“What makes you think you can trust this girl?” Art asked.
“Instinct,” Jack said. “Besides, we're not getting too far and we won't unless we find somebody who knows the ropes. She sounds like she has a pretty good lead for us.”
“It's been a hell of a day for us so far anyway,” Mark said. “Watching those movies being made really got my balls in an uproar. I think if we ever get your film back,” he said, looking at Art, “we should have an immense party on the spot.”
When Teresa joined them, they hopped into a cab and sped over to the East Village, getting out in front of a grungy-looking old five or six story office building. As they got out, Teresa briefed them on what was going on. “You're going to see just about everything in this place—it's really a zoo. Not only does the guy make, buy, and sell porno films, he also runs a massage parlor, and a modeling studio, and about three other kinds of fronts for whore-houses. They're all on different floors. But you'll probably see them all by the time we're done.”
They entered the building and went to the third floor in the elevator, where they were introduced to a man who, if possible, was even more disreputable-looking than Ben. His puffy nose seemed to dominate his prune-like face, and his squinting eyes could barely be seen. His name was Al, and he was really a weird-looking creature. He talked in a slow, almost dazed fashion, and had long, greasy strings of hair falling to his shoulders from his half-bald head. He wore baggy, pleated pants, a bright yellow shirt with orange spots, and a battered old vest that looked as if it had come from a twenty-dollar suit of twenty years ago. His shoes were scuffed, and one of them had a hole in the toe.
“Hi, Teresa,” he mumbled. “What can I do for yuz?”
“These men sort of want to look around—maybe have a massage or something. Isn't that right?” Teresa turned pointedly to the three.
“That's right,” Jack said. “We also might be interested in buying some films.”
“Arright,” Al said. “Come dis way.” Like a ship rolling in a stormy sea, he struggled down the hall, and Jack could see that there was something wrong with one of his legs. It was deformed somehow. What a zoo! Jack thought to himself. As they walked down a narrow hall with many doors on either side, one of the doors suddenly popped open, and a tall, very skinny girl, laughing hysterically and completely naked, practically fell out on top of him. Looking inside the room, Jack saw a man with a can of shaving cream, squirting it all over the place. He had squirted quite a lot on the girl. Was that his idea of sexual kicks? Anyhow, the girl dove back into the room, apparently not embarrassed at all, her skinny rump disappearing behind the door, which slammed closed abruptly.
Al led them into a large room at the end of the hall, where numerous girls lounged around in bikini panties and pasties. “Dese are de models,” he said, “you could choose whatever one outa here. Dey'll do a real nice job on yuz.”
Just to make things look good, Art and Mark each chose a model from among the scraggly collection, and were escorted to smaller rooms along the hall. As they walked, the boards in the old building, creaked, and the light bulbs that hung by cords in the ceiling, swung lazily above them. It was really a seedy place. Teresa and Jack told Al they wanted to look at some films, so Al took them to the elevator and down a floor, then led them along the hall to a storage room. While they were there, Jack noticed that there were several other people in an adjoining room, and that they were looking over films. Something odd immediately caught his eye. One of the guys—a sort of husky, curly headed, broken-down looking man of about thirty five, was arguing with the others over a matter which they clearly didn't think was very important. “What do you mean, you'll only give me ten bucks for it? You didn't even see it! I looked at it myself—it's great!”
One of the other guys, his hands in a big spaghetti of film spread out on the table before him, said, “You're lucky if well give you that for it. How the hell do we know where it came from? It might get us in a lot of trouble.”
This all sounded very suspicious to Jack. It could have been over anything, but he really wanted to believe that they were hassling over Art's film. Just then, however, Al showed up with a greasy-looking pile of film cans, and began opening them and holding the contents up to the light for him to inspect.
“Gee, I don't know,” Jack said, loud enough for the arguing men in the adjoining room to hear him, “these don't look so good to me—I want some really good group stuff. I'll be willing to pay a lot for it, but it has to be good!”
At this, the man who was trying to sell the film in the other room looked up, and proceeded toward him. “Hey mister,” he said, “I got a film here-”.
“Shut up,” one of the men from the other room said.
“Who the fuck's that?” Al said, trying to focus his foggy eyes on the intruder.
“Some guy who's trying to peddle a film to us,” one of the guys said. “Sure as shit it's a stolen film-it can only be trouble for us.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Al said to the man. “We don't need your shit.”
Then, as if that settled the matter, he turned back to Jack. “Now, mister, I got some better stuff upstairs. Come on with me, and we'll take a look at it.” The man with the film—it was in a box, so Jack couldn't see whether it was Mark's film can or not—seeing that he was outnumbered, began to retreat. Jack was screwed. He didn't want to antagonize Al by asking the other guy to see his film, in case it wasn't Art's, and in case Al did have Art's upstairs. But Teresa saved the day.
“You go on up with Al and look at the films,” Teresa said, “and I'll look at a few down here and see if there's anything. Is that O.K. Al?” she said.
The man was receding rapidly out the door, and was on his way down the hall. “Yeah, sure, Teresa,” Al said. “I trust you.”
Jack followed Al out the door, and he was really afraid that the man with the film would get away, but as they went out, he saw Teresa rush into an adjoining room, and as they took the elevator up, he could hear Teresa's footsteps following the man down the stairs. Jack was extremely nervous, but he didn't see how he could shake loose of Al and follow the man with the film. Al and his nasty looking buddies seemed just crazy enough to beat the shit out of anybody that they thought was competing with them, and Jack didn't want to get into any fights. Especially trying to defend the guy who had probably ripped off Mark's car. He went upstairs and nervously looked at a few more films. While he was doing that, he noticed that through a curtain that divided the room he was now in into two parts, he could see a homosexual stag flick being made. He began to think that all of New York was engaged in the porno film trade, as he watched two guys going down on each other, and happened to see one of them uncover a huge cock just as it sprouted sperm into the air and all over the face of the guy who had been sucking it.
In a few seconds, however, Teresa returned. She was carrying a package. She whispered into his ear, “I don't know whether this is it or not—but I got it from the guy for forty bucks. We'd better wait till later to open it up. Meanwhile, we'd better keep on looking here, and see if it might be around here instead of in this package. Are Art and Mark done with their models yet?” Her voice was sarcastic, as if she knew perfectly well how ridiculous it was to call the collection of freaks upstairs models. As if in answer to her question, Art and Mark appeared. Jack was too anxious to find out what was in the box that Teresa had bought to look at any more films, so just to make Al happy they bought a couple of really trashy films and split. In the elevator, Art ripped open the box that Teresa was carrying, and, low and behold, Mark's film can was staring him in the face. Just to be sure, they opened it up and held some of the film up to the light. Sure enough, it was the party film. Their troubles were over, on the other hand, their troubles were just beginning, because when the elevator hit the ground floor, and the doors opened, three cops were staring them in the face. One of them, a large Irish sergeant, yelled, “O.K., boys, back in the elevator, You're under arrest. This is a bust.”
Art's face was panic stricken. Behind the three cops, there were five more, getting out of their van and piling into the building. “We're, going back upstairs,” the sergeant said. “What are you guys, you part of this operation?” Then, as if answering his own question, he said, “Well, we'll find out when we get to the station house. Meanwhile everybody in the fucking building is going downtown.”
Jack looked at Mark, who was staring at the ceiling with a disgusted look. This was too fucking ironic for words. Art tried to tell the sergeant that he had no idea what was going on, that he had come to look for his grandmother or something—some very stupid story—but the cop just pointed to the film in his hand and laughed. When the elevator reached the third floor, cops piled out, and there was screaming everywhere as Al and his buddies, and all the hookers and customers in the place, fled for the stairs. But it was no use—everybody was trapped. Mark and Jack found themselves handcuffed together, at the sergeant's side. Art was just having the cuffs put on him when he whispered something in the sergeant's ear. All the other cops were running around, chasing the naked bodies that seemed to emerge from every crack and cranny of the place, telling them to get their clothes on. Art must have said something very interesting to the sergeant, because he dragged the three of them into a small side room. Art had found the ticket. He shoved his hand into his pocket and took out a roll of hundred dollar bills. “Now look,” Art said, “I'm not involved in this thing—I'm just a customer, and I can't afford this kind of scandal. I'll pay you five hundred dollars on the spot to let the three of us out of here.” He peeled off five bills and handed them to the sergeant, who, looking around cautiously, unlocked the handcuffs and let them go.
“O.K.,” the sergeant said, pocketing the money, “you guys can leave. But this is staying here.” He grasped the box with the film in it in his pudgy fingers.
“I'll pay you another five hundred to let me have that film.” Art said. That was obviously what the cop wanted to hear. More money changed hands, Art shoved the film under his coat, and the three of them headed for the elevator. As they got in, a patrolman tried to stop them, but the sergeant yelled out, “Hey, they're alright—it's all a mistake. They're not involved. Let them go.” The three of them piled into the elevator, sped to the ground floor, and fled, laughing and breathing deep sighs of relief at once.
“It's a hell of a good thing you brought a lot of money with you,” Jack told Art. “Or we'd be in the fucking clink, and you're old lady's ass would be evidence!”
“I don't give a shit about the money,” Art said, “but I did have to spend a few thousand to get this piece of shit back!”
At that point, Jack suddenly realized that they had not seen Teresa for some time. “Son of a bitch,” he said, “where the fuck is Teresa? She's the one that got the goddamn thing back for us, and I bet they got her!”
“I'm going back and see what happened,” Mark said immediately.
“Well, I'm going to make sure this film is safe,” Art said, 'out take some money—as you can see, it does wonders.” He handed Mark his roll of hundred dollar bills; and Jack, following Mark, split back toward the building, while Art continued on his way.
Jack and Mark arrived back at the building just in time to see Teresa being led out in handcuffs. The sergeant was no where around. The patrolman who had grabbed Teresa was one that neither of them had seen before. He was standing alone on the sidewalk, while most of the other patrolmen were up in the building yet, and the rest were shoving prisoners into the police van that was parked about twenty yards away.
Jack suddenly hit on an idea. He had once received a press pass as a free lance writer which allowed him to cross police lines, and he had not thought of it before, but he had it in his pocket now. He decided to pull a gutsy move. From about twenty yards away, he yelled, “Hey, Teresa, what the hell's going on?” He managed to wink at her, to let her know that he had some land of plan. Then he went up to the officer. “Officer, I'm a writer, and I'm doing a series on these smut houses. This is my assistant. What the devil is she doing under arrest?”
“Don't give me that bullshit,” the officer said. But Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out his press pass, all nice and official, and shoved it in the officer's face.
“You know, you get in a lot of trouble for arresting reporters?” he said. He threw around the name of a major newspaper, and claimed that there would be a terrific stink if a writer for them got busted, and he could see the patrolman's resolve weakening. “Let me see the person in charge,” Jack said. “We've got to get this straightened out. I'm not going to have my assistant going to any jail like the rest of these fucking hookers I Here we are trying to do an expose on this stuff, trying to help you guys out by arousing public opinion, and you're hassling us!”
Finally the officer, who was young, and a little inexperienced, relented, and let Teresa go. Jack thanked the officer profusely for being so reasonable, and he, Mark, and Teresa, practically ran away from the place. They caught up with Art at a corner, and all hopped into a cab together.
“Well,” Art said, when they had finally escaped from the Village, “it's been a fuck of a day. This morning I was in Boston thinking over a big business deal, and this afternoon, I almost get busted in a two-bit smut factory in the Village! What the fuck—I'm out a few thousand dollars, but what's that? Let's go to someplace really fancy and have a few drinks. We can use it.”
CHAPTER SIX
The night of Art's deliverance from the hands of New York's underworld, Jack, Mark, and Teresa, spent several hours getting thoroughly soused in one of New York's finest bars. During that time, Jack learned—not much to his surprise, since he had felt this in his original impression of her—that Teresa was really quite a bit different from the people she had worked with. She was nineteen years old, and acted like she was about thirty. She really had a head on her shoulders. She had graduated from high school and had started at a very prestigious college, but had dropped out because she didn't have enough money to continue, and because college bored her. She described herself as something of a nymphomaniac, but Jack had long since ceased to find any meaning in that word, since the way he figured it, a nymphomaniac was just a woman that liked sex as much as any man, and there was nothing wrong in that. After they had drunk about as much as they could hold, Art remembered that he owed Teresa forty dollars for the movie, and insisted on giving her another thousand-no he insisted, make it two thousand—for her part in recovering it. At first Teresa tried to turn the money down, but finally allowed as how she was getting a little tired of working for Ben, and saw that for her modest needs she could live for the better part of the year on two thousand dollars, while that kind of money meant next to nothing to Art. They then got into a conversation about Jack and writing erotic literature, and it turned out that Teresa herself had made a few attempts in the field of writing. She even had a part of a novel that she had been working on in a writing course at college, which was being unfinished in a drawer in her apartment, because she had no time to work on it.
In a few days following the great movie caper, Teresa stopped by Jack and Gretchen's apartment a few times, and Jack read her manuscript. He was astounded. He felt that it was as good as anything he would ever write, and encouraged Teresa to finish it as quickly as possible. It was a very esoteric piece, not much to do with sex, full of a stream-of-consciousness writing and beautiful imagery. Teresa said that she wanted to move out of her dingy apartment in the Village, and Art learned that the studio apartment upstairs next to the apartment of Joan, Cindy, and Janice, had become vacant, so he arranged for Teresa to move in there. What with Jack pounding away at his typewriter, and the girls upstairs working intermittently on their book, and Teresa laboring to finish her novel, the place had turned into a virtual writer's cooperative.
A month or two later, Art, who was beginning to tire of city life, came over one evening, and over a few drinks and through a fairly thick haze of marijuana, announced that
he wanted to move out of the city. Winter was cold, and he wanted to go south. He had a good friend who owned the better part of a small island in the Bahamas, and who had a guest house of immense proportions that was vacant almost all the time. Art had arranged to have it for an indefinite period, and he was leaving for the place almost immediately. He invited just about everyone he knew to come down and stay with him. Jack was hesitant, but there was nothing holding him to New York. Gretchen had a job that was holding her back, but it was nothing she was that attached to. She could go for at least a few months. Joan, Janice, and Cindy got so excited about the prospect—especially since Art offered to pay virtually all of their expenses while they were there—that they all allowed as how, if it would really work out, they'd quit their jobs the next day and say goodbye to New York forever. By the time Art had finished making telephone calls, his impulsiveness had become catching, primarily because nobody could believe they would really have an opportunity to live in complete freedom on a beautiful island, and they all realized how little actually held them to New York. All in all, twelve people agreed to go, although some of them didn't know how long they would be staying. Al and Candy Frederickson were about as free as anyone, and agreed to go. Sal Fortunato and Dale Henry also thought it would be great, and along with Joan, Cindy, Janice, and Teresa, and Jack and Gretchen, Art and Marge were guaranteed of a pretty wild group. In only a week, the power of money had ripped them all out of their established but somewhat hectic New York lives, and they found themselves at the airport, drinking in the bar, watching the planes come and go, and waiting to board their own.
Their flight to Nassau was short and pleasant, and after they arrived, they immediately boarded a chartered boat that would take them to the island. The dazzling blue water, the shockingly green vegetation, and the clear sky, made Jack feel as though he had been transported to another world, and the others in the party seemed to share the feeling. Looking around at all of them, he wondered whether they would really be able to live together, alone, without any hassles developing. As far as he could see, the group was very tight, but who could tell what hidden pressures or hang-ups would emerge during months of what were bound to be fairly intense confrontations? So far, each person in the group had led his own private life, and had emerged from it to become one with the group only in the context of brief orgiastic parties. This was going to be a lot different, and Jack vaguely wondered whether he and Gretchen had been too impulsive in taking up with this group. “Well,” he thought, “we still have our place in New York, and we can go back to it whenever we want, so I guess we're not really loosing anything.”
Escapades of a Porno King Page 10