“Do you know this girl?” he said.
Luisa Maria stared at the picture but did not touch it. “I don’t think I know her. I know her face, maybe. I don’t know. If I see her sometime, then maybe I know her.”
“You won’t be able to see her anymore.”
“So then I won’t know her.”
“Would Teenager know her?”
“When this Teenager that you know comes here then you ask him,” she said.
“I got a better idea,” Myles said. He pushed the picture of Chita Gonzalez across the bar at her. “Take this picture to that friend of yours and tell him I know. Tell him I know and he knows and this picture knows.”
Luisa Maria’s eyes became agates. She walked away and began looking for things under the bar. Hansen watched her, took the pipe out of his mouth, held it up, examined it and said quietly, “That sure doesn’t take us anywhere.”
“Well, she’ll let that Teenager know,” Myles said.
“Why should he know what you got on your mind?” Hansen said.
“Because this is personal.”
Hansen put the pipe back in his mouth and said nothing.
Martin came back from the men’s room bawling, “I had it in here. Let’s go someplace where we belong. Like Sheridan’s or something.” He rolled out of the bar. Myles left the picture of Chita Gonzalez on the bar. Then he dug into the envelope and brought out three more and left these, too. “Pass them around,” he said as he left.
Outside, Martin looked for McGuire and the car. “He said he might go for gas,” Martin said. “The way the man drives he’ll be gone for a week.”
Standing on the sidewalk in front of the bar, they were three men waiting for a lift. As seen from the laundromat across the street, the three were fortifications that no one could dare approach. Corky stood in the back of the laundromat and muttered, “Too hot.”
A woman stuffing clothes into the machine alongside him said, “That water must be hot for these things.” She held up a greasy T-shirt.
“Wash it clean,” Corky said.
He walked out the back door and went down a narrow alley that was covered with garbage. He waved a hand in front of his face against the flies. On the street, out of view from the bar and the sidewalk in front of the bar, the two thugs who traveled with Corky were double-parked in a blue Lincoln.
“Back it up,” Corky said as he got in.
“No good?” the thug in the front seat said.
“Law,” Corky said.
“Are they there to help him?” the driver said.
“I don’t know, but they’re there,” Corky said.
“We could forget about that joint,” the driver said.
“There’s other places he’s got to go to,” Corky said.
“All right. What do you want me to do, take you home?” the driver said.
“Might as well,” Corky said.
“Can I just do one thing on the way out of here?” the driver said.
“Go ahead,” Corky said.
The driver went through sidestreets and swung around trucks and then turned onto the emptiness of Maximo’s block. The car stopped short of the corner and the driver studied the sidewalk and the building. A woman was on the outdoor phone. Maximo’s building was lifeless in the late afternoon. Across the street, at a window one flight over the bodega, a woman stared down at her kid, who rode a bike on the sidewalk.
“Who could he be, living here?” Corky said.
“You can never tell; they all live like pigs,” the driver said.
“But this is really nothing. This guy got to be only a runner,” Corky said.
“I think he has to be in with them pretty good. I still say that was a white broad I saw coming out of there,” the driver said.
He started the car off to Jersey.
It was not until the next evening that Teenager arrived at the bar. Before entering, he had Albertito, one of his gunmen, drive him around the block three times while he looked at any strange face as if it were a land mine. When he had watched Mama shake the shells, rub them and roll then onto the straw mat as if they were dice, he had not been surprised to hear her say the shells spoke of danger. When she said that the shells warned that the danger was from an American, he said, “Police.”
Mama held a shell to her ear and closed her eyes and chanted in Yorubic.
“Yes, police. They want to put you in many jails. Changó says there is a more powerful enemy. A man who is not a policeman. An American man you know. He wants to kill you this day.”
“Mariani,” Teenager said.
Mama held the shells. “Yes, that is the man. He is going to try and kill you.”
“Where would he do it?” Teenager asked.
Mama listened to several shells. “In a door,” she said.
“Where is this door?”
Mama squeezed her eyes shut. She took an immense breath and the room was soundless as she listened to the shell. She put the shell down. “Changó is not there anymore. I don’t know which door. I think it is a metal door with a broken window. But look out for all doors.”
Now, as Teenager got out of the car by the side door to Ana’s, he would not walk to the door until he saw Benny Velez standing in it. With Albertito covering his back, Teenager then sauntered into the bar. He laughed as he greeted Luisa Maria, for he knew she had to be angry at him; he had not seen her or called her for two days. His laugh died as Luisa Maria told him of the visit by the cops. The cop leaving the picture of Chita Gonzalez particularly irritated him. What were they bothering about a female like that? Chita was a bad female, man. Why don’t they leave me alone? He walked to the front window and looked out at the street. The trucks from the firehouse up the block had just returned from a run. Two firemen stood in the middle of the street and held up the cars until the trucks had backed into the firehouse. Boots flopping, the fireman ran after the trucks as they backed into the house. Teenager smoked his cigarette and stared at the street with sleepy eyes.
“The cop that was here was the same one who hassled us about his battery,” Benny said.
“Then he wasn’t in here about a battery,” Teenager said.
“He was being cute, man,” Benny said.
Teenager smoked his cigarette down slowly, lazily. Why do they bother to come here like this, he said to himself. Changó says I have trouble with Mariani. So police should not come here to bother me. I am only home from jail for a little while. Let them bother somebody else. Teenager flicked the butt out the open door. His right elbow smashed into the frame and caused white wood to sprout like a broken bone through the many coats of red paint.
It took several brandies before Benny thought that Teenager had calmed down enough to be spoken to. Benny spilled cocaine out of his pillbox onto the bar. With a single-edged razor he divided the white crystals into ten stubby lines. He rolled up a new fifty-dollar bill and without talking, handed it to Teenager, who held it to his right nostril, bent over and sniffed. The bill became a pleasant vacuum cleaner and brought the first five lines into the nostril. He put the bill to his left nostril and sniffed up the next five lines.
“Party!” Teenager shouted.
Benny picked his head up from doing his own lines, clapped his hands and then bent over to finish his cocaine.
Luisa Maria said, “It’s about time you took me someplace.”
“You must stay here,” Teenager said. “Money comes here tonight.”
“Then I will keep all the fucking money,” Luisa Maria said.
“You just take the money and keep it for me,” Teenager said.
After a few happy shouts, Teenager followed Albertito out the back door and into his Mercedes. Tires sounding, they pulled away from the bar and headed for Watson Avenue, which was Teenager’s public gardens. Teenager felt good now. He was dressed to cause even the night air to pay attention. He had on a brown silk body shirt that was open to the chest, allowing everyone to see the great medallion of his saint, Changó. I
t was, after a second Mercedes, the first thing Teenager had bought after coming onto the streets and making money. It was made for him by an Hasidic Jew who had a gold jewelry business behind thick steel doors on the eleventh floor of a building on West 48th in Manhattan. The medallion cost fifteen thousand dollars, and on the day Teenager paid for it he was embarrassed because it had left him penniless, and also because he wanted a larger medallion. This one was inlaid with red and white stones and hung from his neck on a heavy gold chain. On his left wrist was a yellow bracelet and this, too, embarrassed him because there were no diamonds in it. When he became like Rockefeller and was in charge of all the drugs, he would have diamonds in his eyes, he told himself.
Teenager’s medallion blazed in the streetlights as he got out of the car in front of the Casa, on Watson Avenue. He swung around so that the medallion would be noticed by the crowd sitting on car fenders and hanging from the windows of the old apartment buildings that lined the street. Teenager stood while Benny went to the door of the Casa and checked it. Nearly all those watching Teenager were people who were up each morning to work at factory jobs, making wallets and belts and dresses, and they spent evenings screeching out windows at the children on the sidewalk below. They were the members of the underclass who did not steal, tried to have their kids keep pace in school, despised dope and were terrified at the idea of the word jail, but who, at times such as this, when Teenager emerged from his car with his jewelry afire in the streetlights, always paused in their honesty and allowed the delicious thoughts to run through them that they, too, were a part of this.
“Aha!” Teenager announced as he walked into the bar.
A girl named Ramonita, who had been standing at the juke box absently selecting records, suddenly threw her hips into motion. Her head rocked back and forth and her eyes danced as they met Teenager’s. He took her by the wrist and drew her to the bar.
“You are with me for the whole week,” he said.
As Ramonita giggled, Teenager snapped his fingers. “Money!”
Standing behind Teenager, Santos Rivera dug into a pocket and first brought out the roll of worn bills, then shoved them back in his pocket and brought out a thick wafer of new hundred-dollar bills he had picked up at the bank for Teenager.
“Santos carries my money,” Teenager said. He stood away from the bar and patted his tan slacks. “I own so much money that it ruins the look of my pants. I have many people carry my money for me.” Underneath his bravado was irritation: tonight he only had eleven hundred dollars. Someday, he would carry thirty thousand, he promised himself.
Around him, a semicircle of people laughed.
“Brandy!” Teenager called out.
“Brandy!” the semicircle called out.
“Aha!” Teenager said. “We are all drinking brandy.” Many hands reached out for the honor of handing Teenager his brandy when it came. A couple, particularly the wife of Junior Mendez, a pusher, gagged when they had to drink the brandy, which was not drowned in the sugar and fruit juice they liked, but as this was a business meeting, they sought with each motion to please the president of the firm.
Ramonita leaned over and kissed Teenager on the neck.
“You must behave,” Teenager said.
“I do not like this behaving,” Ramonita said.
“Luisa Maria will find out that you are kissing me and she will be mad,” Teenager said.
“I will beat up Luisa Maria,” Ramonita said. She made a fist of her right hand and threw a punch into the smoky air.
“Luisa Maria is very tough,” Teenager said.
“Then I will shoot her,” Ramonita said.
“If you shoot her, then I will have no woman friend,” Teenager said.
“I will be your new woman,” Ramonita said.
“When you shoot Luisa Maria, then I will come with you,” Teenager said.
“You would not care?”
“I will cry at Luisa Maria’s funeral and then I will take you out to watch racing horses,” Teenager said. He laughed and threw a hundred on the bar, crisp and unfolded. “For the drinks!” Ramonita looked at the money and did not smile.
“I will shoot Luisa Maria with a shotgun,” Ramonita said.
The barmaid’s name was Ada and she was from Colombia, as was Luisa Maria, and Ada did not like people from Puerto Rico saying that they were going to kill people from her country.
As she rang up the drinks, she told herself that she would call Luisa Maria the next day and tell her that this Teenager had decided that he wanted to have Luisa Maria killed.
When Teenager had the excitement around him in the bar so high that it had a sound of its own, a strange tune coming out of one of the radios out on the windowsills, perhaps, he threw ten dollars down for Ada the barmaid and ordered his party to walk across the street to the La Barca. He moved as if he were touring a fallen city; medals flashing in the streetlights, an arm about Ramonita’s waist, people jostling with each other to walk alongside him. Albertito and Junior Mendez, the pusher, stood in the doorway first, and then Teenager paraded into the La Barca and let out his shout. “Aha!”
An hour later, he was dancing with Ramonita, his hands pressed against the small of her back, his thoughts considering an announcement to everyone that the place would have to be emptied so he could dance alone with Ramonita and perhaps throw her atop the pool table. A pusher named Tato approached him, then remained in silence a couple of steps away, a grisly altar boy waiting to be summoned to the tabernacle.
“I am in love,” Teenager said, dancing with his face buried in Ramonita’s mane.
“There are two cops sitting in the car up the block,” Tato said.
“They are hiding so the sergeant doesn’t see them,” Teenager said.
“These are detectives,” Tato said.
At three in the morning, Teenager stood in the street, glanced up at the Plymouth Fury parked in the shadows between streetlights on the next block, got in the car for a moment, stepped out to confuse the cops, then immediately slipped back in and sent the Mercedes rocketing down the street. He made a left, went to an avenue under an El, turned right and went into the lane that runs between pillars directly under the El tracks. A bus lumbering toward Teenager’s car wanted the entire lane and Teenager had to swing out into the narrow lane between the El pillars and curb. In doing this, he smacked the fender of a car parked in front of a nightclub. Teenager let out a happy shout as the bus reached a point where it had the detective’s car trapped against a pillar. The bus yielded no territory and took the doorhandles off the detective’s car. Teenager now slowed enough for the car to catch up with him. With Ramonita sitting in front with him, and Benny and Albertito in back, Teenager drove up to 183rd Street, establishing a pace that made it difficult for the detectives to follow him as they wanted to, keeping another car between them and Teenager in order to disguise their presence. Going up a hill on 183rd, Teenager caused his machine to crawl; the detective car behind him had no choice but to come close. The light on the Concourse turned red, and Teenager sat in his Mercedes, looked into the rear-view mirror and, seeing Myles driving, spit words out of a mouth that was suddenly filled with acid. “This mother-fucker!” His body wanted to get out of the car and walk back and yank Myles out of the car and the black nigger with him. His mind told him to try it another way. Teenager pointed back so Ramonita, Benny and Albertito would turn and look at Myles and Hansen. The car burst into laughter as Teenager shot the red light and raced out onto the Grand Concourse. Myles and Hansen did not follow. Myles’ fingers drummed on the wheel. Hansen put his head back and closed his eyes. “We got all the time in the world. We get paid for the ride.”
Teenager appeared at Ana’s Bar at four the next afternoon, found it closed and had to open it himself. He was alone in the place with Benny, and they sat for two hours in the smell of filled ashtrays and stale alcohol. Who is she not to be in this bar when I come, he fumed. When Luisa Maria finally arrived, she took a fat envelope of money
out of her purse, threw it on the bar and began to clean the place without bothering to look at Teenager.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said.
“Where were you all night when I was sitting here with this filthy animal? He gives me the money for you and then he says that we should make a bed out of the pool table while I was waiting for you.”
The money had been left by a man named Alex from Avenue B on the downtown East Side. Counting it, eleven thousand dollars in small bills, exactly the amount promised, Teenager said to himself that a man who lives up to his word in business like this could say anything he wants to a female, even my female. He put the eleven thousand into both back pockets, buttoning the flaps over them. In the front two pockets he had thirteen thousand more, giving him twenty-four thousand, the light twenty-five thousand that he was to give Mariani’s people later in the evening for another half kilo of Marseilles white.
“Why did you count the money twice?” Luisa Maria said. “Don’t you trust me?”
“I just count to make sure.”
“Count once to make sure once. But the second time you do it to see if I am a thief.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I should steal your money. You let me stay here all night with this filthy animal.”
As the bickering progressed, Teenager slammed the table, causing the ashtray to bounce on the floor. Still, Luisa Maria’s complaining filled the bar. Abruptly, Teenager stood up, told Benny to watch the bar and stormed out of the place with Luisa Maria; he would shut her up with a drink after he delivered his money. As he pulled away from the bar, he inspected the rear-view mirror, made a left turn and saw that a red gypsy taxicab and a white panel truck were behind him. At the first corner, he made a left and saw the red cab and the white panel truck disappear. An old blue Falcon now was behind Teenager. At the first corner, Teenager made a left. The blue Falcon went straight. Teenager drove up the block with no one trailing. Detectives, he thought, bother you the way kids do. One moment they are all about you, causing you to keep pushing them away, and then they suddenly run to someplace else and leave you alone with your hand still pushing them and they are not there.
Forsaking All Others Page 20