Hillbillies.
The bald guy got up and limped after them, dragging his right leg.
“Dudes,” he called.
“Whatchu want, man?” the long-haired scarecrow answered, opening his car door to get in.
“A little help,” the bald guy said, hobbling. “My arm and leg’s killing me, and my Oxy prescription ran out.”
“Don’t care,” the scraggly woman said, standing on the passenger side. “We got Oxy, eighty milligrams … at 200 a pill.”
“Only cost eighty bucks inside,” baldy said.
“You ain’t inside,” the hillbilly said.
“Can you sell me twenty?”
“You got $4,000?”
Baldy nodded.
“Show me the money,” the Tennessee trader said.
“Show me the Oxy,” the bald guy insisted.
“Man, I got people waitin’ in line for this shit back home,” the hillbilly said. “You want it or don’t you?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Of course not.” The seller laughed. “But I can sell you twenty pills for $4,000, trust or no trust.”
“The money’s in my van,” the buyer said, and he limped toward a rusty panel truck. I noticed he was dragging his left leg now.
Something wasn’t right.
Baldy returned and handed a brown paper bag to the dealer, who removed the money and counted. When he was satisfied, he turned to the woman and nodded.
She removed a bag from a leather pouch and tossed it to the man with the cast. He opened it, took out the contents, smiled, and gave a thumbs-up. A police cruiser and an unmarked car screeched into the parking lot. Two uniformed cops hustled out of the cruiser with drawn guns and ordered the hillbillies to put up their hands. Two plainclothesmen appeared from the unmarked car. The bald cop had disappeared. “You’re under arrest,” one of the uniformed cops said. “You have a right to remain silent … you have …” yada, yada, yada.
“Aw, shit,” the hillbilly said.
I tossed the Intruder on the passenger seat, got out of the Mini, and trotted across Federal Highway. A guy wearing a sports jacket and tie showed me his badge and said, “Stay back … police business.”
“I’m a private investigator,” I told him.
“I don’t care if you’re Dick Tracy. Stay back.”
“I’m going to show you my wallet. Stay calm.” I removed my wallet slowly from my back pocket and handed it over carefully.
The police detective read it and smiled. “The Boca Knight. I heard a lot of good things about you.” He handed back the card and told me his name was Patrick Curley. We shook hands. “Hey, Antonelli,” he called over his shoulder. “We got a celebrity here.”
“Who?” the other detective asked.
“The Boca Knight.”
“What’s he doing here?” Antonelli asked, walking over.
“I’m on a case,” I explained.
“Luke Antonelli,” the second cop introduced himself and took my hand. “What kind of case?”
I gave them a summary minus names.
“Too bad about the girl,” Curley said. “Unfortunately she won’t be the last.”
“Well, at least you got those two pushers off the street,” I said, watching the uniformed cops put the dealers in the cruiser.
“They got greedy,” Curley explained. “If they drove away without selling, we couldn’t touch them.”
“What about the clinic?” I asked.
“According to the State of Florida, the clinic did nothing illegal,” Curley said as the cruiser screeched out of the lot with the dealers.
“Someone will take their place tomorrow,” Antonelli told me. “It’s a never-ending cycle.”
“It has to end,” I said.
“Tell the Florida state legislature,” Curley said.
“I will,” I said, and no one laughed.
That night, Claudette and I were sharing a pizza at Rotelli’s on Clint Moore when she asked, “Is something wrong between us, Eddie? We haven’t made love in weeks.”
“Shhh. The pizza maker doesn’t have to know.”
“Well, it’s true,” she whispered. “You’re never in the mood anymore. Do you still love me?”
“Yes, I love you,” I answered truthfully.
“Then what is it? Talk to me.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “It’s Mr. Johnson,” I told her, referring to my talking penis. “We’re barely on speaking terms.”
Yes, I have a talking penis. All men do. Any guy who says he doesn’t is lying. Mr. Johnson started talking to me when I was eleven years old and continued babbling for forty-eight years, nonstop. He became less talkative in the forty-ninth year and was now virtually incommunicado.
“I haven’t heard from him in weeks,” I confessed.
“Was I with you the last time he showed up?”
“I was by myself.”
“You didn’t!”
“No,” I assured her. “I kept my hands to myself.”
“What happened?”
“It was weird.”
I told her I was home alone watching an old movie with Ann-Margret when Mr. Johnson popped up.
“I love this movie,” he said as though everything were normal.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“Hanging out.”
“Why haven’t I heard from you?”
“Why didn’t you get in touch with me?”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Same here.”
We watched Ann-Margret for a while until Mr. Johnson lost interest and said, “This movie isn’t as good as I remember.”
“I agree.”
“I think I’ll be going. See ya.”
“See ya.”
When I finished, Claudette took out her cell phone and punched in some keys.
“You’re not issuing a press release, are you?” I asked.
“I’m calling your urologist.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“You’re underreacting,” she said pointedly.
“Dr. Koblentz’s office,” I heard a voice on her cell phone.
“Hi,” Claudette responded. “I’d like to make an appointment for Eddie Perlmutter as soon as possible.”
“Don’t I have a say in this?” I asked.
“No. Tomorrow Morning will be fine.”
• • •
Dr. Alan Koblentz and I had become intimate several months ago when he gave me a digital prostate exam and a colonoscopy. Now he was proposing taking our relationship to the next level. He wanted to squeeze Mr. Johnson’s head while sticking his finger in my ass.
“Can’t we just be friends?” I asked.
“Eddie,” Dr. Koblentz said, “a bulbocavernosus reflex test is the quickest, safest way to check your problem.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” I said slowly. “You want to squeeze the head of my penis with one hand and stick a finger up my ass with the other.”
“That’s the basic procedure,” he answered casually.
“Will you still respect me in the morning?”
Mr. Johnson seemed indifferent, and I started worrying that MJ might actually have “little brain” damage.
According to women, men have two brains: a big one in their head and a little one in their pants. Also, according to women, men don’t have enough blood to sustain both brains at the same time. Maybe that was my problem. Maybe I was thinking too much.
“Eddie, you’re thinking too much,” the doctor’s said. “This is a very common procedure.”
“I know. Some guys swear by it,” I said, thinking of my friends in Wilton Manor. “It’s just not my thing.”
“There are other options, but they’re more invasive.”
“What’s more invasive than a finger up my ass and a hand in my crotch?”
“Injections,” he told me.
“What and where?”
“Prostaglandin direct
ly into your penis.”
“Tell me about the hand-and-finger thing again.”
• • •
When Dr. Koblentz finished doing the hand jive in and around my pelvis, I pulled up my pants and asked him to marry me.
“You have ED,” he told me, ignoring my proposal.
“An eating disorder?”
“Erectile dysfunction.”
“Like Bob Dole?” I asked, referring to the 1996 Republican presidential candidate who lost an election and his erection and got a job as a Viagra spokesman.
“Similar.”
“I didn’t even run for office,” I said. “Is it serious?”
“Nothing we can’t treat. Millions of men in this country have ED. In your age range, 17 percent of the men tested had ED, and by seventy we’re talking 40 percent.”
“There must be a lot of sexually frustrated older women because of ED,” I said.
“Not really. A seventy-six-year-old woman threatened to sue me for malpractice unless I stopped prescribing Viagra for her husband.”
“She must have been concerned about his health.”
“She was concerned about her own health,” he explained. “She told me she was a mother of four and a grandmother of twelve and didn’t want an eighty-year-old man with a chemically induced hard-on chasing her around her two-bedroom condo.”
“Is Viagra that effective?” I asked, embarrassed that I was being outperformed by an eighty-year-old.
“Viagra’s just a brand name for sildenafil citrate,” the doctor said, going technical on me. “Like Cialis or Levitra. ED is all about blood flow. When a man is sexually aroused, the brain sends an impulse to the arteries in his penis to widen. More blood flows through these expanded arteries and the penis gets hard.”
“I remember that.”
“If something interferes with that blood flow, it’s a problem.”
“What interferes with blood flow?” I asked.
“Lots of things. Nerves or blood vessels malfunction, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, prostate problems, depression, stress, the wrong medicine, or just old age are causes.”
“Are you trying to cheer me up?”
“No, I’m trying to get you up.” He laughed.
That’s not funny.
I went to CVS on Powerline, where a girl who should have been selling me Girl Scout cookies sold me four Viagra pills instead.
“They’re for my father,” I told her.
I got in the Mini and glanced at my watch. It was nearly seven. Claudette was working late at the Cohen-Goldman clinic, so I decided to take a directionless ride. I drove east on Yamato and randomly selected I-95 south.
White lines and exit signs hypnotized me: Glades Road, Palmetto, Hillsboro, SW Tenth Street, and Sample Road flashed by. When I passed Copans Road, I was in a daze, daydreaming of the old days, accompanied by songs on an oldies station. When “Love Potion No. 9” came on, I had to laugh, but then I started personalizing every title: “Ain’t That a Shame,” “Bye Bye Love,” “The Great Pretender” …
Did I just see a sign for Martin Luther King Boulevard, five miles?
The disc jockey announced three Rolling Stones songs in a row that were perfect for my condition: “Start Me Up,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”
The finale featured Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire” followed by his version of “End of the Road.”
I checked my watch. It was a few minutes past eight. I had been driving south for over an hour. It was time to turn around. I got off I-95 on Seventy-ninth Street and looked for an entrance ramp north. I got lost. Soon I was driving past decrepit buildings and shabby storefronts. I saw the sign liberty city auto repair and realized I had wandered into one of Miami’s most dangerous ghettos. By my third directionless turn, I had driven down a dead-end street. My headlights illuminated a group of young, sullen black faces gathered around an old, four-door Buick.
You’re not in Boca anymore.
The Buick’s headlights went on, and I was in the spotlight.
I completed two points of a three-point turn before I was surrounded by nine scowling black men. They wore silver-and-black jackets.
Love them Oakland Raiders, but I gotta go.
I inched forward, but one of the Raider fans walked in front of the car and broke the left headlight with a baseball bat.
“Get out of the fuckin’-”
I saw red, and I was out of the car before he could finish his sentence. I inherited the red spots from my grandfather, who stabbed a bear to death in Ukraine the first time he saw red.
“I’m gonna kick your ass,” I said to the guy with the bat.
I felt a gun barrel pressed against my left temple.
That changed things.
“One mo’ step … you dead,” a young voice said.
The gunman couldn’t have been more than seventeen. He looked nervous enough to pull the trigger.
Do or die.
I slowly raised my hands in surrender, but when my left hand was nearly to my shoulder, it became a trained weapon. I hit the underside of the kid’s gun hand with an upward chop. The gun barrel pointed skyward. In one continuous motion, I twisted the gun from his hand and had it pressed against his forehead before anyone reacted.
You see that?
Eight angry black men were now pointing guns at me. I quickly calculated my chances.
I’m gonna die.
I looked at the kid at the end of the gun barrel. He was on the verge of tears. He was just a boy trying to be a man in front of his gang.
No one was moving. I stood like a statue, left arm out straight, pressing the gun between the kid’s eyes. Eight guns were pointed at me.
I lose. I’m the best marksman I know, but I figured I could only get off one shot before I was bullet riddled.
You little shit. You should be home with your mother.
I looked at the pistol in my hand. It was an old-time, low-tech Saturday-night special, probably a Ring of Fire MP-25 with six shots. It wasn’t much firepower but enough to kill the kid at the end of the barrel. Staring through the gun sight, I was thinking about my funeral when I noticed the safety was on. It was so unlikely I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” someone asked.
“The safety is on,” I told them, still laughing.
“Ladanlian, you dumb shit,” someone shouted at the kid.
“That’s how you give it to me, Roach,” Ladanlian defended himself to a muscular gang member.
“Here’s the safety, kid,” I said, taking the gun off his forehead and flicking the switch to the on position. “See? Now you’re ready to kill someone.”
His eyes grew wide.
I tossed him the gun.
He was too dazed to react, and the pistol bounced off his chest and clattered on the street.
Roach stepped forward, picked up the junk gun, and waved it at me. “No more fuckin’ around.”
“I wasn’t fuckin’ around,” I told him.
“Give me your money.”
“You want it … take it,” I challenged him.
He moved closer, aiming the gun at my head. I clenched my fists and thought how sad Claudette was going to be when she learned I was dead.
“Stop!” A low voice rumbled.
Everyone froze, including me. A huge black man stepped out of the shadows and brushed the gunman aside. He looked down at me. I looked up at him.
Holy shit!
The man was gigantic; at least seven inches over six feet tall and several lines above 300 pounds on a scale. He was a block of black granite with arms as thick as banyan boughs. I wasn’t afraid of him. I just knew I couldn’t beat him.
Then again, my grandfather killed a bear …
“Why you give up the gun?” he asked, squinting at me.
“I didn’t want to shoot the kid.”
“Why?”
“It wouldn’t change anythi
ng,” I explained. “I was a dead man either way. Why take some dumb-ass kid with me?”
He tilted his head trying to get a better look at me. “That dumb-ass kid my nephew.”
“Your aunt will be very happy,” I said.
“She dead. I take care of him.”
“You’re doing a lousy job.”
“Say what?”
“Your nephew was five seconds away from having a hole in his head.”
He stared at me curiously. “Where you from?”
“Boca.”
“Whatchu doin’ here?”
“Wrong turn,” I said.
He almost smiled but didn’t. “You a cop?”
“I was … a long time ago.”
“In Boca?”
“Boston.”
He took a step closer and folded his arms across his broad chest.
“You the Boston cop … that Boca Knight guy … who fucked up them white-power skinheads a while back?”
I nodded.
He looked around the circle.
“That was good,” he said, nodding his head.
“Good enough to get me out of here?”
“Maybe,” he said, staring at me. “But lemme ax you somethin’. How much money you got on you?”
“About thirty bucks,” I guessed.
“You willin’ to fight Roach for thirty bucks? He’s half your age and twice your size.”
“I don’t give up anything without a fight,” I said. “And I could kick Roach’s ass anyway.”
“You crazy or something, old man?” Roach asked.
“Crazier than you,” I told him.
“You know who we are?” the huge man asked.
“The Oakland Raiders?”
“The Overtown Outlaws,” he said. “Everybody knows us.”
“I never heard of you.”
“We rule Liberty City,” he said proudly. “Don’t need no Boca.”
“Boca doesn’t need you either,” I told him. “What’s Overtown?”
“A symbol.”
“What kind of symbol?”
“A symbol of how white people mess with black people,” he said.
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