Every Man a Menace

by Patrick Hoffman

  The DJ had found the right beat. The music seemed perfect now: a tropical rhythm, the right thing for Miami, hand drums and bass. The man playing records was an artist; this was his art. You had to respect him for that. He’d crafted a life playing music, an honorable occupation. I need to learn a craft, he thought. He glanced back at the women. One of them smiled. She looked so serious, even smiling. A nice girl, but serious. He pushed his hair back on his head. It felt good. He danced a little, just moving to the music, not too fast, but the movements came easy; they felt natural. Isaak was bending over, talking to one of the seated women. A good man. Why had I doubted him? They’d been through so much. They were where they needed to be now. Miami, America, Ground Zero. Life was made for living.

  “There’s my boy,” said Isaak, stepping toward Semion. “Stupid, you just needed a little thiz-nation up in your fucking dome, get your head off. Look at you now.” Isaak talked like a black American when he was high. Semion smiled and sipped from his drink. Strong stuff. His legs felt firmly centered on the ground. He smiled at the serious-looking girl and she smiled back: two people recognizing the uniqueness of each other. He resisted a strange urge to press the back of his hand against the back of hers.

  “Our club,” Isaak said, motioning out at the room. “Our fucking house.” Semion nodded. Yes, he thought. We made this. He felt hot, took his jacket off, folded it, and placed it on a chair. He closed his eyes, studied the beat. The image of the bed—blood on white sheets—popped into his mind for a moment, but he breathed it away. Isaak was tapping him on the arm. Feeling very high now, he opened his eyes, swung his head, and saw his friend pointing across the club at someone. Semion squinted: it was Mr. Hong.

  “There,” said Isaak. “Go talk to him.”

  A wave of caution passed through Semion. Go talk to him. He lifted his arm, a greeting, but Mr. Hong didn’t see him. Isaak placed a hand on Semion’s back and pushed him gently forward. Semion took one last glance at the girl with the serious face, raising his hand to let her know that he’d be back.

  He moved through the crowd. He recognized faces now, nice people, good, kind people. He exchanged a gentle high-five with a man he knew. Then the dancers opened up in front of him, and he reached Mr. Hong.

  Mr. Hong! He was wearing a white sweater, khaki pants, white shoes. He had a shy smile on his face, an apologetic smile, like he was sorry for something. Semion, using his sleeve, wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “Mr. Hong,” he said, holding out his hand. Mr. Hong grasped it in both of his own—two dry, warm, friendly old hands.

  “Where have you been?” Mr. Hong asked.

  “I’ve been here,” Semion said. “Do you need a drink?”

  Mr. Hong squinted, shook his head. “Small problem,” he said, raising his voice a little over the music.

  Semion turned the words over in his head: Small problem. Yes, he was having a small problem, it was true, but how did Mr. Hong know about it? “I’m sorry?” he said.

  “Can we talk?” said Mr. Hong.

  Semion’s ears popped. He felt something happening in his mouth, like a burp mixed with a yawn. “Talk?” Semion asked, guiding the man toward a table in the far corner, away from other people. He looked back to see whether Isaak was watching, but the crowd was still between them.

  When they sat down, Mr. Hong’s hands caught his attention. Gold rings, gold watch. The man was classy; you had to give him that. He looked up again to find Mr. Hong looking back with a flat expression.

  “Small problem,” the man said again. “Our associates have a problem. Maybe not a bad thing for you.”

  Semion didn’t know what he meant. He tried to let the words settle into some kind of meaning, but they didn’t. He was conscious of the fact that his face showed confusion.

  “The Burmese need your help,” Mr. Hong continued.

  The Burmese need my help?

  “Nothing so much,” said Mr. Hong.

  Semion’s mind drifted for a moment. He hadn’t felt this high in ages. How much had Isaak given him? He looked out at the crowd, everyone dancing to the same song.

  “If I may tell you a story?” Mr. Hong asked. Semion nodded.

  “When I was a boy in China, I had a friend who sold misplaced rice,” the man said, leaning in. “He used a truck to take it to Shanghai. Commune business, you know, corrupt. But he did what he could to help his parents. You understand what I’m saying?”

  Semion nodded again. He had no idea what the man was talking about.

  “The boy got in trouble, because our commune boss wanted him to sell it for more than he was asking. I don’t know if you understand me?”

  Semion was utterly confused. The Burmese want rice? “No, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  “You Jewish,” said Mr. Hong, pointing at Semion. “Me, I’m Chinese. Them—” he pointed with his thumb toward the wall behind him. “They are Burmese. You understand me now?”

  Semion shook his head.

  “We all work together. Each of us, connected. You know?” Mr. Hong motioned to suggest a rope connecting his chest to Semion’s, a rope between their hearts.

  Semion nodded. Yes, connected!

  Mr. Hong leaned back in his seat. He regarded Semion like a teacher appraising a child’s intellect. Then, carefully, he cleaned the corners of his mouth with his fingers and continued.

  “My friend, the boy who sold the rice, very smart boy, he did the commune one better. He said, ‘I sell my rice’”—here Mr. Hong smiled, a large, open smile—“‘I sell my rice, but I will agree to sell your rice for you also.’” Mr. Hong nodded his head and leaned forward again. “He took their rice, sold it for them, everyone happy. He has money; they have money. Good for both.”

  “Mr. Hong, I’m sorry. What are you trying to tell me?” Semion said.

  The man studied Semion’s face. “The Burmese lost one of their routes.” He wiped his hands together. “They ask if you would be willing to help.”

  “What happened?” asked Semion.

  “Long story—market shifts. Ports closed. Now Burmese have shake-up in organization. They say we need to cut out all small-time partners. They need bigger partners. You understand me?”

  Semion didn’t understand. The drugs had overwhelmed him.

  “They need you to buy more.”

  “How much more?”

  Mr. Hong shook his head. “A significant amount.”

  “Maybe right now is not the best time to talk,” Semion said.

  “Listen to me,” Mr. Hong said. “My associates, the ones I work for, they told me not to offer this to you. They said, ‘We need a better partner.’ I said, ‘No, no, you don’t know these men. They’re good men, these Israelis. Give them a chance.’ They said, ‘Raise the price.’ I said, ‘No, he’s loyal, same price, same market!’ They said, ‘They too small. They not buy enough.’ I said, ‘They buy more. Give them a chance.’ I put my neck out for you.”

  The words washed over Semion. He couldn’t find their meaning. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Hong, shrugging his shoulders. “But?”

  Semion looked at Mr. Hong. How can you say no to this man? He wiped his face, pulled himself together. “You’re saying we have to buy more?”

  “Exactly.”

  “How much more?”

  “Not much. Only ten times. Same price. I get it for you special.”

  This was exactly what Isaak had been lobbying for, he realized. But Semion’s drugged mind didn’t quite allow him to feel anger. Instead he took in the lay of the land, and considered his next move.

  “Same price?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” said Mr. Hong.

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

  “It is, in fact, exactly how it works.”

  “We buy more we should pay less,” said Semion.

  Mr. Hong simply shook his head.

  “I’ll need to think about it,” Semion said. “You have no idea wh
at kind of headaches I’m dealing with right now.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve been told to offer you two days.”

  “And if we decide to say no?”

  “Let me help you,” said Mr. Hong. “Don’t think: ‘What problems will this bring?’ Instead, think: ‘What problems will this solve?’”

  The night turned worse from there. When he found Isaak again, his friend seemed wildly high, inappropriately high. Semion wondered if he’d been smoking meth. Isaak’s face was sweaty, his eyes distant. When Semion whispered Mr. Hong’s proposal, Isaak, in response, simply held his hands up, a freak’s smile on his face: What can you do? Celebrate! The music pounded on and on.

  Semion, still very high himself, felt sober around his friend. He wanted to go back to their office and talk it through, but Isaak only wanted to dance. He kept pushing himself on Semion, grinding on him like a horny teenager. When Semion tried to make him stop, Isaak changed strategies and pushed Semion toward the serious-faced girl. But the last thing Semion wanted was sex.

  Jimmy Congo was high, too. He kept dancing in Semion’s face, trying to lock eyes with him. Semion didn’t understand their belligerence. Finally he gave up and snuck out of the club without saying good-bye.

  He didn’t want to go home. Instead he parked his car a few blocks away, lowered the driver’s seat, opened his window, and sat staring at the sky. The quiet would do him good. He was still very high, but in a different way. His mind drifted: he remembered playing football in an alley in Ashdod. The boys he’d played with—Russian immigrants, like himself—had on occasion passed the ball so smoothly that they’d experienced moments of transcendence. Time had slowed down. The memory was interrupted by an image of Mr. Hong miming the rope between their bellies. Isaak appeared next: his sweaty face, that what can you do gesture.

  It occurred to him again that this was exactly what Isaak had always wanted. Every six months or so, he would bring up the prospect of increasing their order. He’d even suggested they start selling to more distributors than just the Filipina woman in San Francisco. Semion, using the same story about his friend Schmuel Teper being thrown in front of the bus in Tel Aviv, had always succeeded in shutting him down. It wasn’t a matter of superstition, either: he truly believed that with bigger orders came bigger problems. The key to survival was to stay small. You start making too much, people notice.

  Shit, thought Semion. He might get what he wants.

  When he woke the next morning, his depression—surely the product of depleted endorphins—didn’t feel new; it felt old, native, inescapable. Finally, with effort, he raised his head and looked around the room. It was clean and white. Normal.

  Don’t think: “What problems will this bring?” Think: “What problems will this solve?” Semion’s mind started pinging back and forth. His hands began to sweat. Shit.

  He got dressed. What problems of mine will it solve? He brushed his teeth, went to his couch, stood, paced, all in an effort to delay what would happen when he went downstairs and presented the issue to Isaak. He didn’t want it to be true. It couldn’t be true.

  I don’t have any problems, Semion told himself.

  He knocked on Isaak’s door for two minutes before his friend—pale faced and bleary-eyed—finally opened it. Semion tried to step inside, but Isaak barred the way. “Someone’s here,” he said.

  Semion stood there blinking, panic-stricken. Mr. Hong? Vanya? he thought.

  “A girl,” Isaak said, wiping at his face. “Hold on.”

  He closed the door. Semion, forced to wait, stood in the hall on aching feet. Finally, the door opened again, and the serious-faced woman from the night before stumbled out. She shot Semion a brutal look and staggered down the hallway.

  “Sorry,” Isaak said. “Come in.”

  Semion moved past him, wandered to the window, looked out at the bay, and then turned back to his friend. Isaak’s face resembled that of a man who’d heard the same argument numerous times, and suspected he was about to hear it again.

  “What is it?” he asked in Hebrew.

  “Mr. Hong,” Semion said. He stared at his friend, trying to gauge his reaction and seeing nothing. “The Burmese want us to buy ten times more,” he continued.

  Isaak looked down, and then looked back. “Yeah, you said, last night. So what? It’s good. Ten times more, we can retire ten times sooner.”

  Semion wiped his sweaty palms on his pant leg. He felt his face become ugly. “What’s good is if we ask for it,” he said. “It’s not so good if we’re told we have no choice.”

  “It’s still ten times the profit,” said Isaak.

  “We make good money right now,” Semion said. “We have an easy situation. We buy from one, sell to another, and with this, we make enough money to live like fucking kings. But trust me, I’ve done this before, if we get greedy, people will notice. The gangs will notice. The police will notice. And then we will have nothing.” He leaned toward Isaak. “This isn’t fucking normal business. This isn’t let’s see how many clubs we can open. This isn’t, you know, collect all the chips on the table. Trust me on this one.”

  “A thousand times you’ve made this speech,” said Isaak. “And a thousand times I’ve said I agree with you. So, okay, I still agree with you, but if Hong needs us to take ten times more, well, what can you do?”

  “He killed Vanya, Isaak. Maybe he hired her, too, but he’s the one doing this.”

  “What?” said Isaak. His mouth fell open. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Last night, Mr. Hong said, ‘What problems will this solve?’ Get it? What problems? What problems do I have?”

  “No,” said Isaak. “You’re being paranoid.”

  “No? Then who? Tell me, who would come into my home?” With a flat hand, Semion tapped his chest. He knew his face was red. He could feel it. He was short of breath.

  Isaak shrugged.

  Semion stared at his friend for a long moment. You fucking spoiled little shit, he thought. This is exactly what you’ve been dreaming of. He forced himself to calm down. “So I should tell them yes?” he asked. “Tell them: ‘Yes, please come into my home, kill a girl in my bed, and blackmail me.’ And then what? Back to business as usual? Sure, no problem.” He shook his head. “It’s not what you want, Isaak. We’re not here to become drug lords. We’re trying to make a little money, live comfortable.”

  Isaak looked embarrassed.

  “So,” said Semion. “I will tell him no. No deal.”

  “And then what?” Isaak said. “We lose our connection? Or worse? Brother, please, think about it. We don’t even know he had anything to do with this.”

  “We’ll find a new way,” said Semion. “We’ll get it from somewhere else. It’s a big world. The lady will still buy from us.”

  Isaak looked away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think we want to piss these guys off. This is not a group of hippies from Belgium, Semion. These Burmese, they’re military, you know?”

  “So are we.”

  Isaak winced. “Shit.”

  “Listen to me,” Semion said, forcing himself to sound calm. “We need to know if he did this one way or another, right?”

  Isaak raised both palms. “You have to be smarter than them, Semion. You know? The girl might not even be dead.”

  “So they carried her away in a bag. Okay? Fine. Tell me, in what world would you not want to know if Mr. Hong set that up?”

  “I would not want to know—” Isaak paused, and took a breath. “If knowing meant we lose our connection, and start some kind of war with people we know nothing about, then no, I wouldn’t want to know. Look.” He pointed at another tower across the street from their own. “They could be in there, Semion. They could be anywhere. Right now, they could be watching us.”

  Semion stared at the building Isaak had indicated. Maybe it was time to quit.

  “It’s a shitty situation,” Isaak said. “I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry this is happening. Whatever you want to d
o, we’ll do that, okay?”

  “I want to know if Mr. Hong did it,” Semion said.

  Isaak said nothing.

  That night Semion dreamed he had a loose tooth. He could feel a molar hanging in the back of his mouth from a thin piece of flesh. He found Isaak on the beach and asked for help. His friend tried to set it back in place, but it wouldn’t fit. Semion couldn’t close his mouth. Other teeth came loose. His mouth filled with chips of bone, with actual teeth, drool, blood. He woke up at dawn feeling panicked and trapped.

  The next night, with Mr. Hong’s deadline approaching, Semion spent four nervous hours in the office at Ground Zero, clicking through real estate listings, refreshing his Facebook feed, reading Israeli football news, and suffering from indigestion. He drank club sodas mixed with cranberry juice. He’d be sober when Mr. Hong came tonight.

  Finally, a few minutes before 1:00 a.m., a tired-looking Isaak opened the door and whispered that the man had arrived. He glanced at the safe in the corner. They had put a quarter of a million dollars in cash in it that afternoon.

  Semion walked out to the main floor and found Mr. Hong standing near the entrance. The place was full, and he looked strange there, under the lights, people dancing in groups all around him. He looked angry, Semion realized; it was an emotion he had never seen on the man’s face before. The dread in his stomach doubled as he guided his visitor to a back table.

  “Drink?” he said, when they’d sat down.

  “No, thank you,” said Mr. Hong. For a moment, the two men regarded each other without speaking. And then, skipping the formalities, Mr. Hong asked, “Did you have a chance to consider our offer?”

  An interesting way to phrase it, thought Semion. “I did,” he said. “And the answer is no.”

  The look on Mr. Hong’s face surprised Semion. He looked sad, suddenly: his eyes dampened, and he looked around the club as though searching for help. It was not what Semion had expected.

  Mr. Hong scratched his chin, looked back at Semion, and then, over the music, said, “We work together, me and you. Everything has been good?”