6
We had gone only a few blocks west on Oakland Park Boulevard when the reason for the traffic delay became evident. A mob of hundreds of pedestrians were standing on both sides of Oakland and had merged across it, forming a solid blockade of flag- and sign-waving humanity. Most of them were wearing red or purple T-shirts and hats, connoting some sort of organization behind their numbers. After another slow half block of creeping forward, Kelly battled her way into the second lane from the right.
Nick said, “I sure didn’t miss this crap over in the islands.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t,” Kelly agreed. “Who would?” Then so quickly that I almost missed it, she spat her gum out the open window.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“Some kind of a strike against Target. That’s it a few blocks up on the right. I can’t tell if it’s a real strike or some kind of a union flash-mob thing. They do that sometimes. Wildcatting, they call it. The union bosses probably know ahead of time, but they pretend they don’t. They’re mostly wearing the same T-shirts and the signs look machine-printed, so I’d say it’s a union deal.”
“And the police tolerate it?” I asked. “Blocking off Oakland Park Boulevard during the morning rush, I mean, they’re just nuking traffic all over the area.”
“Lots of people won’t be getting to work on time today, that’s for sure,” Nick added.
“No shit. Or to conferences in Miami Beach. So, where are the police? Do the police put up with this kind of thing?”
Kelly said, “Usually the strikers are just on the parking lots and sidewalks. They don’t block the whole boulevard too often. It really pisses people off.”
“So, why don’t the police break it up?”
“What, you think you’re in Miami already?” she asked. “This is Broward County. This county is totally screwed up. The police are a joke; they’re part of the problem.”
“And the police belong to a union too,” said Nick. “So they’re not going to break up a strike by their union brothers. Solidarity forever, right? Not even when they’re blocking major roads. It’s easier to just wait for the union bosses to put the word out to knock it off. It’s easier and safer for the police to just let them blow off some steam and block the roads for a while than to go in with riot gear and turn it into all-out warfare.”
I asked Kelly, “How often does this happen, blocking the whole road? And how long does it usually last?”
She appeared to be unperturbed but had begun to chew on the corner of a thumbnail. “Well, Target is the strike target, obviously. They have picketers out all the time, mostly on the sidewalks, but once in a while the whole union comes out and blitzes one store location. I have no clue why today’s our lucky day. Union politics, maybe. Contract deadlines, who knows? I have no idea how long it’ll last.”
“Is it going to be a problem for us? Can we go another way around?”
“Hell yeah, it’s going to be a problem, because the cell phone place is on the other side. It’s in the Target shopping center, in the back corner.”
Nearly a thousand people, about half of them African-Americans and most of them wearing matching T-shirts, were keeping customers away from the Target parking lot by screaming, hollering through bullhorns, beating bucket-drums and waving signs and banners. Shoppers would have to be very brave or very desperate to run their jeering gauntlet to get those cheap Asian shoes.
Traffic on Oakland Park was virtually at a dead stop, and we were trapped in the middle lanes without even a cross street for escape visible ahead. Across the boulevard from Target another big-box store, a Walmart from the looks of it, was already shut down and boarded up, along with most of the other outlets in the shopping center. The Walmart showed signs of fire damage, not recent and not repaired.
Nick said, “They don’t pull this kind of crap in Dade County. Romeiro would send in the riot battalion. They’d be puking pepper spray for a month.”
Little bands of red-shirted union members holding strike signs and plastic buckets left the main body of the mob and walked toward us through the stopped cars. Three of them walked between the right lanes, stopping alongside each car to glare at the occupants and “request” a donation to their cause. All three of them were wearing bright red union ball caps and T-shirts. Two African-American women held white plastic buckets that had, according to their labels, previously contained Publix-brand ice cream.
A three-hundred-pound Hispanic with a shaved head stood behind the two black women, lending them his moral support. Black knee socks stretched from his black high-tops to his droopy black shorts. His red XX-L union T-shirt was stretched tightly around his girth. He carried a small sign nailed to a six-foot length of two-by-four lumber. An inch of sharp nails protruded from the back of the wood at the very top. The nails at the bottom of the sign had been hammered over flat. By the way the guy wielded his sign he made it clear to all observers that the stout timber was meant for more than just holding the message aloft. Behind him in the main force blockading the boulevard, dozens more dual-purpose signs like his were visible.
The threat was formidable. An angry mob was dangerous enough, but an angry mob armed with nailed clubs could kill you. If anybody insulted or threatened the donation-collecting squads, reinforcements in great numbers were just a yell or a whistle away. Escape by car was impossible in the gridlock, and getting out of a car to run away on foot wasn’t a much better option. The hundreds of union members were united in their common cause, but the hundreds of people waiting in traffic were all different individuals and small groups, united by nothing other than their desire to get past the delay and onto the interstate highway a few blocks ahead.
The lumber sign poles were blatantly deadly weapons, especially with the nail points sticking out at the tops. I could only conclude that the strikers had no concerns about police interference, and that made them all the more emboldened and dangerous. If the police did show up, the protruding nails could be quickly bent over and flattened against the street pavement, and the strikers would claim they had been hammered down all along. I could see cleverness in the strategy. They had some thinkers on their side. Dangerous thinkers.
The approaching Latino’s machine-printed placard read “TARGET THE TARGET SCABS!” with a crosshair over the store’s bull’s-eye logo. Instead of reaching for my wallet, I tipped the mini-atlas off of my Glock in the map pocket. Kelly eyed my hand’s movement. There was nowhere we could go, sandwiched tightly between pickups, SUVs, sedans and trucks belching out stinking exhaust fumes.
With my hand resting on the Glock, I smiled wanly and said to the fat lady holding a donation bucket at my window, “Sorry, but we’re broke today. Looking for work.” I forced a nervous laugh. “You guys hiring?” The bottom of her plastic bucket tapped on the edge of my door’s open window, and loose change in its bottom made a hollow jangle. Her red union cap was on sideways, even though she was at least forty years old. Maybe older. The cap was perched high atop a henna-colored hair weave.
She just said, “You gotta give us something, man.” Matter of fact. We do this every day. Her red T-shirt was brand new, probably passed out by the shop stewards that morning. The initials and union local numbers meant nothing to me.
“All I got is some change.”
“Well, give it over, then.”
“I can’t, it’s our only lunch money. We have to eat too.” Even though she was no taller than five-six, she weighed over two hundred, easy. Somebody was feeding her pretty well, that much was certain. She carried more spare body fat than the three of us in the car combined.
The Hispanic goon holding the spiked two-by-four posted its base on the asphalt, leaned over and looked into the GTI with narrow, bloodshot eyes, staring at each of us in turn. “What’s in them bags?” he grunted toward the back. My legs concealed my daypack.
“Work clothes,” I replied. “In case we get hired.”
He seemed unbelieving, but didn’t know how to push the is
sue further without getting physical and possibly provoking an unwanted response. My right hand rested on the grip of the Glock, unseen by him. Behind his bloodshot caramel-colored eyes I could see the gears slowly shifting and turning as he measured the odds and possible outcomes. A violent skirmish with the passengers in one car would not lead to more donations down the line. Maybe Kelly’s red tank top and necklace triggered subliminal thoughts of union solidarity, but he blinked and almost smiled, straightened up and moved back a step.
The skinnier of the bucket holders grew impatient, scowled and moved off, and the other two in the shakedown posse followed her to the car behind us. Even if we were guilty of being evil white racist Caucasians, clearly we were not rich capitalist exploiters. Not driving a ten-year-old Volkswagen with no air conditioning in the Florida June heat. I was glad not to have been wearing my coat and tie, for reasons both of climate and class identity.
We were in the next-to-right of the four westbound lanes, inching forward. Kelly suddenly brightened, sat tall and said, “I just had a brilliant idea. We can kill two birds with one stone, maybe. I had to think it all out, but I know how the backs of these places connect. We can cut through some of the service roads, from one store to the next, and get behind the Target. They’re not on the GPS, because they’re private property. Dan, try to stop that guy in the U-Haul and see if he’ll let us cut over.”
I stepped out of her car and stood directly in front of the small orange truck on our passenger side. Its front bumper was even with our rear. I gave the driver a head nod toward the curb and indicated our desire to cut in, and he casually nodded and finger-waved an okay with his palms still on his wheel. He wasn’t moving anyway. I encouraged the ancient station wagon in front of the U-haul to edge forward as far as he could go to open a gap for us.
Kelly wrenched the wheel hard over, turned the GTI forty-five degrees to the traffic, crossed the right lane and then, still on the angle, she walked the right front tire up onto the curb and sidewalk. It was quite a demonstration of her prowess with a stick shift as she applied just enough power to mount the curb one wheel at a time, on the angle like a pro so that the GTI didn’t high-center and become trapped. Once the car’s four wheels were all up on the sidewalk I got back in and closed the door.
“Nice work,” I said. “I’m impressed.”
“I told you I could drive a stick.”
“I never doubted it.”
“But now you know it,” she said, revving the engine in neutral.
“Yeah, now I know it.”
She tried to keep a poker face, but I could tell she was suppressing a proud grin as she pushed the stick into first and we zipped ahead. It was near anarchy in the street, with hundreds of belligerent strikers spread across the boulevard just a block ahead. Nobody was going to care about one compact car escaping up onto the sidewalk and then crossing some patchy grass and knocking down a few weedy shrubs, then finally dropping off another curb onto a boarded-up muffler shop’s trash-strewn parking lot. Kelly shot around it, passed a used furniture store and weaved her way through the back lots and service roads behind fast-food joints, a Goodwill Store and a minor strip shopping center. The mostly empty parking lots helped her keep her speed up until we approached the back of the main shopping center anchored by the Target.
“Private security,” Kelly said. “Stay cool, I can handle this.” She rolled to a stop before two rent-a-cops guarding a lifting gate. Without a guardhouse or any overhead shelter, I guessed that the gate was normally automated and unmanned. The armed guards were probably posted in response to the strike action.
One of the private guards was sufficiently overweight that his white undershirt was visible between his buttons while his gut piled over his belt, and the other guard had disturbingly crossed eyes. Guarding the back of a shopping center, even during a strike, was not exactly the top echelon of the security employment spectrum. Even so, they both had pistols belted to their hips, along with Tasers, pepper spray, telescoping batons, steel handcuffs, plastic flex-cuffs and radios. Despite their armaments and cop paraphernalia, I noticed that they lacked any sign that they were wearing Kevlar undergarments. There was only a layer or two of thin cotton between human flesh and unfeeling lead bullets. Just like us.
Observing a young and attractive female driver, they approached the GTI’s open window for a better look. While checking out Kelly’s bare shoulders and legs, the heavier one said, “Sorry lady, no public access. Employees and staff only.”
She pushed her sunglasses up on her head and smiled first at the chubby guard and then at the one with the lazy eye and said, “I understand, I really do, but I have sort of an emergency. Those union guys are blocking Oakland Park, but if I don’t get to Miami by nine, I won’t be able to take the test for my realtor’s license, and…and…it’s really important, and if I don’t take it…my mother…our house…my little sisters…” Her smile faded and her face turned into a trembling mask of sorrow. She made a little choking sound and said, “Oh, please, please can’t you make an exception, just this once? I just have to be in Miami by nine!”
“Oh, for the love of Pete, let her go, Duane,” said lazy eye. “Any fool can see they’re not with the union. Just look at ’em!”
“Shit, Billy, we could git fired if yer wrong. They said nobody gits through without an employee sticker. And she’s wearin’ a red shirt!”
“And maybe I’m wearin’ red underbritches. So what? They ain’t union.”
Kelly’s cheeks trembled, her head tilted forward and she began to dissolve into actual tears, and the fat guard’s resolve disappeared.
He said, “Um, okay, lady. Go on through.” He stepped back and pushed a button and the gate swung up to vertical. “Good luck with your test.”
“Oh, you are so nice, both of you.” Kelly smiled again and we pulled forward.
“Academy Award,” said Nick from behind me.
“At least a Golden Globe,” I agreed.
Kelly batted her eyes and played along. “Thank you! And I also want to thank all the ordinary little people who helped me along my way to achieving this great honor.”
****
A few hundred yards ahead and around a corner was a row of red-painted back doors for the smaller shops. The last had a small plaque above it reading HJS Electronic & Wireless. These doors were no more than fifteen feet apart, so the shops behind them were quite narrow. I visualized glass storefronts with roll-down security panels on the side facing the shopping center parking lot.
Kelly said, “I’ll park in front of his door, because he knows my car. It’ll help. Otherwise, I’d park over there under the trees so you wouldn’t bake in the sun. But this won’t take long. You desert warriors can handle it, right?” She bumped the tire stop, yanked the emergency brake and killed the engine.
“Are they open?” I asked.
“That’s his white Audi over there in the shade.”
“Who is he?”
“Herman Stark. Look, I’ll need some money for the phones.”
“You know him well? You trust him?”
Kelly turned in her seat, her sunglasses still pushed up, and her blue eyes sparkling. “Oh, I’ve known Herman like forever. Friend of the family, sort of. Herman’s about seventy. He escaped from East Germany in a crop duster when he was twenty-five. And he’s a real commie hater—that’s why he helps a few friends like me with gadgets. He says he never dreamed that he’d see communism come to America. This is his way of fighting back.”
“Sounds like my kind of Kraut. Will five thousand be enough?”
“It should be. But don’t expect a receipt. Not for this kind of deal.”
“I’m not planning to list it as a deduction.” On the tax forms I’m not going to fill out.
“That’s probably a good idea.”
“When this is all over, I’d like to meet him. Your friend Herman sounds like somebody I should get to know.”
“I can arrange that. When this is all over.
”
I handed Kelly one of the half-inch-thick packs of folded hundreds. She stepped out of the car, approached the red door with her sunglasses still pushed up on her head and pushed a button. She rang it again, and a few moments later a tinny voice could be heard through a speaker. Kelly held the button down and spoke to the person within. So it wasn’t just a doorbell, but also an intercom built into the door frame. After a brief exchange the lock buzzed open and she was admitted. The door closed behind her into its steel frame, which was set into concrete blocks. Kelly was now unreachable, but this shop was her connection and we had to play it her way.
Nick sprawled against the backseat and said, “She’s really something, isn’t she?”
“That she is.”
“You think she’s pretty?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course.”
“I do too. And she’s almost like a trained spy! First she comes up with duress codes, and now we’re at Herman’s getting phones. And did you see her put on that crying act for the guards? And driving up the curb?”
I liked Kelly, but I was rapidly gaining the impression that Nick liked her even more. I told him, “I guess you have to live like a spy if your country isn’t free but you want to live like you’re free. You have to learn to fake a lot of things to get along.” I understood this well. It’s the same if you grow up under the control of tyrannical parents. I had learned many of these same spy tricks as a child. The easy lying, the conniving, the acting, the keeping track of minute details in order not to be trapped in a deliberate deception.
I turned the ignition key to the accessory position, switched the radio to AM and pushed the seek button, listening for familiar talk show hosts, but all I could find was sports talk, religion, gardening, a self-help guru and music, mostly in Spanish and some in Haitian Creole. After a minute I quit trying to find a talk show in English and shut it off.
Castigo Cay Page 24