by Todd Cohen
The Crazy Eddie commercials were memorable. Even spoofed on Saturday Night Live. Crazy Eddie grew to forty-three stores in all and grossed more than $300 million. But eventually he was accused of fraud. The company went under, and Eddie fled the US for Israel. He returned to the US for trial in 1993 and was found guilty. Prison! That was where he went. Not a resort in the Caribbean at all, at least initially. Was I headed for the same place? Sing Sing? “Only if I am lucky enough to survive this,” I surmised to myself. He was sentenced to eight years in prison but served much less and was released in 1999. Would I be so lucky? “Hey, wait a minute, I never did anything wrong, whatsoever!” I said to myself.
Chapter 59
Before the new, Mr. Crazy Eddie-sounding guy left, I did hear that the shipper was shipping the package to “Fort Mason.” I heard it as clear as day. “Fort Mason.” The only Fort Mason I knew of was in San Francisco. Every year, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or SFMOMA, had their Artist’s Warehouse sale there. Two years ago, Shari and I were vacationing in Frisco and went to Fort Mason and bought six paintings for our Hamptons house at their Annual Warehouse sale. We got all those great pieces for a song and a dance, and they now filled our place on Homans Avenue. The warehouse sale was always in May, and it was now November.
Fort Mason was an old army barrack with yellowed concrete buildings, casement windows, and green-tiled roofs, all touching the San Francisco Bay, facing out towards Alcatraz. Oh, how ironic!
“Too many ironies,” I thought. First, the new Crazy Eddie and now Alcatraz. Maybe I was getting a little paranoid. The artists I like all committed suicide. The people around me right now are thugs and scum. And me, little old me? I’m being accused of murder and grand art theft; and now this? My mind must be playing tricks on me or perhaps it is the concussion. Am I delusional?
“We’ve got to get out of here and get to San Francisco,” I thought. But was I sure of the plan? Was the new-fangled Crazy Eddie really talking about shipping the painting or something else? Or was it just a coincidence?
Chapter 60
I had no alternative. I knew where this was heading, and there would be no happy ending! I had to do something, get myself free, release Amy as well, and escape!
Myth busters demonstrated the ability and strength of duct tape, time and time again on their popular TV program. Duct tape could hold a broken-apart car together and survive the stress of driving at sixty miles per hour. It could create a suspension bridge strong enough to allow a group of large adults to cross over a ravine. But even with that strength, there was something that was even stronger.
The human jaw!
The amount of force applied by the human jaw is many times stronger than the strength of both a human’s legs and a human’s arms combined. It is the masseter muscle, or jaw muscle, that gave me hope—the hope of cutting through the tape.
I wiggled and moved my mouth for about five minutes until I was able to get my tongue out. I used the moisture from my tongue to loosen the tape, and its contact with my face together with my jaw’s movement. In another five minutes, I was able to get my teeth on the tape and began gnawing. When I got through it, I was then able to work on my legs and ankles. I tried to reach towards my feet with my mouth, but they were just too far way. Maybe if I was double jointed and had the flexibility of a circus contortion expert, I could have reached with my teeth and grabbed the tape that was restraining my ankles. But I wasn’t even close. I wiggled my body towards the side of the storage container and started to work on my hands instead.
There was a razor-sharp edge by the metal container door, and I was able to swing myself around and work the tape off of my hands, which were numb from being pulled around my back. I got the tape off my hands, then off my ankles. I then ripped off the tape that was covering my eyes. Then I saw her!
My precious Amy had a large bloody bump on her head. The blood was dried and crusted over her left ear and ran down the left side of her face. She was lying on the floor, completely bound by duct tape, just like I had been. I carefully, as gently as possible, pulled the tape off her eyes and mouth, and freed up her arms and legs. I could see that she was conscious, but barely. “Was she drugged?” I wondered. “Or was this the effect of the head trauma.”
“We have to be quiet,” I whispered to her.
“Thanks, but we have to get out of here,” she whispered back.
“So great to see you,” I said affectionately. “I reached over to her and gave her a big warm hug. I felt tingles all over! But did she?”
“I didn’t know what happened to you. I thought you were dead,” she said.
“I don’t know exactly who we’re dealing with,” I whispered. I motioned with my finger over my lips, the universal sign for quiet, and then we just listened. But we did not hear much.
Chapter 61
With my ear to the door, I listened again. “Only the quiet of an abandoned or remote outdoor spot!” I thought. We had to take a chance. I wanted to try to open up the large storage-container door. But I had feared Mustache Man and Sidekick would be waiting for us outside. We had to be careful. I listened again and again and again. I didn’t hear a thing. I listened for about another twenty minutes and still heard nothing. If they were going to try to dispose of us, we would at least have to risk trying to escape. I looked at the large metal container door, which must have weighed eighty pounds. In my mind, there was no way this door would open. Besides its weight, it had to be bolted shut.
But I gave it a shot. I heaved the large, sliding storage-container door upward, and it barely budged. By its movement, however, I knew it was not bolted shut. Then I gave it another full “heave ho” with all my might, and it opened about halfway, providing us just enough space to escape. We both made our way out of the container, and then I pulled the door back down.
Sunlight greeted our eyes, and lots of it! It was an enormous shipping yard, and this end contained twenty oversized storage units, with one large wooden sign overhead which read: ship my bike, ship my art. Mustache Man and Sidekick, as well as the Crazy Eddie guy, were nowhere to be seen. And the storage bin next door was wide open and completely empty. I looked out, away from the shipping yard and across a body of water. The water was polluted with floating bottles, cans, a dead fish, and a full page of the New York Daily News. “No place for a swim.” I grinned. The body of water was more like a small man-made river, inlet, or canal. There was bulkhead on both sides, reminding me of the channel that led between Dune Road and the main part of Westhampton Beach, but much wider and dirtier. Across from the so-called canal were a number of brick high-rise apartments. Queens or the Bronx? But it could also have been someplace in Staten Island. Or Jersey, for that matter. I had no way of knowing. The area looked nothing like any I’d ever seen before.
A tugboat anchored on the other side of the bulkhead said, helen mcalister. Was Helen McAllister the owner? Or was McAllister some other dead-end. “Perhaps an Irish relative of McElroy?” I speculated to myself. The boat showed no indication of life—just anchored on the other side of the body of water.
It would have helped if I knew how long we were knocked unconscious. A few hours or even a day? I looked at the sun—dead straight overhead, it appeared to be afternoon, though I couldn’t be sure. I had no sense of direction. How far were we from Riverhead? Could we be in Connecticut? I doubt it. It looked like some of the more built-up areas near the City—New York City, that is.
Amy and I made our way around the side of the complex that faced towards the water. I was holding my breath while anxiously looking for the perpetrators. A number of trucks were parked there, and there were still no signs of movement, or any sign of human life, for that matter. I gave out a big sigh while gasping for breath. Just seagulls, lots of them. I looked to the right of the shipping yard and saw what looked like a towering pile of landfill encircled by seagulls. The air smelled of this refuse. “Oh, how pleasant,” I said to Amy. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
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We made a mad dash for it. Racing out of the parking lot, I instinctively grabbed Amy’s hand. Near the exit out of the parking lot there was a large shipping truck parked next to an evergreen Jeep Active Drive 4 x 4. A relatively short guy got out of the Jeep and walked to the much larger shipping truck, and opened up its back door. Then went to the front of the truck. I glanced at the truck’s side and saw the now very recognizable insignia we had just observed outside where we were imprisoned.
On one side was what looked like a historic emblem with a picture of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
ship my bike, said the draped upper emblem.
As we carefully circled to the other side, there was another historic emblem, with a picture of the Mona Lisa.
ship my art, read the draped emblem above it.
The back was open, someone was coming. I caught one quick glance of him. That was it. The real Crazy Eddie was a six-foot-plus beast of a man with a roaring voice. My made-up Crazy Eddie was a five-foot-four middle-aged Jewish grey-haired guy of medium build. The back of the truck gave it all away, and the new Crazy Eddie was coming toward us. Amy and I before he even noticed hid around the back near the truck’s doors. There was a full artist’s rendering on the back of the truck door that looked quite familiar and historic.
It was a classic picture of Uncle Sam, and above it read: uncle daniel wants you.” Below, it had the address:
Ship My Bike, Ship My Art
Principal: Mr. Daniel Kleinman, Esquire
355 East Rockaway, New York
www.shipyourbikes.com
This guy must be a comedian.
There was no way we were going to run out of the shipping yard without being seen. And there was no way I was going to let Mr. Kleinman escape with what may be the world’s most valuable piece of art.
I jumped inside the truck, then grabbed Amy’s hand and pulled her up as well. Inside there appeared to be twenty to twenty-five boxes, even crates, and fifteen motorcycles, all bubble wrapped. One of the crates was quite oversized, large enough to house the Pollock. We wedged ourselves together in a corner between a “Bike” and a “Box.”
“Oh, this is cozy,” I whispered to Amy. The box shielded us from anyone glancing inward through the back door. Thirty seconds later the back door was slammed shut, and we were trapped in the dark again.
“One last pickup and we’re off,” said the Crazy Eddie-type voice. “We’re going to Ghost!”
“Could it be? Could we be going to where I think we’re going?” I whispered to Amy.
Chapter 63
Ghost Motorcycle was another one of those legends, but this one was not in the Hamptons.
“They can’t be heading there,” I said to Amy incredulously.
“Why’s that?” she replied.
“Because Ghost is located in Port Washington, my hometown. The town where I raised my kids!”
“Sorry,” she said sympathetically.
Ghost Motorcycle had been located in an off-white, dilapidated, concrete building on Main Street many years, in what was an overbuilt Long Island Sound sea town. In the past, the large sign ghost hovered above the store’s edifice. For many years it was stocked with an array of used and rebuilt Harley Davidsons. And a seedy-looking crowd of bikers. The male bikers were either bald or had long grey hair, often accompanied by unruly facial hair. They reminded me of the rock band ZZ Top, with their black leather vests and matching biker boots, and their unsightly tattoos! The Biker Babes were equally tattooed and stuffed into similar black-leather garb, always too tight, and definitely unseemly. This group seemed harmless to the mostly white-collar workers that inhabited Port Washington. The ghost sign had long since been removed. And Ghost was really a ghost. I had no inkling that there was even any life left in Ghost. No pun intended.
Port Washington was on the water, and Main Street led from the Manhasset Bay water park, up past the shops, past the modern Port Washington Library, past the stately Landmark Senior Center, past even more shops, and then up to Ghost. The meandering, wooded village streets of the affluent village of Sands Point and the eclectic little Port Washington neighborhoods and villages all wound up on the “Main Street” of Port Washington. A number of the elite Wall Streeters, New York professional athletes, including New York Ranger greats and Mets veterans, as well as some well-known TV personalities all came from the storied village of Sands Point. Hey, even the sportscaster/NBA broadcaster Marv Albert and the National Hockey League legend and Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky once lived here. And many of the neighboring doctors, lawyers, and other businessman all hailed from that area, as well as the less affluent but still gentrified Port Washington. This included the New England-style neighborhoods, such as Baxter Estates, Beacon Hill, and Port Washington North.
If you went a little further up Main Street, you hit the Long Island Railroad, or LIRR—a unique feature of the town. Since Port Washington was the end of the Port Washington Line of the LIRR, you could always get a seat to Penn Station in downtown Manhattan.
Everyone knew that Ghost had had tax problems and essentially disappeared. At least, that was the story.
“Ghost essentially became a ghost.” I whispered into Amy’s ear. “I thought they were in foreclosure.”
The truck came to a halt, and Amy and I immediately hid behind the large crate in the back. I did, however, get enough of a glance out the back to realize we were on Main Street in Port Washington. After a few minutes of apparent serenity, I slid out from the crate toward the back door of the truck and quickly caught a glimpse of the vacant, signless Ghost building. I then returned back to Amy, where we both hid, in the back corner behind the crate.
Chapter 64
“Amy,” I whispered. “We are so close to my old place. If I could only run to my house, and get some things, it could be helpful to us.”
“I don’t think you have enough time,” Amy replied.
“But all I need is an hour, tops. That’s all I need. I really have to get some things, especially if we are going to head across country. We’ll need water and nourishment at the least, just to stay alive.”
“Don’t risk it,” she said.
“Amy, I hope you’ll understand. But I have to risk it. We will get to the bottom of this mess. And we will figure out who is behind the art theft. Sixty minutes, tops. That’s all I need.” I was hopeful that she would understand.
But she didn’t. “MD, don’t even think about it. What if they leave in the next few minutes? I would be trapped on board in the back of a truck, potentially driven by the murderer and thief. On a trip to who knows where. Plus, you would not be with me.”
I thought about what she said. She was right!
I resisted the urge to run out the back and up Main Street. It was too risky, heading to my house in Beacon Hill, literally a twenty-minute walk from Ghost. I had no clue how long the truck would be there. If it were only ten minutes, Amy would be up the creek without a paddle. But weren’t we up that creek anyway? Was this our opportunity?
After what Shari did to me, I did not even want to see my old place again. But I needed my wallet, and other essentials. And what if I ran into Shari. What would she do? Call the police? In my mind, our relationship had ended. Finito! And it ended with a bang, not a whimper. I was literally and figuratively screwed! The literally screwed part was the blond buck Shari was doing in our bedroom.
Rather than run, I reached into my pocket and found something that I had forgotten I had.
Chapter 65
My iPhone. It had been turned off to conserve energy, and I flipped it back on and switched the phone to “silence.” When it rebooted, I saw ten text messages.
Six were from Alex, all wondering where I was: two from Mr. Schwartz, asking for me to give him a call, one was from my mother, wondering if I’d started dating, and one was from Mr. Edward Ginsberg, Esquire, Shari’s new attorney, stating that divorce papers had been filed, that we were legally separated, and that th
e papers were in the mail.
I quickly called Alex but only got his usual message, “Hello, this is Alex,” followed by a bunch of French pleasantries, and then back to English: “Leave your name and number at the sound of the beep. Merci et passez une journée agréable.” I spoke quickly and concisely into the phone.
“Alex, where the hell are you? Amy and I’ve been kidnapped and have escaped, but now we are in Port Washington, hiding inside the back of a large shipping truck. We need your help. We are on Main Street in front of the old Ghost Motorcycle building. We are inside the large white truck with a ship my art/ship my bike emblem painted on it. I believe the truck is headed to San Francisco. Amy and I plan to go with them. I know it sounds strange, but I think it will all come together where I Left My Heart.
Alex knew this song well. It was my wedding song, but now it might be my swan song.
“I don’t want to let this painting out of my sight, Alex. Please keep your phone at hand, I will need your help in Frisco. They are loading the bikes on board and will be off to the West Coast shortly.”
The message ended abruptly and I knew I had to act fast.
I snuck out of the truck for an instant and listened from the right side of the Ghost building. Peeking my head around the corner, I saw Mr. Kleinman—who appeared harmless enough in the distance—giving his best Crazy Eddie sales pitch as his team started to wrap up five more motorcycles. When I heard him tell their customer that it would take an hour and a half, including a detour down to the Harbor Deli for snacks, I knew I had time to make one more trip.