There I encountered a formidable-looking female guard sitting at a table right at the doorway. She packed an impressive array of gear—pistol, mace, handcuffs, phone, walkie-talkie, extra bullets, bulletproof vest, nightstick—and she was wearing a beret. She held a tablet.
“Who’re you here for?” she asked.
“Esther Lacey,” I said, cowed.
“You’re Nick Friedman?” she asked, scanning the tablet.
“Yes.”
“Don’t usually get an appointment last minute like you did,” she said.
Apparently, Maggie’s powers had gained me an appointment.
She tapped the tablet a few times and looked up at me. “Okay,” she said, pointing into the room. “Go there and empty your pockets into one of the lockers on the left. Put your coat there, too. Then have a seat. Someone will get you.”
I did as I was told, then sat on a bench that had seen better days. This space was painted in early drab. Several neon ceiling lights needed replacing, the resulting darkness contributing generously to the mood. A sprinkling of other visitors was spread throughout the room, keeping to their own business, none looking joyful to be visiting this tribute to the color gray.
Quite like a nurse calling me for a follow-up appointment with an oncologist, another well-armed woman at a door leading into the prison called my name. I went to her. She, too, wrote something on a tablet. She frisked me, rather thoroughly I must say, making certain my pockets were empty and that I had nothing hidden elsewhere on my person. From my shirt pocket she took the pack of cannabis-laced Marlboros I’d brought as an offering. She inspected it, making certain there were no tiny hidden weapons. She gestured with one hand to follow, and with no small amount of trepidation I did.
It took about ten claustrophobic minutes to traverse the labyrinth of narrow corridors. I soon was dizzy and disoriented, unquestionably lost. I disliked being at the mercy of this guard whose terse manner conveyed the impression she’d just as soon shoot me or shove me into an empty cell as return me to the outside world.
The guard brought me to a small room with a gray rectangular table and two chairs. She pointed to the one farthest from the door. I sat. As I recovered a sense of stasis, the guard left to fetch Esther.
I sat fidgeting like a six-year-old in the principal’s office, feeling guilty, though without good reason. A few moments later Esther entered the cell, hands and feet in shackles, and dressed from head to toe in gray, including a cap that did not sit properly on her head.
The guard took up the rear, nightstick pressed firmly into Esther’s back, and chained Esther’s feet to two rings near the floor. Then she undid Esther’s handcuffs and chained her hands to the rings on posts jutting up from the table. While all of this manacling took place, Esther was cooperative, even docile, eyeing me with half a smile playing across her lips.
As the photos promised, Esther was obese, a perfect physical match to the man who was her business partner. Her hair was long, blonde and so bedraggled I wondered if she worked to achieve the look. She wore steel-rimmed glasses over a full-moon face.
The guard said, “You have ten minutes.”
There was a ragged scar on Esther’s neck where it was well known her father had slit her throat at age twelve because she resisted his sexual advances. The wound was small, and gave her mother time to get her to a hospital before bleeding out.
One day, maybe two years after he’d cut her, some kids found her father’s corpse in a dumpster, his head on backwards and a stupid look in his wide-open eyes. No one could ever prove that Esther was the doer, but no one doubted it.
Staring at me with those twisted eyes, she smiled. “So you’re Nicky Friedman,” she said. “Shmulie talked about you a lot. We had hopes we might bring you in. You know, poor professor using his brains for more profitable work.”
“Yeah,” I answered. “He tried to get me to join up once over drinks and cigarettes at a club in the Village. Wasn’t interested.”
She gave me a knowing stare. “If I’d offered you the job, you’d have joined up pronto. And we’d have had fun, you and me. One thing sure. You’d have made a great big pile of money. Maybe Shmulie woulda then betrayed the both of us.”
I squirmed. “No doubt if you’d have been at the club that night instead of him, I might well have joined your merry band.” But I reflected on the condition of the woman sitting before me. “Here I don’t find you persuasive, all chained up like a naughty monkey at the zoo.”
As I didn’t see any “no smoking” signs there in our tiny tribute to the color gray, I pulled out the pack of cannabis-laced Marlboros.
“Cigarette?” I asked.
She eyed the red-and-white pack greedily and gave a half nod. An echo bounced around the room as I banged the top end of the pack, opened it, pulled one out, placed it between her lips, and lit it.
The cigarette dangled from a corner of her lips. Her face filled now with smoke as she inhaled and exhaled through her nose. A look of appreciation filled her eyes as the nicotine and cannabis filled her lungs.
“You can’t get Burros here, only some cheap shit brand made just for prisoners in a jailhouse in North Carolina. Got no pot in it. They fall apart soon as they’re in your mouth and you get a tongue full of that crap. You know what they call them? Lockups. Can you fucking believe that? Lockup Cigarettes,” she said, then took another drag.
Her eyes mellowed, her cheeks turned red, her glare softened.
She continued, “You’re here to talk about Shmulie, right?”
I nodded.
“So, get on with it. What do you want?”
“Have you heard anything from Shmulie?” I asked.
She hesitated, then smiled. “Now how in the hell am I going to hear from that fat prick, even if I wanted to?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’ve purchased some privilege. Maybe you and he have the odd online chat or exchange texts now and again. At the least, I figured, maybe he’d send you a letter.”
“A lot of figuring, Nicky. None of it true. Why would I want to hear from that bastard, anyway?” she said, eyes narrowing. “Why would he want to talk to me? He’s the reason I’m here, and I’m the reason he’s out there. He’s overjoyed to be rid of me. My Shmulie has lost no sleep over how he fucked me over.”
The cigarette reached its end. Esther moved her head my way and let it drop to the floor where I stubbed it out. I pointed to the pack and she nodded. I gave her another and lit it.
“There’s buzz,” I said, “that you don’t actually loathe each other—the way you speak in public is an act. I heard maybe you and he struck some kind of a deal. Since one of you had to go to prison, it would be you. If it’s true, I’d like to know why.”
She snorted. “I’d like to know why, too, sweetheart. I heard all that stuff about us being the Romeo and Juliet of the underworld. Let me tell you. It’s bullshit. Someone invented it on some site and all the rest of those electronic rags picked up on it like flies to feces. No truth in any of it.”
She tossed her head back to force the hair out of her face. Her glasses edged down her nose. The queenpin of the underworld looked pathetic indeed.
“I’m in Camp Shithole for fucking good. Twenty minutes a day I see the outside, and no one’s there when I am but a coupla guards carrying more hardware than a South American army. I got cameras aimed all over me, even when I’m on the crapper. Like maybe I’d shrink and flush myself down the drain. Like that guy from that movie, I’m gonna crawl my way through the sewers to freedom.”
A fly landed on her nose. She flicked her head trying to chase it away.
In the attempt, some of her hair fell back into her face, her glasses fell onto her breasts, and the cigarette flew from her mouth like a bullet, past the table and onto the floor, sparks silently exploding.
“Honey,” she said. “Could you give me a h
and?”
I leaned forward and retrieved her glasses. I adjusted her hair and returned the cigarette to her mouth. Quietly, she inhaled.
“Thanks,” she said, and took a couple more drags. Her eyes were now red and boozy. “Look, Nicky. My life here is one tiresome daily routine. I get three squares a day, all the water I can drink and all the books I can read. I got no computer. I keep a journal by hand. What’s there to say when every day is just the same? What kind of poetry could I write? Being is Nothingness?”
I smiled.
“No one’s going to pull me out of this hole, and sure ain’t no governor with all his marbles gonna pardon me for any reason. I’m up for parole in around a hundred and ten fucking years. If I take real good care of myself, I might last another fifty, sixty. I share this space with nobody I’d ever want to have coffee with on the outside. I’ll never see the City again. I’ll see no city again except in my dreams. That sound like the kind of place I’d put myself in forever—just to do Shmulie Shimmer a favor?”
She eyed me. A long ash from the cigarette dropped onto her gray prison smock as she took another healthy drag, exhaling the smoke through her nose. She worked her way down to the filter.
“So, you don’t have access to a computer?” I asked.
“You’re one persistent fuck, aren’t you?” she asked, spitting the butt onto the table where it rolled and the remains sat smoldering. “I don’t know how to say it any other way. I don’t talk to Shmulie every Friday and tell him how much I love him. I don’t write him long letters and he don’t send me flowers on my birthday. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Now get the hell out of here. You wasted your time coming. You wasted your money on those butts. Guard! Get me out of here.” She was breathing hard and fast, and the chains on her arms and legs rattled as she moved them in agitation.
The guard rose and came our way. Like a traffic cop I raised my left arm. The guard stopped. “Give us another minute.”
I looked at Esther and said, “Okay. Sorry I got you angry. I had to know. Rumors are epidemic on the Web. All over there are stories about you and Shmulie and a hidden international empire the two of you still control. I thought there might be something to it.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said in her growing haze. “I got me a room full of electronic gadgets and a warehouse full of shit imported from China I sell online to support the indigent of Djibouti.” She grinned. “All right,” she said, breathing slowly now. “You’re not an asshole, just a schmuck.” Calm, she said, “Light me again?” She took a long drag and exhaled such a huge cloud of smoke it escaped into the web of the prison and reached halfway to Philly. “Take the butt out of my mouth, will you?” she asked. “I think I’ve had enough.”
As I did, I said, “We’ve got a few minutes left, and I’ve got questions.”
Rattling her chains, she said, “I’m not going anywhere, babe. You ask Esther all you want. I’ll answer all I want. If our friend over there gets jittery—” She nodded toward the guard. “I’ll give her a piece of what’s left of my mind.”
Her eyes caught me, and I couldn’t pull away.
I said with caution, “Now, don’t get angry with me again.” I silently counted to three to let those words penetrate the smog. “Do you have any idea where I could find Shmulie?”
A sigh that would have filled the Grand Canyon poured out of her.
“No, schmuck. No, I don’t. He got moved and I got the shaft.” She looked at me barely blinking for almost a minute, her red eyes casting a devilish stare. “But I’ll tell you what you might do.” And she waited another long moment. “You know anything about the Velvet Underground?”
“The sixties rock band? Lou Reed, Nico, John Cale?” I said, wondering at the randomness of the question.
“No, idiot, the Velvet Underground that lies under the City.”
Oh. I’d heard of this place, but not much, and, besides, most people thought it was an urban myth, that if there were such a place it hardly sized up anywhere near its more exaggerated dimensions, a dark city within a city.
Without waiting for an answer, Esther continued. “Get to Grand Central. Go to Track 42. Walk to the end of the platform and make your way onto the track. Don’t worry; it’s not in use. Hasn’t been for a while.” She continued instructing me how to find the entrance and what I should say if I were challenged. “When you make your way into the Velvet, ask around for Shelley Tanzer. Shelley goes by the name Wolfman Tanzer. He knows a thing or two about Shmulie. At least he ought to. He was Shmulie’s accountant.”
She called the guard.
She gave me one final look in which I saw a measure of despair, then a thin-lipped smile. “Y’all come back now,” she said and giggled as the guard unlocked her chains and led her away.
After a wait of some minutes, the guard fetched me and pulled me through the labyrinth of the prison to the other side. I caught a cab and a train, which meant there would be a lot of starts, stops, and detours before I returned. I’d make my way down the Velvet Underground rabbit hole the next day.
CHAPTER 12
FINGER OF FATE
ON THE TRAIN BACK I tried to recall the last time I saw Shmulie Shimmer. It was a year or two before the GD, a chance meeting at a club in the East Village called the Jazz Store.
I would frequent that place on occasional Friday nights. They knew me there. Bob Frank and Willie Hahn, owners and life partners—until, alas, their life partnership dissolved—had been students of mine. When they opened the place they told me I’d never have to pay a cover charge, one of the few perks of my profession. From time to time I took them up on their offer.
Lone musicians would perform before an audience of unpredictable size. The small basement room, seating no more than seventy-five, was dark, smoke infested. As the evening aged, the music would become bluesy, melancholy, and improvised, reflecting a silent synergy between musician and audience.
Visitors to that smoky space would trickle out at closing, at two, sometimes three in the morning, into a dirty world empty of life save for an occasional car or homeless soul rooting atop a grate for warmth.
That Friday, I was more than a little drunk, sitting at one of those small wooden cafe tables, smashing cigarette butts one after another into the ashtray, wondering when I was going to quit. I was half listening to the music from a blues guitarist and half reviewing the events of the week. As my eyes scanned the stage, I noticed that the musician was missing the pinkie finger on his right hand. It didn’t affect his guitar playing.
I was holding a glass of cheap liquor as a cigarette burned away in the ashtray when out of the mists Shmulie inserted himself back into my life. He checked around the room, his eyes first resting on the guitarist, who, deeply into “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” slow and mellow like a New Orleans funeral, seemed oblivious to Shmulie. He scanned the room and spotted me. I saw his face light up. He sauntered over, towering above me, and, uninvited, sat at my table wearing a bright smile that said for all who cared to see that he expected me to greet him with love and amazement at the utter coincidence of our encounter. But if he was going to offer me the equivalent of a ham sandwich, this time I would not bite.
“Hello, Nicky,” he said, leaning forward, offering me his hand.
The Shmulie of my youth was present in this incarnation, even through the changes. A kind of oleaginousness covered his skin. I felt reluctant even to consider shaking his hand from fear the touch would leave a slick. And the corpulence. He hadn’t seen the inside of a gym in decades. He’d gained considerable weight, at least 150 pounds, and he was a shtarker to begin with.
Above his lip clung a pencil mustache. His skin looked as though he hadn’t seen the sun since the day, senior year, when we snuck off to Brighton Beach to look at girls in bikinis. His hair, still jet black, was slicked back with pomade. He wore an expensive gray th
ree-piece suit and silk shirt, with a red silk tie around his neck. But his belly bulges detracted from any dignity his pricey threads might otherwise have afforded.
I put my drink down and gave him my best alcohol-induced squint. “Hello, Shmulie,” I said. “Quite the coincidence, no? Or perhaps you came knowing this would make the perfectly lousy end to my perfectly lousy week?”
He ordered a triple shot of twenty-year-old single malt. We stared at each other. A tic in his right eye made it seem he was winking at whoever passed by.
“We’re a pair of Jew boys, aren’t we, Nicky?” Shmulie said as our waitress placed the drink before him. “What would your blessed mother say about you coming to a saloon on Shabbos, smoking butts and listening to a shvartze strum the guitar?” He continued, “My mother—” He looked at the skinny end of his tie, extending beyond the fat end. The tic worsened. “She died a couple of months ago, my mother.”
“I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry. How’s your father taking it?”
“I stayed for most of the shiva, but we didn’t talk much. Haven’t for a long time. I called him, he called me, maybe three times total since she’s gone. He’s okay, I guess. I haven’t been back since the shiva. He never comes out here.”
The bluesman accepted applause at the end of the number, then went into “Sweet Home Chicago.”
“My late mother is turning somersaults in her grave,” he said. “Not seeing me in a bar. No, I’m no surprise to my late mother. But you, Nicky boy, Professor Nicky Friedman, the pride of Avenue J, you she never saw desecrating the Sabbath. Now she has.”
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