Forsaking All Others

by Jimmy Breslin

  “What the hell, a car is ordinary. I wanted to do it special,” Martin said, his lips compressed in great anger.

  In disdain, Martin left the pilot standing guard over his helicopter. He and Myles got into the car and Martin immediately went over a list, tapped a finger on it and said to Myles, “You can cover a pusher’s place over on St. Anselm’s Avenue. I got McTaggart and Feeley there now. We already carried the dirty pusher out of there. You should’ve heard him. ‘I only sell reefer.’ I says to him, ‘Well, I’m sorry. I only got homicide warrants. So I guess I got to arrest you for murder.’ ”

  When the detectives on guard let Myles into the apartment, Indio’s wife was sitting with her two children on the plastic-covered living room couch. She glanced out the window at the squad cars across the street where the forms of strangers, rat cops like the ones here in her house, could be seen. The whole day is wrong, she told herself. Right away, before anybody was out of bed, Teenager was banging on the door. “They are following me with a helicopter,” he said. “Indio, give me your rifle. I am going up on a roof and I will shoot the mother-fucking helicopter.” Indio’s wife noticed that Teenager had a glassy look and did not seem to listen when Indio said that he had no rifle. “Get me the rifle,” Teenager said. “I’ll come back for the rifle.” Teenager went away. Her husband Indio sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think of where he could get a rifle. Ten minutes later, detectives crashed into the apartment, picked up her husband from the edge of the bed and showed him a murder warrant. “Was Teenager here?” a detective shouted. “He went away,” Indio’s wife said, hoping the information would cause them to forget about her husband. Instead, they carried him out of the place, cursing that they had missed Teenager. Indio’s wife had only one satisfaction: the detectives were so mad about missing Teenager that they had not gone into Indio’s shirt drawer and found the half los of heroin.

  Now, the two detectives who had remained with Indio’s wife picked up their shotguns and left. Martin, standing in the doorway, told Myles that he would send Hansen around in a few minutes.

  “Shouldn’t I have a shotgun?” Myles said.

  “What for?” Martin said. “The guy’s been here. You won’t see him again around here. I’m not even sure there’s a reason for having anybody here. Grab the phones maybe. We know where Teenager is. We’re tracking him precisely.”

  “Where is he now?” Myles asked.

  “How should I know? I’m standing here with you. When I go out and speak to the men tracking him precisely, then I’ll know where he is.”

  Martin left, and Myles tried to lock the door after him, only to find that it had been loosened from all moorings by the police break-in. He shut the door, tipped a kitchen chair against it, which he knew was useless, and sank into an easy chair that allowed him to guard the door, see both Indio’s wife and kids, and also the late morning cartoons on television.

  In the middle of a Popeye cartoon the door swung open and the chair holding it fell. Myles’ hand went for his gun and did not make it. A junkie as dirty as an oilrag walked in.

  “S’up, man?” the junkie said.

  “Get out of here,” Myles said.

  “Somebody just get me a little,” the junkie said.

  “Get out,” Myles said.

  The junkie wandered past him as Myles, growling, pulled himself out of the chair. First, he reached for the open door. Close this, he thought. Make sure nobody else walks in. He heard somebody else walking up to the door and Myles stepped through the door to stop whoever it was, another junkie surely, from walking in, and he came out into the hallway outside the door and was one long step away from Teenager.

  Teenager’s eyes went into a mean squint and his body rose into his chest and his heels came off the floor, ready to spring. Then he paused. The thought of garlic bullets froze Teenager’s coiled body. He had just driven to see Mama, and she listened to the shells and said that the spirits said it was all right to shoot a helicopter down with a rifle. But she said the spirits in the shells said again that he should be very afraid of the police shooting garlic bullets. “The spirits do not accept blood that is bad,” Mama had said. “Your soul will fly through all the nights in pain and no one will take the soul in.” Then she had told him, “Be distrustful. Carry water in a straw basket.” Teenager had not understood this. He had stopped in his car and done cocaine in order to clear his mind so he could think about this proverb. No answer had come to him. And now he stood in the hallway and called on Changó for help. He waited for a sign, for a whisper from his god that it was all right to reach out and snap this person’s neck.

  Myles did not know what caused this hesitation, but he knew that if he reached for his gun he would precipitate an explosion that would end him. Carefully, he put his right hand into his pants pocket, making it obvious that he was not going for a gun. In the pocket, his fingers grasped the lengthy silver chain. At the most desperate moment of his life he was relying on his institutions, a prayer of his church, the badge of his civil service job. Slowly, so as not to alarm, he began pulling the chain out of his pocket. He wanted to produce the badge that would show Teenager that there was more than merely some gun to contend with, that he was facing the majesty and meaning of an entire city founded by Irish.

  When the first section of chain spilled out of Myles’ pocket, Teenager told himself to go, to jump Myles, to crack his windpipe. More of the chain began to emerge. More yet. Myles nervously had both hands at the pocket now, bringing out the chain hand over hand and he stood in the hallway like a plumber with an unruly snake. The chain now came down Myles’ leg and began to coil on the floor. The growl at the bottom of Teenager’s throat turned into a chuckle. Finally, Myles brought out the symbol of all his authority, his badge, and held it out for Teenager to inspect.

  Teenager’s eyes crinkled and his body shook with laughter. A fucking patrolman! He threw his head back and roared. I want my rifle inside Indio’s apartment and they try to stop me with a fucking patrolman’s badge! Teenager looked up at the ceiling and shouted a laugh and he was going to stop the laugh and kick Myles, kick him and then crack his windpipe, for he was certain that the badge was the sign from Changó that he was safe from garlic bullets. Then Teenager heard the noise behind him.

  “How we doin’?” Hansen said.

  “We have visitors,” Myles said.

  “Well, the visitor better get himself up against that wall,” Hansen said.

  Teenager turned his head and saw Hansen was well out of reach and held a shotgun. A shotgun that could put a thousand garlic pellets into his body.

  “That’s all right,” Teenager said.

  “I know it is,” Hansen said. “Just put your hands against the wall.”

  “I don’t do anything,” Teenager said.

  “Do what he says,” Myles said. He now had his gun out.

  Teenager waited for a sign from Changó but he felt none and he saw none.

  “The wall,” Hansen said.

  Teenager turned and put his hands against the wall and felt Myles hand slap his thighs, spread the legs.

  “Hands behind your back,” Myles said.

  “I’m a millionaire,” Teenager said. “I go to court and the judge lets me walk out.”

  “I’m sure,” Hansen said.

  In the hallway there sounded the metallic zinnngggg! as Myles Crofton at last bound the steel cuffs around Teenager’s huge wrists.

  At central booking, there was a small bench for prisoners in the hallway outside the booking room and a uniformed patrolman was directing his prisoner, a black in ripped fatigues, to be seated.

  Myles walked Teenager past the bench and to the booking room door.

  “Hey, don’t you see me here?” the patrolman on the bench said.

  Myles paid no attention and started knocking on the booking room door. Hansen was standing to the side, humming.

  A lieutenant looked through a small window in the booking room door. He waved his hands for My
les to go away. Myles gestured excitedly.

  “Hey, you know?” the patrolman on the bench said.

  Myles pretended not to hear him. He kept waving until, reluctantly, the lieutenant pressed a buzzer and opened the booking room door.

  “What do you need?”

  “We want to move this guy through right away,” Myles said.

  “I’m here first,” the patrolman at the bench said.

  “Neither of you goes anyplace until I let you,” the lieutenant said.

  “This is special,” Myles said.

  “What special?” the patrolman said.

  “This guy is Teenager,” Myles said, his hand on Teenager’s arm. Teenager was cuffed with his hands behind his back, a fact of much comfort to Myles, whose fingers told him that Teenager’s arm was maplewood.

  The lieutenant looked at Teenager’s face. “He’s older than that,” he said.

  “He means that is my name,” Teenager said.

  “Oh, I see,” the lieutenant said. “That’s good that you got a name. Because that means you got a name.”

  “He also has a dozen homicides,” Myles said.

  “Good for him,” the lieutenant said. “In the meantime, I got work to do here. I’ll take you in a minute.”

  The patrolman standing at the bench ran a hand through his hair in agitation. “Hey. I got a prisoner, he got a prisoner. I was here first.”

  “I said this guy got a dozen homicides,” Myles said. “We got things to do.”

  “So this guy committed a crime too,” the patrolman said.

  “Twelve homicides?” Myles said.

  “We got him in a girls’ room in a grammar school. Trying to fuck all the little girls. What do you call that, disorderly conduct?”

  The lieutenant looking through the partially open door said, “If this is what you bothered me for.” There was a loud snap as the door shut.

  “How do you like this?” Myles said.

  Hansen smiled. “Almost three o’clock now. We’re lucky there’s not a dozen ahead of us. The man’s just waiting out the change of shifts. He’ll leave us for the next group.”

  “He makes me wait like a beggar,” Teenager said.

  “Why don’t you just sit down?” Hansen said.

  “I don’t sit with a piece of shit like that,” Teenager said.

  Hansen smiled. “I feel better if you’re sitting.”

  “Not with him,” Teenager said.

  “Just keep things centralized.”

  Myles pushed Teenager’s arm but Teenager held his position. “Come on,” Myles said.

  There was a loud clicking sound at the end of the hallway and there were voices and feet shuffling and four young blacks appeared, strung on a chain, with three transit policemen in leather jackets herding them along.

  “Either you take a seat now or you’ll have to stand waiting with them,” Hansen said.

  Teenager looked at the blacks on the chain and then stepped to the bench. He wiggled his body to make more room for himself.

  “Stop pushing, man,” the black next to him said.

  “Shut up, you black nigger bastard,” Teenager said.

  The patrolman spun around. “You keep your mouth shut,” he said to Teenager.

  “This guy is a bum,” Teenager said.

  “Let me tell you something,” the patrolman said. “He’s shit and you’re shit. There’s no difference between yez.”

  Hansen took out his pipe and smiled as he filled it.

  A half hour later, the shift in the central booking room changed and the door was opened and somebody said, “Next,” and Teenager started to stand, but the patrolman resolutely led his girl-molester into the room first and the two kids on the end of the chain tried to slump onto the bench with Teenager. He stood up in disgust. Then the booking room door buzzed open again and Myles tapped Teenager’s arm and led him inside.

  A patrolman sat at an old typewriter at the first desk.

  “All right,” he said, typing, “you’re arrest number 32,672.”

  “I’m Teenager.”

  “To me, you’re arrest number 32,672,” the patrolman said.

  Hansen took the pipe out of his mouth and held it out. “It’s just like the officer said outside. You’re just shit to us.”

  The sound of the old typewriter caused the last excitement in Myles to go away. He felt tired and sat down. In the cells in the rear a voice was complaining that nobody had brought the orange soda he had paid for.

  30

  IT WAS FRIDAY NIGHT and Nicki was in the kitchen making bacon and eggs at eight o’clock when her husband came home.

  “I figured I’d find you here,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you don’t stay out shopping last three weeks.”

  “So that’s why you decided to come home?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Make you something to eat?”

  “No. I got to meet some people later.”

  “Then why did you bother to come home?”

  “I don’t know. I figured you’d be here.”

  “Well, I am.”

  She took the bacon and eggs on a tray and went out and sat on the couch and watched television as she ate. She sat on the end of the couch nearest the window. Her husband sat on the opposite end. Both studied the television, a musical game show, as if it were important. Neither saw any of it.

  “If it’s that job that’s bothering you, I told you to give it up,” her husband said.

  “It isn’t the job.”

  “Something’s bothering you, and I’m bettin’ it’s that freaking job. I told you to quit.”

  “It’s not the job.”

  They sat in silence and pretended to watch television.

  “Well, if it isn’t the job, then it’s something else,” he said.

  “It is.”

  “What?”

  “Something died when you were in jail. I don’t know how to explain it, but something died.”

  “Is there some other guy?” He asked it calmly, but she knew the simple thought of such a thing caused him to seethe. An affirmative answer would have produced immediate murder.

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  She wanted to tell him that she loved him for the past, for her family, for her way of life, but not as a husband she loved. Instead, staring straight ahead, she just said, “Yes.”

  “Then we need time,” her husband said.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  There was no more conversation. Nicki curled up on the sofa, keeping her face away from his, and cried without her body moving. Her husband sat and smoked cigarettes slowly, deliberately, and watched television. In posture and thought, he was prepared to pass the time as easily as a municipal building. He had done this before with her: let her flail until, tired of herself, she crept back to him.

  At the other end of the couch, Nicki, her face turned from him, but constricted more by the feeling of his presence than she would be by his sight, continued crying. She wanted to ask out loud for a pill that would put her to sleep. Silently, she wept more. She would be asking her husband for drugs. After a while, she fell asleep. She woke up once halfway through the night and saw her husband was out of the house. She put her head back and remained on the couch. At 5:00 A.M., she awoke again and walked into the bedroom where he was asleep, or pretending to be asleep. She undressed and went to bed and lay awake until morning.

  They exchanged few words in the morning, and he left while she was cleaning the house. At noon, she went out to her new car, a red Buick with mag wheels, and drove to Angela’s house.

  “I was just doing my map,” Angela said at the door. She walked happily down her hallway to the dinette where she had a large street map of Manhattan spread on the table.

  “See?” Angela said proudly. Many of the streets had been colored with orange crayon. “Every street I can remember being on in Manhattan is going t
o get colored in.”

  “So what does that mean?” Nicki said.

  “Then I’m going to frame it and hang it up. It’ll be like a record of every place I’ve been in Manhattan. I think it’ll look very interesting.”

  “Or demented.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, why would you want to know where you’ve had to be in a crummy city?”

  “I think it’s nice,” Angela said. “See, 52nd Street. I was to the Alvin to see Annie and then we went to Gallagher’s. That was with Joey.”

  “What would you want to remember a night with him for?”

  “Nicki, I’ve had three dates in two years. This was one of them. He took me to see Annie and then we went to Gallagher’s. I can even remember what I had. I had tomato and onion salad, thumb bits and that sauce they have there, and three Scotches. I look at my map and I remember the whole night.”

  Nicki pointed to West 44th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Laughing, she said, “What were you doing on a street like that?”

  Angela said, “I don’t know. I just remember walking down it once. I never was in anyplace there, but I remember walking down it.”

  “Well, that’s stupid to keep a record of West 44th Street,” Nicki said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Nicki was laughing loudly now. “Because only some moron would want to remember he walked down that street.”

  “Why are you saying that?” Angela said.

  Nicki was busy laughing and tracing other streets with her finger. “Oh, look at this,” she said, her laugh louder. “Angela, how could you ever even want to admit you know this street?”

  “Which one?” Angela said.

  “Avenue C.”

  “I went walking there one Sunday.”

  “You had nothing better to do than go walking on Avenue C and instead of trying to keep it a secret, you’re hanging up a map to tell it to the whole world. I think this is stupid.”

  “Nicki, please don’t say that.”

  “Well, it is stupid.”

  Angela didn’t answer.

  “Avenue C,” Nicki said. She laughed.

  Angela picked up the map and took it into her bedroom and then walked past Nicki into the kitchen. “Have a cup of coffee?” she called out.