by Dorsey, Tim
That’s where he was now, in the last car of the 4-5-6, standing up, approaching the Eighty-sixth Street station. It was almost five a.m. when he reached Park Avenue. The Upper East Side was still and dark except for puffs of steam from the grates that drifted slowly across the empty street. There wasn’t much time left before the garbage trucks would come. Eugene began grabbing Glad bags of trash off the stoops of million-dollar apartments, taking as much as he could carry and running two blocks to Central Park and into the woods. He began sorting through the trash, the lion’s share worthless to him. But shortly after sunrise, he had what he’d come for: six empty bottles of the most expensive cologne from Saks and Blooming-dale’s. He jammed them into his jacket and headed for a drugstore on Seventy-ninth.
Soon he was climbing out of the subway on Bleecker Street with four bags from Rite Aid. Back in his apartment, he spread the contents on the floor. Economy sacks of green mints, red-and-white hard-candy mints, peppermint patties, Tic Tacs, mouthwash, a big pouch of disposable Bic razors, shaving cream, combs, Aqua Velva, toenail clippers, files, No Doz, Sominex, a two-liter bottle of generic cologne and a large pickle jar of discontinued condoms.
He poured the generic cologne in the designer bottles from Park Avenue, then packed everything into an old briefcase he’d pulled down from his closet. He got out his paperback again, to make sure he’d done everything just the way the character in the book had. Then he lay back in his bed and waited.
Limos arrived at the curb outside the Hotel Carlyle on East Seventy-seventh.
Eugene Tibbs approached on foot from the south. He was wearing the tuxedo from his blue days and carrying his briefcase. He made one last stop at a print shop.
“Yes, I’d like your Fifteen-Minute Instant Business Card Special.”
“What do you want them to say?”
He pulled the paperback from his pocket, opened it to a dog-eared page and pointed at something he’d underlined. “This right here.”
“You got it.”
“And can I have my change in ones?”
Fifteen minutes later, he left the print shop and walked the last few blocks to the Carlyle. A long line spilled out of the café. Inside was a hospitality industry ant farm: service people moving in all directions, maître d’, greeters, coat checkers, table captains, waiters, water pourers. Tonight there was also an armed guard because Woody Allen was playing the clarinet. Eugene still couldn’t believe anyone would pay the sixty-dollar cover charge. He decided he’d never understand white people.
Eugene walked past the coat line.
“Excuse me,” said the guard. “Where are you going?”
Eugene produced a business card from his jacket. The guard studied it and handed it back. “Go ahead.”
Eugene stuck the card back in his jacket and wound his way through the hotel to the men’s room. He set the briefcase on the counter next to the sink and opened it. He removed the contents, setting out mints and aftershave and cologne in precise arrangement. Then, the final touch: the tip basket with a few ones from Eugene’s own wallet.
Three hours later, Eugene counted up his tips. The paperback had been right—there must be five hundred dollars here. Eugene heard the rest-room door opening, and he stashed the money in his pocket.
A small, redheaded man with a clarinet case walked into the men’s room. He finished his business; Eugene handed him a paper towel.
“Do you need anything, sir?”
The man looked around to see if anyone else was there, then pointed.
“Mint?”
The man shook his head.
“Condom?”
He nodded.
Eugene opened the jar. “How many?”
“Five…no, six.”
The man stuffed the foil pouches in his instrument case, threw a twenty in the tip basket and left quickly.
That was just the beginning. Eugene Tibbs pulled down five grand in the next month, making two- and three-night stands at the Four Seasons, the Waldorf, Tavern on the Green, constantly rotating to avoid suspicion. There were enough four-star restaurants and hotels in Manhattan that he could change locations every night and not run out for the rest of his life. As long as Eugene didn’t deviate from the plan in his paperback, everything went smoothly. Oh, sure, there was the occasional skepticism, but the book had anticipated that. Eugene compiled a list of restaurant owners’ names from the department of health, and he called ahead each night to ask the name of that evening’s maître d’.
“Nobody told me about this!” said the maître d’ at Sardi’s, studying Eugene’s business card.
Eugene didn’t say anything, just stood there holding his briefcase like he was bored, staring at caricatures of Liza and Anthony Quinn.
“And I’ve never heard of your company either.” The maître d’ read the card again: Big Apple Urinal Guys—restaurants, hotels, weddings, bar mitzvahs. Bonded, references.
The maître d’ turned the card over. He saw two names in pencil: his own and that of the restaurant’s owner.
“Where’d you get these names?”
“My boss. Those are the people I’m supposed to ask for if there’s any trouble.”
The maître d’ began to perspire. He stuck a finger in his collar to loosen it. He picked up the phone under the brass lamp on the reservation podium and dialed the number on the card. He got Eugene’s answering machine. “…Big Apple Urinal Guys, we’re not in…”
The maître d’ hung up. His Adam’s apple stuck out.
Eugene remembered what the book had said. There’s a point in conflict resolution when the next person who talks loses. You’re ready to play with the big boys when you can recognize that moment.
The maître d’ coughed. “I, wait, uh…”
“I won’t need an escort,” said Eugene, moving past the man for the men’s room.
The money rolled in. The Essex House, Trattoria, the Brasserie. Eugene experimented by wearing his dark sunglasses and offering paper towels in the wrong direction, but the increase in sympathy tips was offset by people who waved a hand in front of Eugene’s face and then took money out of the basket.
He couldn’t complain. The hours and money were great—it was working out just like it did for the character in his paperback. Eugene was making a fortune as the Wildcat Urinal Guy.
It being New York, however, the scheme did have limits. One night in a regional French bistro on Amsterdam Avenue, Eugene learned the hard way that the mob had a hand in the urinal guy rackets on the West Side, and he was toilet-dunked by two guys in sharkskin suits. He got home and found his loft apartment had been tossed.
So he stuck to midtown and the East Side. He began taking other precautions he’d learned about in his paperback. When he left his apartment each day, he lightly sprinkled talcum powder on the doorknob and some more in front of the threshold, only enough to notice if you looked. He went out on the fire escape and taped a human hair across the base of the window.
A week went by without incident. He was working Rockefeller Center that Friday when he was approached by a capo in La Cosa Nostra. They made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Eugene was a pro by now, and the mob had taken notice. They’d also become increasingly unsatisfied with their own soldiers assigned to urinal duty—guys whose heart wasn’t in it, slouching against the sink in Naugahyde jackets, smoking, listening to Knicks games on transistor radios.
“Excuse me, could I have a mint?”
“You want a mint? Sure, I’ll give you a mint. I’ll shove it up your fuckin’ ass, you fuckin’ douche bag!”
For some reason, the mob wasn’t seeing a lot in tips. Not the kind of money Eugene was making. They proposed a split. Eugene would be allowed to expand into their territory. He’d return a piece of his action from Hell’s Kitchen, and they’d give him a taste of Little Italy and protection from the crazy Jamaican gang that was already running a wicked urinal guy operation in Jersey and Queens.
Business boomed. Le Cirque, the Ritz-C
arlton, the River Café. In the middle of an eight-hundred-dollar night in the Russian Tea Room, he pulled the paperback out of his pocket again and smiled at the cover. Eugene decided that if he ever got the chance, he’d make sure he thanked Ralph Krunkleton in person.
29
December thirtieth in New York is no time for shorts and tropical shirts. The Russians stood rubbing their arms in the cab line outside JFK.
“Screw this,” said Ivan. “I know a trick.”
They went back inside and followed the arrows to curbside check-in. They waited until a taxi dropped off a fare, then sprinted outside.
“Manhattan!” yelled Ivan.
“It’s against the rules. I’m supposed to go back to the pickup zone and wait at the end of the line…” The driver stopped and looked around quickly. “Get in!”
They pulled away from the airport. Ivan looked out the window and saw a giant metal sphere flickering through the trees, the old ’64 World’s Fair globe in Flushing Meadows. He sat back in his seat and noticed a thin ribbon of incense smoke by the dashboard, but it was no match for the foul human smell. Strange, mystical music came from the radio. The driver had oily hair and a scraggly beard.
Ivan leaned to the partition. “Are you an immigrant?”
“No. College student.”
The driver made an unexpected turn, and Ivan was pitched against the door. A recorded message came on in the backseat. “This is Paul O’Neill of the New York Yankees asking you to hit a home run for safety. Please buckle up.”
They entered the Midtown Tunnel under the East River and came out in Manhattan. Then the fun. Thrills, spills, the driver bench-testing axle strength, better than any amusement ride back in Orlando. They headed north, their taxi joining a sea of yellow cabs weaving up the Avenue of the Americas. The Russians saw there were lanes painted in the road, but that was clearly part of an ancient custom from some long-forgotten people.
The taxi screeched to the curb, tossing the Russians into the partition. “There she is,” said the driver. “The famous Warwick. The Beatles used to stay there. And Cary Grant lived in one of the rooms for twelve years…”
The Russians dashed into the building and stomped their feet for circulation as they waited at the registration desk. They took hot showers and had the bell captain send up a clothier. They checked the time. Four hours until the meeting Mr. Grande had set up with Yuri.
“I’m hungry,” said Vladimir.
“Me, too,” said Dmitri. “But I’m tired of all this American food.”
Five smartly dressed men in new fur coats walked down West Fifty-seventh. The one carrying the silver briefcase gestured, and the rest followed him into a restaurant under a red sidewalk canopy. The Russian Tea Room.
“Get a load of this place,” said Alexi, slowly turning around. Bright red carpet and red leather banquettes, gold firebirds on the walls, gold on the ceiling, and gold samovars on the counters, for tea. The Moscow skyline carved in ice.
“Incredible,” said Vladimir, studying a scale model of the Kremlin.
Ivan watched a sturgeon swimming in a fifteen-foot revolving aquarium shaped like a bear. “Everyone back home should get a chance to see America. We certainly don’t have anything like this where we come from.”
They waited in the lounge for their table. The bartender came over. “What’s your pleasure?”
“What should we get?” Dmitri asked the others.
“When in Rome…” said Ivan.
“Manhattans?” said Dmitri.
“Try the Russian Quaalude,” said a stockbroker three stools down.
“Never heard of it,” said Ivan. “What’s in it?”
“Not sure,” said the broker, turning to the bartender. “Hey Bob, what’s in a Russian Quaalude?”
“One second,” said the bartender, walking to a wall phone by the stemware.
Alexi got nervous and stood up. “Who’s he calling?”
“Relax,” said Ivan. “This is America. He’s on the bartender hotline.”
The man hung up and returned. “Frangelica, Baileys, vodka, layered in that order.”
“Five,” said Ivan.
The bartender grabbed a bottle of vodka by the neck. “I was a technical adviser for the movie Cocktail.” He swung the bottle up quickly like he was going to twirl it in the air but didn’t release, for liability reasons. “The trick to twirling bottles is to pick ones with only a little liquor left. The cast tried to twirl full bottles. Liquor flew everywhere. Had to edit it out.”
Dmitri whispered to Ivan: “You meet everybody in New York.”
Their table was ready when they finished the drinks. They all got the hot borscht and Stroganoff, except Dmitri.
“How’s the chicken Kiev?” he asked the waiter. “I hate it when it’s tough.”
The waiter said it wasn’t.
Sevruga caviar and gazirovannaya vodka arrived, then the main course. The men ate with gusto as they admired winter paintings above their booth by Surikov and Kustodiev. Dmitri poked his chicken with a gold fork. “It’s tough. I knew it.”
In the back of the restaurant, a visitor from Florida sat alone, sipping tea, reading a paperback.
The check arrived. Ivan patted his full stomach. “We better get going for the meeting. Who has to take a leak?”
They went downstairs to the men’s room. After finishing business, Ivan set the briefcase on the floor and turned on the ornate gold faucets. The others lined up at adjacent sinks and turned more gold faucets.
Eugene Tibbs handed out paper towels.
Ivan lifted the lid off a jar. “Mint?”
“Take as many as you want.”
The Russians each took one of the round, hard, red-and-white mints. They liked those.
Ivan threw a five in the tip basket and picked up his briefcase.
The Russians started across midtown on foot, the temperature dropping fast. They picked up the pace, passing twenty consecutive windows with pictures of restaurant owners and Giuliani. Icy gusts blew down the Seventh Avenue canyon. More windows, more pictures. Pauly Shore, Ron Howard, Julie Newman, Goldie Hawn, Kim Basinger, Mike Tyson, Damon Wayans.
Ivan pointed across the street at a blue-and-yellow sign, LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN. “We’re getting close.”
They went around the south side of the Ed Sullivan Theater, over to Fiftieth Street and down the stairs into the subway.
“Where is it?” asked Alexi.
“Not sure,” said Ivan, reading his own scribbling on a Moon Hut matchbook.
“You said we were supposed to meet Yuri and make the submarine deal at a clandestine KGB document drop station.”
“That’s right. It’s disguised as a little subway bakery—bagels and stuff for morning commuters.”
Dmitri looked across the subway platform. Nobody else except a man in a trench coat playing the tenor sax in a rueful way that made people want to forgive Third World debt. A deep rumbling noise grew out of the darkness at the end of the platform, then a bright light. A late train on the 1-2-3-9 roared out of a tunnel and stopped. The doors opened. Nobody got on or off. The doors closed. The train left.
Vladimir studied a map on the wall. “I think that was the red line.”
A gravelly voice: “Are you looking for Siberia?”
The Russians turned around. A homeless face poked out of the shadows from a dark corner of the platform.
“What’d you say, old man?”
“You looking for Siberia? That Commie place?”
The Russians glanced at each other. The document drop station was a tightly guarded Soviet secret. Just great. Even the bums knew about it. And he was calling it Siberia, adding insult.
“I’ll tell you for a dollar,” said the bum.
Ivan handed him a folded George Washington.
“Go over this platform and around to the other train. Don’t worry if you think you’ve gone too far—just keep going. It’s way down in the bowels of this thing. You’ll find it, j
ust keep going down….”
They started walking away. Ivan stopped and turned and called back to the old man. “How do you know about this place? It’s supposed to be a secret.”
“It is a secret,” said the bum. “But the in-crowd knows about it. They’re always coming by to check it out, usually on the weekend if there’s nothing else to do.”
“It’s become idle amusement?”
“Pretty much,” said the bum.
“Wonderful,” said Igor.
The Russians went farther down into the subway. And down. And down.
“Where the hell is it?” asked Vladimir.
“He told us to just keep going,” said Ivan, trotting down another flight of stairs. “If we…hold it, what’s that?”
They saw a dark glass door and approached slowly. The door had a little sign. In small, plain black letters: SIBERIA. Ivan thought he heard something. “Is that music?”
Next to the door were several large windows, also dark, wallpapered from the inside with newspaper clippings. The Russians began reading the articles, all about the discovery of a Soviet document drop station. Their hearts sank. Ivan continued reading: in the mid-nineties, someone had leased the shop for a pub, and they started knocking out interior walls for more space. That’s when they found all the KGB documents and Russian passports and rubles inside the studwork. The clippings said the station was traced to a Soviet agent known as Yuri, who had fled long before the FBI swarmed the place. Other articles chronicled the new, literally underground, coolest bar of the moment that had since sprouted at the location. One story explained that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority doesn’t allow bars in the subway, but this specific location fell in a jurisdictional crack because of complex subterranean rights with foreign corporations in the area of Rockefeller Center.