenarios for what might have happened at the Martin’s. There could have been a bloody mob hit, or a shoot-out between drug dealers and the police, the nephew may have broke in and went on a shooting rampage. All the ideas had to do with terrible acts of violence, which he scolded himself for and blamed on the media that he didn’t watch.

  He walked as quickly as his XXL body would allow to the Martin’s where a small crowd had gathered. The paramedics had disappeared inside and a patrolman was stationed at the door, restricting entry. After about fifteen minutes most of the crowd of short-attention-span Americans had abandoned the front door leaving Andy and a couple other neighbors standing there with the police officer.

  “Do you know what happened Officer?” someone asked.

  “No, Ma’am, I don’t have any information at this time,” was all he would say, which was probably true. After thirty long minutes, enough time to know something was very wrong, the Paramedics wheeled the stretcher out, carrying the small body of Maria Martin, strapped to the gurney with three yellow belts and another across her head, which had been surrounded by some kind of inflated, three sided pillow which looked sort of like the headgear boxers wear during sparring, only bigger and tighter. Mr. Martin followed close behind, locking the door behind him and climbing in to the truck to be with his Maria. He never looked around; his face was stern, his countenance broken. Andy didn’t know what might have happened, some kind of accident, he supposed. He wondered if it was related to the drugs. Violence follows drugs, he remembered saying. He caught the officer as the ambulance rushed away from the corner.

  “Sir, are they going to SF-General? Can you find out?”

  “Yeah, they are on their way to General. Looks like a neck or back injury of some kind. Said she fell down some stairs,” the officer said.

  “Thanks, okay,” Andy replied, and stood motionless on the corner for a minute as people dispersed. In three minutes the neighborhood looked like nothing every happened. That hit him hard. The hustling, bustling city just went back about its business like nothing ever happened. Depression snuck up behind the big man on the corner and grabbed him by the throat. Andy’s head hurt by the time he made it back to his house. He felt helpless and abandoned. He unconsciously walked to the freezer and took out a pint of ice cream, it didn’t matter what kind. He numbly grabbed a spoon, leaving the flatware drawer open, and slumped down in his chair. He sat silently, staring at the wall in front of him and eating slowly from the cold container. Tears were dripping down his cheeks, partly out of sadness and concern for the Martin’s and partly for his own loss. He didn’t have many friends and he secretly hoped each would out live him so he wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of losing someone. The Martin’s weren’t even that close, but they knew his name and had invited him into their home. Andy cursed himself for acting as if it were about him.

  The empty cup and spoon fell to the living room floor and Andy buried his face in his hands. Rubbing his head and neck he mustered the resolve to get up and wash his face and go to the hospital.

  Young Albert Martin spent forty five minutes in an alley, two blocks down 3rd Avenue, sitting behind a dumpster crying. He heard the ambulance, saw the glow of the lights and commotion of the people on the corner, but he couldn’t go back up there. This was his fault. He was damning himself for stupidity. “Why did I do this? What in the hell am I doing?” But he was running out of time. The sweat-stained little slip of yellow paper in his pocket reminded him that the business venture that he willingly started, without advice or guidance, had real deadlines, and real consequences for failing to meet them. He walked back up the quiet street toward the Deli.

  The back door was locked, of course, but he tugged at it anyway. He knew there was a steel bar the size of a railroad tie holding the door fast. The front door was locked, although the lights of the deli were on. Some of the tables and chairs were scattered around, a mess of his own doing. He went back around to the rear of the store. The alley was dimly lit. The two windows on the first floor were small and high. They were barred shut. Albert could see that the second floor windows were shut as well, but without security bars. He looked around and finally pushed a dumpster over a few feet so it was just under one of the second story windows. He climbed up the dumpster and reached as high as he could but was still well short of the second story. He rummaged quietly and quickly around the alley and collected a few vegetable crates, an old chair and a concrete block, and erected a crude ladder on top of the dumpster which he carefully ascended bringing his head and shoulders up to the level of the window. He saw, through the curtains, that the place was empty. The lights were on and the house was still a mess from his rampage, but no one was home. He wondered about his aunt. “What did I do?” he whispered. But there was no time for self-pity.

  He broke the glass with a brick and turned the metal latch, pushing the old window up high enough for him to shimmy in. He was barely strong enough to lift his body weight, but urgency provided the needed adrenaline and he made it, tumbling into the living room, upsetting a floor lamp and a rack of newspapers by his uncle’s chair. He received a pretty mean gash on the back of his right forearm from broken glass, which dripped freely and stun
g sharply. He held his arm and stood, looking back out into the alley, making sure he was still alone. He washed off his arm in the kitchen sink the cold water felt good. He wrapped his arm in a dishtowel and immediately started looking for the box. “Where is it, Uncle Albert? Where the hell did you put it?” he asked out loud as he walked around. He was almost sure it was in the apartment - no one ever came up there besides Albert and Maria. Their nephew, himself, had only been in the residence one time.

  The most private of all places would be the bedroom, and that is where he searched. He turned the place upside down like a detective with a hard lead and a warrant. Then, finally, in a small box of ladies purses, he found what he was looking for. The box was hidden inside a black purse, zipped and snapped and impossible to find. Almost. Albert quickly tore in to the brown paper wrapper and pulled out the box of Ritz Crackers, he broke open the seal and dumped the brick out. Relief overwhelmed him. He looked around and stood, at the same time sliding the key of pot back in to the box. He went back out to the kitchen and found a white plastic grocery bag and pulled a can of vegetables and a box of pasta out of the pantry. He put them in the bag with the Ritz and exited the apartment down the steps where his aunt had recently tumbled. The lingering images and sound of her pitiful screams nearly made him loose his own balance. Removing the big metal bar from the back door of the storeroom, he exited the building and ran.

  Albert stashed the groceries at his apartment and went back out to the street. He was exhausted and needed to buy some go-powder to keep him moving for another 36 hours. He got his last hundred bucks out of an ATM and knocked on a familiar door. He bought all he could—grabbed one snort before he left and another when he got back to his place. He rubbed his hands together and cleared his nose and eyes. “Time to make some money,” he said with a greedy glee.