Crumbtown

by Joe Connelly

  “Ten thousand,” Don said.

  “I knew it. Goddamn. I knew it.”

  Don put the twenties in his pocket and read the opening lines of his parole guide, a brief overview of the television and motion picture industry’s early release program that since 1998 had helped over two hundred men and women, and in that time had become a model of prisoner rehabilitation. He pulled out another folder, which held the copy of his contract with Halo Productions. In language generally vague, then suddenly precise, Don had, in exchange for his early probation, forfeited all current and future rights to any representations of his life, both fictional and otherwise. He put the folders back into the envelope and stared out over the watery edge of the highway, the service roads spilling around islands of green and gray, houses crouching above their basements.

  They stopped for breakfast at a diner in New Morgan, the inside looking exactly like the out. The driver led him to a booth in the back, Don staring at the menu for five minutes. It had been so long since he had to choose what to eat, and when the waiter came he still didn’t know, eggs or pancakes. The driver ordered a fruit salad and pulled out the magazine he’d brought in, which had something to do with raising pigeons. At the table next to Don a woman was watching talk shows on a handheld television. She wore headphones, but with the volume so high, it sounded like dogs fighting. The other tables around him were full of people who’d ordered the wrong things, and the waiter kept coming back, three times, and finally Don just ordered the eggs, scrambled, and when they came they tasted just like prison. He poured ketchup over everything anyway. Everybody knew where he’d been.

  He was asleep before they hit Waterville, and an hour later the driver woke him at the hotel, the door opening onto a sidewalk of fake grass, which led to a lobby of cracked stucco and pink glass, a young woman talking to her computer at the front desk. She handed him a card she called a key and said the minibar and pool were not available to parolees. When Don finally figured out how to get into his room, he double-locked the door and sifted through the pamphlets on the desk, credit card applications, and guides to nearby riverboat gambling.

  Someone was knocking. He went to open the locks, and the phone started to ring. While the phone rang, the man at the door handed him a package. Don brought it to the bed and answered the phone. A Miss Delouise, from Brian Halo’s office, told him she would be serving as both his production manager and his probation officer. She asked him to open the package. Inside was a portable phone no bigger than Don’s ear. It came with an instruction booklet the size of the Bible in his desk. Ms. Delouise called it a cell phone, and said that it would replace his prison cell. Don and the cell phone he was holding must never part, she said. Don was responsible for maintaining battery charge and remaining within high-reception fields. Two missed calls was considered a violation, and would require Halo Productions to notify the police, where a Detective Harry Hammamann was liaison.

  Don opened the instruction booklet, but before he finished “How to Turn On Your Phone,” the little thing began to ring. He pushed a few buttons but the ringing continued. Then the big phone next to the bed joined in, hi-lo, hi-lo, like a police siren. Someone was back at the door, knock knock, politely at first, then louder. He pushed some more buttons, the phones getting louder with every knock. Don backed into the wall, beneath the striped paper, the familiar smell of concrete. He pushed more buttons on the phone, yelling at the door, “Wait a second.” He went to the window by the desk, ten floors to the street; he jumped on the bed. “Come in,” he said, and when the young man from the flower shop entered, Don rushed the opening, pushing past the man’s bouquet, out the door, Don taking the stairs. A little card falling to the floor: Compliments of Brian Halo.

  17

  Brian Halo stood at the eastern edge of his office and looked out at the skyline fused white by the sun. Rob walked in quietly and took a seat facing the window, the light pounding him through the glass, and waited for Brian Halo to turn around. It was nine-thirty in the morning, and Rob was about to be fired.

  “For weeks I’ve dealt with your excuses,” Halo said to the window. “Then this,” he raised the script and at the same time lowered his head, like a preacher holding a vandalized Bible. “This, Rob,” he turned slowly, his shadow thinning, then getting wider until it covered the desk and chair, “is why I love you.”

  Relief hit Rob so hard it nearly knocked him off the chair. He squeezed his legs to force out the air. “I thought for sure you were going to fire me.”

  “You’re my director and my friend, why I asked you to come in. We’re going to make it work.”

  Brian Halo’s shadow moved to the left, Rob strained his neck to stay in. “You like it. I’m so glad. I was having some trouble there with the Rita character, but yeah it is pretty good.”

  “No, it’s not good at all,” Halo sat down, “it’s terrible, so much worse than before. Now she’s unconscious for the entire second act, and then just before she wakes up you had the bright idea of having Don gag her and tie her to a chair.”

  “Because he cares about her.”

  Brian Halo reached across the desk, grabbing Rob’s knee. “We’re not going to argue, okay, because the actress who is playing Rita loves the story, and I love this actress, which is why I love this story too. Are you ready? Miss Dyan Swaine herself is playing Rita.”

  “She’s Ten Thirteen.”

  “Not after Saturday. Contract’s up. The captain’s getting shot.”

  Rob crossed his legs; he slapped his lap. “Wow. So Dyan Swaine likes the script.”

  Brian Halo pulled some papers from a drawer. “She likes the story, Rob, and some of the script, she says, is not awful. Here, she faxed these over, just some ideas, okay? You can fill in the dialogue. She wants to write this with you.” Brian Halo was around his desk, holding Rob’s hands. “It’s all coming together now. Let it come together.” He let go and walked to the window, turning into the sun. The meeting was done.

  18

  Don ran down the stairs through the lobby to the doors to the street, pushing buttons on the phone until it stopped ringing, the screen at the top stopped blinking, “1 missed call,” it read. He looked up the block, the offices emptying for lunch, cars and trucks driving past, places to go. He checked his phone again and made a right, took three steps and turned, back three steps and turned. Ten years. He leaned forward, almost to the point of falling, putting his foot out at the last second, and another, like he was going down a steep hill.

  The old industrial section had been cleaned up, the brick factories converted into factory outlets, their first floors shining with new sneakers and bath oils and wine-tasting equipment. This area that used to look just like Crumbtown, only without the floods. Now the sidewalks were straight, the street-lamps new, every other one with a flag that said “Old Dodgeport” on it. Down on Front Street the bus terminal had been turned into a performance space, and next to that, a new glass tower where the ironing offices used to be. He passed two cranes over an empty lot on Beard, and two more over the old dump between the station and the interstate. Signs on the wall said it would soon be forty stories of new gambling. Don turned under the highway, three blocks then left on Washington, the view down two miles to Crumbtown, looking the same as ever, patched roofs, streets angling into the water.

  He pulled out his phone and checked it again, the wind hitting him with the first smells, salt water and coal smoke, and somewhere close by, a donut shop. He raised his eyes to the sun, staring straight in, warmed by the glare. In prison, the sky took all the color out of you, but out here you took it back, new cars and restaurants, girls in dresses. This time was going to be different.

  He stopped at a new pizza place on the corner, Old Dodgeport Pizza, and stood at the counter, wondering what to order—ten years he’d been thinking about it. For several minutes he stared at the aging slices, which looked like they’d been made in a warehouse, the men at the oven who were too skinny to know good pizza. Don t
urned around and walked out; he’d waited this long, he could wait twenty blocks more, down to Crumbtown, to the world-famous Coliseum, the best pizza in the city. And the only way to get it was to cross that bridge, because the Coliseum didn’t deliver. Sometimes, when you lived there, that pizza made up for everything.

  Down the hill almost running, he took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, the sun on his arms, breathing too quick. The Coliseum, since 1936. He’d sit at his old table, watch the girls walk through, maybe talk to a few. What had he been thinking in prison? That he wanted to go live in the desert? End up watching TV all day, watching other people live. Frozen pizza that tasted like scrambled eggs.

  He crossed the bridge into Lemmings, the familiar horns and derision, just like he remembered, jealous and drunk and mean-looking, except that the stores had changed names and all the people looked Chinese. Sally’s Pawnshop was now a tailor who did acupuncture; Jamie’s Liquors was run by a barber who sold exotic birds and umbrellas. Don had always wanted a parrot, and he stood a long time looking at one in the window, but the tag said three hundred dollars, and the bird looked sick and he hadn’t just walked three miles to look at parrots. He stayed on Lemmings, two more blocks to Leak, and turned the corner and stopped, and looked back, checking the signs; he knew where he stood—Coliseum Pizza was now Secret Ocean Fish.

  Buckets of live crabs in the window, eels and squid and creatures he’d never seen before, some longer than his arm, stretched over beds of white ice, staring at him like they wanted to fight.

  He walked back to Lemmings, his hands in his pockets, looking left up the hill, then right, to Gloria’s bar, two blocks below, its awning stripped and twisted that way since the hurricane came through. The bar had always been named after storms named after women.

  He walked faster into the street, nearly hit by a car as he started to run, heading for the bar. He wasn’t looking to start anything, if the twins were there, just ask a few questions, about loyalty and friendship and why Tim and Tom would be leaving a bank robbery with a security guard in their car. Maybe they had some questions for him. That’d be fine too. Get it over with. Don stopped at an alleyway, an old wooden table someone had thrown away, two legs still attached. He broke one free, solid and not too long. Swinging it at the air as he ran, liking the weight.

  Two painters were working in front, scraping Gloria’s name off the window. Don chased them away with the leg he was waving, “What’s going on?” He put his back to the door and rested there a moment until his breathing slowed, his lungs out of shape. Maybe the hotel had a gym, maybe a separate section where the parolees could work out. He pressed his nose against the glass, his hand over his eyes as he looked inside. The bar was covered with cloth. Two more painters working behind it, also covered in cloth, covering the walls. On the table closest to the window was a computer and phone bank, more computer equipment against the wall. So Gloria’s was gone too.

  He threw the table leg up the street, head bent to his chest as he passed the bar. You are on parole, he said to himself. Slow down. Breathing in deeply, he buttoned his jacket, combing his hair with his fingers. Enjoy yourself. The next two blocks were the same ones he knew, warehouses that had been falling down since Don was born, the half-shuttered store at the corner, that sold only things in pieces. But the scene changed as soon as he crossed Delinquency. Suddenly the sidewalks were level, the power lines gone. It looked more like the Lemmings of the seventies, with curtains in the windows, signs over the stores. A barbershop with a real barber pole, a candy store that looked like it sold more than betting sheets, and next to that, a beautiful sign in white script, Sal’s Neapolitan Fountain. Don was going to have some pizza after all.

  Except where were the people? Something was wrong. Then he saw what, two patrol cars coming up the street, parking right in front of his pizza. A plainclothes cop got out of the first, bald, with a black patch over one eye, two uniforms stepping out of the other, standing behind. The plainclothes looked at him strangely, probably that eye patch the guy was wearing, and pulled out a walkie-talkie and began speaking into it. Don smelled a major police operation under way. Be cool, he said to himself, no crime in getting a slice. He walked past them, catching the light blue letters on the car, NYPD. An operation so big they had to call in New York.

  Sal’s Neapolitan was locked. He pulled on the door twice more and looked in the window, piles of boxes filled with framed pictures. And nothing to do but pass the cops again. He nodded slightly to them, five eyes staring back. Then the phone in his pocket started to ring, right on time. He pulled it out and coolly dropped it on the sidewalk, and picked it up, poking the buttons until the ringing stopped. No one was talking. The little screen read “2 missed calls.” A violation.

  “Hey Don,” said one of the cops behind him, the plainclothes with the patch. “That’s you, right?”

  Be cool, Don said, go see what he wants, but instead he found himself walking away, and walking too fast. “Where you going?” the voice getting louder. “Stop.”

  Don’t run, Don said, do not run, then the sirens hit him from behind. He was running. Half a block up another plainclothes, wearing a headset with a microphone, stepped out of a stairway and pointed at Don, yelling “I got him. I got him. Stop. You can’t go through.” Don put his shoulder in the man’s chest, knocking him to the ground. He made the corner without breaking stride, the cop cars gaining from behind. Up ahead, two more sirens coming at him. A big crowd of people on his right, forty or more, huddled like they were handcuffed together. He heard the cop car braking behind him, and felt his legs going up, his head down. He hit the windshield and rolled left and onto the ground, coming to a stop before a store-front. He got up and ran through the door.

  “Who are you?” asked the man behind the counter. He wore a long beard, a white turban.

  Don looked out the window, more patrol cars pulling up. He ran to the back of the store, found an open door to a little room where a cop was gagged and tied to a chair, a really pretty blond female captain cop, another man in a turban standing over her with a pistol. This is bad, Don said, and elbowed the man in the nose, grabbing the gun at the same time, the man folding into the captain’s lap. He ran back to the front of the store, and watched at least ten cops get out of their cars and crouch down with guns drawn.

  “Hey dude,” said the bearded man behind the counter. “Are you supposed to be here?”

  “I’m not going back,” Don said.

  “In that case, you better get down,” the man pulled an assault rifle from somewhere under the register and pointed it at the cops.

  Don raised his gun, wondering who to shoot, realizing he couldn’t shoot. The gun wasn’t real. It was lighter than his hand, just a toy painted black. Don could tell the assault rifle the man held was a fake too. These crazy Muslims or Hindus or whoever they were, were fighting cops with fake guns. He backed into a rack of breath fresheners, knocking many of them with him to the floor.

  “Cut, that’s a cut,” the man with the turban called out, and placed his rifle under the counter. Don shoved the toy pistol under his belt. The plainclothes cop came in, the one with the headset, whom Don had knocked over on the corner. “What the hell. Somebody tell me.” He bent over Don, inhaling furiously. “What the hell were you doing?”

  Don slowly unwrapped a piece of gum from the floor and chewed contemplatively, to cover up the fact that he’d lost his breath, and that it wasn’t coming back. The guns were plastic. The cops were actors. Television. Maybe this was his show, The Real Adventures of Robin Crumb, although he’d never kidnapped a police captain or worn a turban. “I was jogging,” he said.

  The second man with the turban came out of the back room holding a towel to his nose. “Should I untie the stand-in?”

  “No,” said the man with the headset. “We’re going right away. And I need security in here. All right everybody, let’s go, back to first positions.”

  Don pointed to the young man’s shoe, which wa
s stepping on the already stained cuff of Don’s ten-year-old trousers. When the man didn’t move, Don lifted the shoe with his hand. He took the gum out of his mouth and placed it on the ground. He placed the shoe on top of it.

  “Oh that’s too much.” The man with the eye patch had come in, whom Don had seen at the pizza place and thought was an undercover cop. “Hey Don,” the man laughed, “how you doing?” Don remembered him then, Anthony King, the fat kid who used to run numbers for Maury.

  King reached down and pulled him up. “I thought you were in Creosote. We better get you out of here before everybody’s stuck to the floor.”

  They walked out of the store and up the street, cops running past them to get back in their cars, reversing at high speed to the corner, back from where they’d come. King grabbed Don’s arm, “Let’s go,” he said, “I’m head of security here. I got to make it look like I’m throwing you off the set.”

  Don shook his arm free. “What show is this?”

  “Ten Thirteen. You must have just got out, am I right. That suit you got on.”

  “I’m supposed to be on The Real Adventures of Robin Crumb.”

  “The bank robbery thing. Where Dyan’s going. That’s your show?”

  Don nodded, “TV parole.”

  “That’s how I started.” King stopped at the corner, pulling Don back, more cop cars reversing past. “They got me out to consult on this informer character who ended up being cut after two episodes, but by then I got my hand in too many places for them to send me back. Now I’m working security, driving Dyan at night, do some acting on my days off. You got to keep the cash flow going to pay off the man, Detective Hammamann. You remember him, right, probably be calling on you pretty soon.”

  “How much does he get?”

  “Fifty a day, plus you got to listen to his shit, he’ll talk your ear off, I can’t stand that.”