For the next four days I didn’t leave my room except to go to the bathroom or take some food from the kitchen. I spoke to no one. I slept fitfully, an hour here and there, more in the daytime than at night. Whenever I dropped off I would plunge back into the same long dream. I was alone in the pitch-dark listening to indistinct voices, unable to make out any words, though the inflection changed often. Sometimes there were several voices, and I thought I was the topic of conversation. Other times it was one voice that I was certain was talking to me, teasingly out of reach, and I’d wake up with a longing I couldn’t identify. Sometimes I cried.
The phone in my room was unplugged, so I would hear the other one ring dimly out in the kitchen. My father answered, and I could tell from his muffled tone whether it was personal or just someone making a bet. He never came into my room, but he kept the refrigerator stocked with cold cuts and potato salad—something he hadn’t done in years—so I knew he was worried about me. Later I found that he’d screened calls for me during that time. He made excuses to Gina, who was used to them, and to Lou, who called only once.
We finally sat down and talked on the day I came out. It was cold and raining hard outside, and I figured I could go out briefly without seeing anyone. I was starting to go stir crazy, and took it as a sign that whatever had kept me locked in was passing.
My father came into the apartment while I was getting dressed. I’d showered and shaved while he was making his rounds. He didn’t hang around the car service much anymore. I heard him sit on the sofa in the living room and rustle the paper. I finished dressing, walked out, and sat in an easy chair opposite him. He put the paper down and looked over at me.
“Back in the world?”
“I think so.”
He nodded. “You were gonna get sick if you kept eatin’ that shit three meals a day. Your asshole must hate you already.”
“It does. Thanks. You’re the one who brought it all in.”
“Complaints? I didn’t see you doing any shopping. I shoulda let you starve. I notice you ate it.”
“What are we talking about here, Pop?”
“Cold cuts and your asshole.”
“Why are we doing that?”
“I don’t know. I thought you wanted to.”
He smiled; so did I. Then we started laughing. Then we talked about school and work and the neighborhood and generally avoided discussing my having become a recluse. Finally he asked me, “Are you going to work for Tony?” I said I wasn’t sure.
“I think you should.”
“Why?”
“To show that you’re not running away. The way it all happened— with you involved—was fucked-up. But Lou and Tony, right now, they think you’re cold-blooded, a stone motherfucker. Tony don’t know you enough to know any better. Lou should, but Lou don’t know anything good enough to tell Tony he’s wrong. Now is when you show your face just a little. Work for Tony for a while and you drift on to something else. Back to school or whatever you want. Just don’t suddenly disappear because of this.”
“You’re worried about yourself,” I said. The words came out as I thought them. “This is about you. I’m in the middle of this shit, and you’re afraid that the guys in the club will think your son’s a pussy.”
He looked down. I felt bad that I’d said it, but worse because it was true.
“Why don’t you just quit?” I asked.
“What am I gonna do? I’m gonna move to the suburbs and take up gardening? This is what I do. I hang around. I nickel and dime.”
“I can’t work for Tony after what happened to Shades.”
“Grief’s a funny thing. I didn’t want to do shit after your mother died; just sit around. But you do one little thing, then two, and by the time you think about it there are these whole new routines you got worked out. It ain’t the same. For me it won’t ever be the same, but,” he shrugged, “you get used to things. You know that. You had to adjust before.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I said. “I mean what Tony did to Shades. To have him killed. To...I don’t even know if you know what happened. It’s not grief. This isn’t like Mom. Tony killed him, and I should go work there?”
He sighed. “Act of God, act of man, what’s the fucking difference? Your mother is as dead as Nicky Shades, and I wish I had someone like Tony to blame. I hope you’re not stupid enough to feel guilty, cause you couldn’t help Shades anymore than I could help your mother. If you want to blame somebody you can blame the guys who did it a little. Blame Tony a little. And blame Nicky Shades the most cause he did it to himself as much as if he stuck a gun in his mouth. Never forget that.
“Why don’t you take this job for a coupla months, then tell Tony you’re not interested anymore. Don’t give up your edge.”
“I don’t have to live my life impressing the street corner ginzos. That’s your story, not mine.” I stood up, took my coat and an umbrella, and walked out.
It was a great exit line, and because it was so good I felt particularly stupid at the door of Tony’s club half an hour later. Asshole that I was, all the things my father had said were in fact important to me.
When I was younger, ten or twelve, I used to think Tony was the boss of the whole world: that he ran everything, had connections in Washington and on the west coast, probably Europe too. The day my father told me that Tony’s territory ended at Sixteenth Avenue it was like discovering there was no Santa Claus. Even the Old Man, who I eventually met and actually picked up and drove to Tony’s club once, only had Coney Island to Sunset Park. There was just too much land, too many people, too much action in the world. I accepted the fact that I would never ever fathom what the real movers and shakers might be like.
A funny thing happened as I walked through the door of the club, though. I became that stone motherfucker. I squared my shoulders, and maybe even swaggered a little. After all, I was the guy with the balls to keep Tony waiting four days for an answer on an offer that half the mopes on the avenue would kill for. If he thought I was the goods, then I’d let him.
The scene in the club looked exactly as it had when I’d been there last. If they weren’t the same old men in the same clothes playing the same poker game, you couldn’t have proved it by me. But there was no game on TV. Instead they had a soap opera on and were watching it as avidly over their cards as if it were football. I wondered if they’d found a way to bet on it. I glanced at the screen. A honey blonde in a nurse’s uniform was telling a guy in a suit that she’d slept with his boss, but had done it for him, to advance his career.
“Butana,” one of the old men yelled at the set, and spit ceremoniously on the floor.
The door to Tony’s private office opened and Zak came out. He looked at me with no sign of recognition, turned, and went back into the office. Ten seconds later he opened the door halfway, stood in the jamb and snapped his fingers once, dramatically, then pointed at me and gestured with his head toward the inner office. I leaned against the bar and stared at him. He glared at me and snapped his fingers twice more, quickly.
“You must have mistaken me for the bartender,” I said. “I’m not him. I’d like to see Tony if he’s got a minute.” I smiled politely.
Zak got that wild look in his eyes and I thought I could see his nostrils flare. For a moment I was afraid I’d been outrageously stupid, even for me. Then I heard Tony’s voice, low and well-modulated, from behind the door. Zak shuddered and swallowed. “Come in,” he managed to rasp.
“Thank you.”
I inhaled and squeezed sideways around his bulk in the doorframe. He didn’t move an inch for me and I felt his eyes boring into my back as I walked to the chair opposite Tony’s desk and sat. Tony looked at Zak and nodded. Zak left the room and pulled the door closed behind him. Tony reached across the desk and extended his hand. I shook it.
“How come you torment Zak like that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t like him. He’s an ape. I don’t like the way he treats people.”
“He doesn’t like you either. And he doesn’t like your father. He don’t think you should get this job.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t think you got here,” I said, glancing around the office, “by listening to guys like Philly Zak.”
Tony smiled. “I assume you’re here because you’re accepting the job.”
“Yes.”
“You took a while.”
“I thought it through.”
He looked at me, not speaking, and I got the feeling that he was weighing me. I sat in one of his small manicured hands, while in the other he held things that he considered important as values, to see how I balanced out. I couldn’t begin to guess what those things might be. It felt like two hours passed. He stood, so I did.
“Zak’s right about one thing,” he said. “You’re very much like your father. I’m glad to have both of you with me.”
He extended his hand again, and again I shook it. I wondered how many times a day you had to shake this guy’s hand.
“Come by tomorrow morning about nine-thirty. I’ll have Lou show you the run. He’s been covering, but he likes to stay by the store.”
He walked me to the door of his office and we said goodbye. I beat him to the punch by extending my hand first this time. He looked surprised, then pleased. No grass grew under my feet.
Zak stood outside the club, sheltered from the rain by the leaky awning. I stopped in the doorway long enough to get my umbrella open. He regarded me menacingly, but he didn’t look really angry, just dumb and mean. As I walked away I looked back at him over my shoulder in the rain. He hadn’t moved, just continued watching me, perfectly still, a rock formation in a sports jacket. I’d been generous to call him an ape. He was a fucking dinosaur.
The next day was my first run, and it was fairly uneventful. I rode with Lou in a car I’d never seen before to a nice house in a suburb of Tarrytown, where I rang a bell and met an Ethiopian. He was tall and bony, almost to the point of being emaciated. Looking at him, I kept thinking about the famine over there. His name was absolutely unpronounceable, and after I tried it twice he told me to call him Todd. There was a Todd in his name somewhere anyway. He and Lou obviously didn’t get along, and each did their best to stare the other down for the whole six minutes we were there. Todd left the front room and returned shortly with a small brown knapsack. He held it out to Lou, who ignored him. I took it. Todd was being polite enough to me, so I didn’t see any reason to follow Lou’s lead. I shook his hand as we left.
When we got to the car Lou suggested I drive, so I’d get familiar with the route. The knapsack lay on the seat between us, and neither of us ever referred to it. I had heard other people in the house with Todd, but I hadn’t seen anyone else. No questions, I told myself.
Lou and I bullshitted amiably, as though the night with Shades had never happened. He was apparently over his embarrassment, and was back to looking at me when he spoke. We talked about horses, sports in general, and real estate, guessing the prices of different houses we passed.
“How come you don’t like Todd?” I asked him.
“Uppity jig. I don’t trust him. He thinks cause he ain’t from here it means he ain’t a nigger.”
“Why do business with him if you don’t trust him?”
“We hafta do...sometimes you gotta do business anyway, with people . . . hey, whattaya think that one goes for?” He pointed to a white columned house with shutters and a fieldstone chimney. “Gotta be half a mil.”
“Half a mil easy,” I said. Evidently we were finished with our conversation.
When we arrived back in Brooklyn, Lou directed me to a woodframe house in danger of imminent collapse in the middle of Borough Park. Hasids in black coats and furry hats and their wives in gaudy jewelry and wigs, trailing a hundred kids, were all over the streets. It was like a constant rush hour. We couldn’t have stuck out more in Bed-Stuy.
“This neighborhood gives me the creeps,” I said. “It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Nobody’s looking right at us, but I know everyone’s watching us.”
“It’s okay,” Lou said. “Everybody watches, but nobody sees a thing.”
The drop-off took less time than the pick-up. We opened the splintering front door and stood in a damp vestibule, looking at a second door made of steel that would have seemed more appropriate on a bank vault. There were four bells set into the crumbling tile wall to our left. Lou rang all of them.
“Only one works,” he said, “but I can never remember which one.”
The door was opened by a short Hasid with red hair and beard. He looked about fifty. Behind him stood a tall, skinny kid in his midtwenties with thick glasses and a yarmulke, but without the rest of the costume. He looked like someone whose lunch money you’d take.
“Go ahead,” Lou said. I handed the bag to the older one.
“Only give the bag to this one,” Lou said. “Nobody else.”
“Or him,” the Hasid said, indicating the younger guy.
“Or him,” Lou repeated, annoyed. “Anyone else?” he asked. The Hasid shook his head. “Okay, then that’s it.” They went in and closed the door. We left.
“I told some a’ the guys I’d bring lunch back to the store,” Lou said, as I was driving down Fiftieth Street. “You mind if we go by Five Brothers, get some potato an’ egg heros?”
“No, I don’t mind,” I said. I looked at my watch. The round trip with stops had taken three hours and forty minutes and I’d made four hundred dollars.
Five Brothers was a deli by the docks in Sunset Park. Borough Park, all Jewish, is right up against Sunset Park, all Spanish, and the number of children in both neighborhoods was staggering. As we drove past Maimonides Hospital, on the line between the two areas, I stopped for a red light. To our left was some sort of clinic entrance that must have been maternity or ob-gyn. Dozens of women—all very pregnant and each with several small children—lined both sides of the alley leading to the double glass doors; a battalion of baby carriages bobbed up and down, it seemed to me, to the same beat. Lou looked past me down the alley.
“South Brooklyn breedin’ war,” he said. “Whoever wins, we lose.”
“Tough call,” I said. “Hasids smell like shit and they’re arrogant, but my old man’s taxes don’t pay for their kids.”
“Yeah, an’ who ever heard of a Hasid mugger. That’s a funny picture—you know—a Beard mugger.”
The light changed and I drove on. At Five Brothers Lou ran in for the sandwiches. When we got back to the car service I had a quick cup of coffee just to show my face, then left. Lou walked me out.
“Next run’s Tuesday, Mike. Just you. Come see me about nine-thirty, pick up some car keys, an’ you’re off. After the drop, park the car around where you found it, gimme back the keys, then go see Tony an’ get your eight bills. Simple as ‘at.”
“I don’t take my car?”
“You don’t never take your car, my car, or anybody else’s car. See me inna morning. I give you keys. I say something like, ‘There’s a blue ‘85 Buick on Ovington.’ You take that. When you’re done, park it back on Ovington, bring me the keys. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Welcome to the club.”
It felt like he was pronouncing sentence.