Fante

by Dan Fante

  As a carny I’d developed a kind of pushy, chitchat skill at selling people things they didn’t need. The transition to peddler was like dropping a shark into a different-sized fish tank. The secretaries from the Time-Life Building were easy prey. I always tried to up-sell the girls and “double” the bracelets. I even offered to color-mix the beads—anything to increase my take. When compared to my best day on a fourteen-hour taxi shift, over the last few months, at sixty dollars, there was no contest.

  Street peddling earned me tax-free cash. In 1973 a hundred dollars a day was a damn good buck.

  But there was a downside. As the weather got warmer, as often as twice a week we’d all get rounded up in sweeps by the black police paddy wagon. After the bulls did their Times Square hooker roundup, they’d swing by Fiftieth Street to get the peddlers. We would scoop up our stuff and run like hell, but the blues were almost always at both ends of the block.

  Two or three police vans would deliver the hookers and our group, loaded down with backpacks and folding card tables and bags of merchandise, to the Eighteenth Precinct. We were then detained in a holding cell for a few hours and given pink summonses for a variety of offenses: blocking the sidewalk, peddling in a restricted area, public nuisance, and failure to comply.

  I learned right away that my New York City peddler’s license was only good in areas where there were no commercial businesses, like the industrial sections of Manhattan: below Houston Street or in the factory area next to the East River or by the docks on the far West Side. Locations where there was no foot traffic. Eventually I accumulated dozens of pink tickets and many incarcerations, enough summonses to paper my bedroom wall. I had moved back to an East Village apartment and the bad part, the serious mistake I’d made, was to use my actual home address on my peddler’s license application.

  I was now a member of a new club—the street peddler club. About twenty of us from around the city ate dinner together after the rush-hour shift at the automat in Times Square. Every evening a line of street merchants would make its way down Broadway carrying its gear, an odd sight for the Broadway tourists.

  We would invade Horn & Hardart and take up a full section of tables. But unlike the carnies I had worked with years before, most peddlers were young and not street-schooled. The carnies I’d known made a life at the fast hustle and the bait-and-switch. They’d sold drugs and dabbled in bookmaking on the road, whatever way they could make a score. The opposite was the case with street peddlers. Most were college kids and dropouts who’d found a way to turn a dollar and would eventually move on.

  My favorite peddler was Ben Schwitz, the wristwatch guy. Benny’s setup was fast. Less than two minutes. He’d unfold his TV tray table and open ten or twelve black velour wristwatch boxes, displaying his fancy-faced, gleaming his-and-hers watch sets. The stuff was all flash. Dreck. Seven to ten bucks a copy. Sometimes Benny had to bang one of them against the side of his table to get it to tick. He had wonderful pitch lines when customers asked about his expensive-looking merchandise:

  “Why so cheap?” the customer would ask.

  Benny would bark back: “You can’t get them at Macy’s and Gimbel’s at this price.”

  “What’s your guarantee?”

  “A fine timepiece can last a lifetime. Remember, you get what you pay for.”

  But my favorite one-liner when Benny saw a pretty secretary stepping up to his table was, “Wanna watch?”

  I got to be good friends with Benny and Philip and Ike and Paul and Myrna. Benny, Myrna, and I often, after a quick dinner, hit the two-for-one bars in Times Square or the joints on Eighth Avenue. Sara never joined in. We would time our arrival toward the end of happy hour. We’d each order six drinks. I could usually get drunk for less than five bucks.

  Eventually, during these happy-hour visits, I learned from the guys that my chubby, generous girlfriend had been in the sack with most of them, even a girl or two.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Help from Uncle Spit

  The issue of my boozing began to be a problem between Sara and me. She was an intermediate-level Scientologist and a persuasive talker. She repeatedly pressured me to join. Her reasoning was that Scientology and getting audited might begin to turn my case around. Sara described me to her friends as an alcoholic. Finally, in an attempt to make sure our excellent sex continued and to get her off my back, I gave in.

  We took the subway to the Thirty-fourth Street Scientology center, where I went to work to dispose of my engrams and implants—my old destructive patterns.

  After a couple sessions of me trying to make the deal work, I quit. The superior—we’ve got all the answers and you’re a moron, asshole—tone of the people annoyed me to the point that I packed it in.

  That afternoon Sara dumped me as her boyfriend. By the next day she had my replacement.

  My drinking escalated and it was during this period that I met two heavy black guys at a bar on Eight Avenue. I’d been drinking for a couple hours with Ike, but he had eventually called it a night. I’d decided to stay on and blow my day’s pay: a fat wad of dollar bills.

  The black cats sat down at the bar and we began to talk. They had attended an afternoon rally at the Federal Building downtown and had taken the subway uptown and were stopping off to discuss the results of the demonstration. Both were militant and political and dressed in long black leather jackets.

  As we got to talking I discovered that their home base was at Black Panther Party headquarters on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. A lot of stuff came up in our conversation: my own political involvement, my militant opposition to the Vietnam War, and the fact that I had once had a black girlfriend. The taller guy, Dyson, was a very angry dude. Very suspicious of whites.

  When I pulled out my money to be a sport and pay for a round of drinks, on the bar with my roll of money was one of my wrinkled ex-PI business cards. I’d inked out the office phone number and left my own. The card had been a fun gag for me. If someone asked for my phone number, I usually handed them the card with the badge on the upper corner and my pretentious title across the middle.

  Dyson picked up the card. I could see his eyes change. “You a fuckin’ cop, my man?”

  The fear and rage came straight at me. “Hell, no, I’m no cop. It’s a joke. The card’s a joke, man. Cool off.”

  Dyson pushed it hard against my chest, then grabbed me by my jacket and slammed my head down onto the bar rail. “You a special investigator, motherfucker?! You follow us from the rally, right?”

  I pushed back. No one, but no one—especially a street thug, given my past experience—was ever going to get the best of me again. Not at a bar or anywhere else.

  From my pants pocket came my metal box cutter. It was at his throat. “Back off, asshole, or I’ll cut your fucking neck open right here!” I was drunk enough to do it. I’d been in this jackpot before and I wasn’t going to let it happen a second time. Not to me.

  The scuffle had caused the bartender to come toward us. I watched as he reached for something on a low shelf. When his hand came up there was a billy club in it. He slammed it against the bar. “That’s it, boys! Take it outside.”

  There were half a dozen other customers on stools—all white men. Dyson added up the odds and must have decided this was not the right time. He and the other guy got up slowly with me behind them, my blade still out. I was ready. I would have killed the guy.

  At the door he glared at me and whispered: “We ain done, motherfucka!”

  On the street in New York you learn that to show weakness is a fatal mistake. The gash I cut in his leather coat ran from the collar down to his side pocket. I did it quickly before he realized what was happening. Then I put the blade back to his throat.

  “I’m ready anytime,” I said. “You’re talk. All mouth. Go back uptown and suck your mama’s titty. Or make your move NOW!”

  A minute later they were gone.

  By the next day, when nothing happened on the street after I left the bar, I let the m
atter pass.

  Then, that night, when I got home from peddling, I received my first of several phone calls. The voice was a woman’s—a white female voice, whispering, sounding sexy. She said her name was Tammy, and she told me we’d met at a bar on Broadway and how much she’d like to see me again. We could get together again—at my place. When I asked for her number to call her back, she hung up. It was then that I remembered my business card on the bar. This was no social call.

  Two or three nights later there was another call. Another female voice. A suggestion that we meet somewhere on the Upper West Side. She said she was a friend of Chet’s. I didn’t know any Chet and I’d never been to the club she was talking about before.

  Now I was sure I had a problem. A problem named Dyson.

  A few days passed and I received more calls. Hang-ups.

  I was fed up and scared. If Dyson and his pal decided to walk across Fiftieth Street at lunchtime some afternoon, I’d be in for trouble.

  The next call came from a guy. He said his name was Eddy. A cheery voice. He said he’d been at my building that day to fix a leaking pipe above my apartment. The super told him to call me to set up an appointment to check for leaks at my place. He had his work order in front of him and was ready to fill it out. “All I need is your address and apartment number,” Eddy said.

  I spoke in a calm voice. A whisper. “I’m waiting. I’m right here. How about I fix your own fucking pipes. Bring a piece when you come.” Then I hung up.

  Now I was scared and squirrelly.

  Half an hour later I made a phone call. One I knew I had to make. The call was to one of my cousins uptown.

  The next day I took the subway to the Bronx, to the Calhoun garage. Tony D., the cousin in charge, wasn’t around, but he was due back after lunch, so I waited and shot the breeze with Hotrod and the other mechanics.

  At the diner over coffee I told cousin Tony my situation. How I’d met this guy at the bar on Eighth Avenue and that he had seen my old business card and that the guy believed I was some kind of cop.

  Tony looked at me. “Ya drink too much, Danny boy. You need to watch your mouth and your ass when you’re with strangers. I knew that pissant private-dick stuff would get you jammed up.”

  I nodded. “I know,” I said. “Giving the guy my card was a mistake.”

  Tony D. was aware that I’d worked the PI job. I had cleared it months before when I first took the gig. He’d shown up in person at my office to check it out, seen Schroeder passed out, half-naked on the couch, and then told me to check in regularly by pay phone.

  “Okay, you say someone’s on you?” Tony asked.

  “Right. After the guy at the bar saw the goddamn business card he got crazy. He grabbed me and told me I was a dead man.”

  Tony sneered. “Asshole. In a bar? In public. Probably just a punk.”

  “That’s what I thought too.”

  “And that’s all you got? A threat? Some jagoff in a gin mill mouthin’ off, trying to push you around? That’s it?”

  “Right.”

  “Look, kid, this ain’t shit. People who hurt people don’t tell the people they’re gonna hurt them. That’s not how it works. They just do it. Quietly. Understand?”

  “That’s what I thought. So I let it go.”

  “What else?”

  “Phone calls. For the last few days, I’ve been getting hang-ups and fake come-ons from women. And a fake workman wanting my address to fix the pipes in my apartment. One girl invited me to meet her at a place I’ve never been to. A bar uptown. I’m thinking it’s all a setup. Look, I know who the guy is and where he hangs out. I just need it to stop.”

  Tony D. lit a cigarette and leaned back. “Everything you’ve said is one hundred percent straight information. Right?

  “C’mon, Tony. You think I’d make this shit up?”

  “I hear ya. You’re worried.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you. I don’t like asking for help on this kind of thing.”

  “Okay, kid, let me check it out.”

  “Thanks, Tony.”

  “For now, go home. Don’t talk to nobody about this. At nine o’clock tonight go find a pay phone on the street and call me. Okay? You still live in Alphabet City?”

  “Right,” I said.

  Tony wrote a phone number down on the back of a matchbook. “After you call the number throw this away. Got it? When you call just say, ‘It’s me.’ ”

  “Sure.”

  “So, who’s the guy? The asshole in the bar?”

  “He said his name is Dyson.”

  Tony D. wrote the name down on a napkin. “That’s it? No second name?”

  “He didn’t give me one.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “He’s maybe six-two. Heavyset. He’s black.”

  “Wait! C’mon—a MOLLIE?”

  “Right.”

  “No fuckin’ wonder. Where can we find this mollie piece of shit?”

  “He says he works out of the Black Panther headquarters on Lenox Avenue.”

  Tony wrote the information down, then got to his feet. “Okay, I’ll check it out. If this mollie Dyson is where he says he is, I’ll let you know how we’re gonna handle it.”

  In New York City the relationship between blacks and cousins like Tony was at an all-time low. Black Power had infused the people of the ghetto with courage and there were many confrontations.

  Now Tony D. was smiling. “Look at it this way, kid. It’s your lucky day. We kill niggers for nothin’.”

  That night at nine o’clock I dialed the number on the matchbook cover Tony D. had passed to me across the table. He answered after several rings.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Here’s what I got: We found the guy. What you said about him—the information—was right. He’s where you said.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Tony sneered. “Look, kid, just tell me how you want it done: fast or slow?”

  I’d been reasonably sober all that day and had thought of nothing else. I’d decided that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t call a guy’s number like that. “Look,” I said, “I just have to let it go.”

  There was a long pause on the other end. “I put in a day’s work here, kid.”

  “I’m sorry, Tony.”

  “By tomorrow I can have it all lined up.”

  “Can someone just warn the guy? Back him off?”

  “That ain’t how it works, Dan. You don’t warn a guy like this.”

  “Then just let it go, okay? I’m sorry. I don’t want the asshole’s blood on my hands. I’ll handle it on my own.”

  Another silence. Then, “Like how? You gonna square it with the guy yourself?”

  “I’m moving. I’ll find another place to live. A hotel somewhere.”

  “Yeah, that might work.”

  “I’m hoping it will.”

  “You still got that thing you showed me that time?”

  “Yeah. Close by, too. Right here.”

  “Okay, kid, it’s your nickel. Anyway, you change your mind before tomorrow, you know where to find me.”

  “Okay, Tony.”

  “Hey, kid, by the way, your old man still writing movies in Hollyweird?”

  “Sure. He’s always working on something. Making a buck.”

  “Tell him for me, if he ever needs a bit actor, I’m available. I always wanted to be in the movies.”

  “I’ll do that, Tony.”

  “Stay close, kid. This thing’ll pass. If your guy was gonna do somethin’, he’d probably have already done it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  It took me a couple days to find a hotel that was cheap and far away from my neighborhood. It was ten minutes from midtown by cab. I left everything as it was in my apartment: my bed and towels and sheets, the stove and refrigerator I’d had to pay for myself, and all my pots and pans and the framed pictures. The only things I took were my books and my foot-high plaster head of Julius Caesa
r.

  I loaded the boxes of books into a checker cab, locked the apartment door, and put the keys in my landlord’s mailbox. No forwarding address. My note said, “Mr. Morgenthal: I’ve had a family emergency and am moving to Connecticut. The stuff in my apartment is all yours. Thanks, Dan Fante.”

  Finito.

  The West End Hotel was an older residential place on Seventy-third Street, a block and a half from the Hudson River. One notch up from a dump. But it had an elevator.

  My room was on the top floor and I had a partial view of the sky. The place was clean with high ceilings and a big casement window that faced two other hotel rooms across the way, sixty feet above the courtyard. I had a small refrigerator and a two-burner hot plate.

  That first night I discovered the only downside: the gay guy across the way liked to advertise. He kept his curtains open and spent his time strutting naked. When I looked out my window and saw him checking me out, he waved. I closed my curtains. So much for seeing any blue sky.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  A Good Novel Can Change the World

  It was fall and beginning to turn cold on the New York streets. I returned to Malibu for a ten-day stay. I had a pocketful of tax-free money from my street peddling business and my bills were paid. I had upgraded my room to a much larger one on the same floor. The rent was seventy-five dollars a week but it was worth it. Most nights I drank at Tweed’s Bar on Seventy-second Street, around the corner near West End Avenue.

  On the plane ride west, I’d gotten drunk and made some trouble for myself by making a stupid remark about hijackers. I was threatened with arrest and detained upon exiting the plane.

  My snarling brother Nick, visiting from Northern California, picked me up at baggage claim after my long delay with security. Then, on our way to Malibu, he filled me in on our father’s condition. The old man now had lesions on his legs and feet that would not heal. He was soaking them in tubs of Epsom salts every afternoon, but the condition persisted. The only remaining residents of the big house on Cliffside Drive were my brother Jim and my mother and father. My sister Vickie now lived in Santa Monica with her husband and two sons.