The Cripple and the Marginal Man
My business was caught in a Catch 22, and since my business was my life, my life was in a Catch 22. I owned and operated the Rapid Personalized Messenger and Delivery Service out of a ten by twenty-foot storefront just off Manhattan’s Broadway and 58th Street. The catch was, I couldn’t attract business unless I had a batch of energetic messengers on the payroll ready to run at a moment’s notice, but I couldn’t afford the messengers because I didn’t have the business. What I needed was an infusion of money.
The two messengers I could afford were Ambrose and Randolph. Ambrose was a diminutive Irish lush who slept on a wooden bench in my office as he waited for delivery assignments. Randolph — a black, three hundred pound giant whose IQ was as low as his love for drugs and drinks was high — slept under the office counter. He insisted on being called Randolph, so of course Ambrose insisted upon Ambrose, and since I was the boss I had to insist upon Mr. Love. We were so formal you’d think we were bank directors, with a Randolph here, an Ambrose there, and a Mr. Love everywhere.
Given that Ambrose and Randolph were two lushes sharing destroyed lives, leather livers, and thirsts that never quit, you’d think they had enough in common to be friends. Just the opposite. Ambrose, looking at Randolph sleeping under the office counter, would sneer, “I may be low now, but I was never so low as that big black bastard. I’ve never slept on a floor. It’s a bed, a bunk, or a bench or Ambrose stands upright on these two legs of steel.” He’d lift his dirty pant cuffs, revealing a pair of spindly legs and knobby knees covered with masses of red hair and purple veins. “Might show rust, but it’s only surface rust and I can still run, stand, or fight any man on these legs of steel.”
Randolph would reprimand Ambrose for being a white drunk. “How can he look at his ugly white face in the mirror and not be ashamed that as a white man he’s sunk so low? Man, being black is the burden that brought me low.” He pointed at Ambrose asleep on the bench. “If I had his white advantages I wouldn’t be there.”“ I’d be a somebody. But a black man’s got no chance... no chance at all. Ambrose’s got no shame sleeping on a bench where everyone can see him, and half the time his fly is open. That’s why I sleep under the counter. I’ve got pride.”
Needless to say, neither was rapid, reliable or dependable, but they were cheap — a few bucks under the table to pick up or deliver a package and off they’d shuffle.
Since all my business was done by telephone my Yellow Page ad was big, expensive, fancy, and multi-colored, with pictures of winged Mercurys guaranteeing bonded messengers and one-hour service. In reality my office was small, dirty and ugly, and the front windows were layered with years of New York grime. A chest-high counter divided the room. The messenger’s waiting area housed the yellow pine bench Ambrose used as a day bed. Behind the counter was a barstool on which I perched, a small desk holding a few receipts and many bills (most past due) and a thirteen-inch color television that kept me occupied when business was slow.
On a sunny, warm October Monday afternoon, the Cripple entered my life, though actually I didn’t see him that day. It all started when a well-dressed, mid-thirties man stood outside my window, adjusting his tie this way and that way for five minutes in his reflection as his eyes slid back and forth like a pair of pendulums. Finally, he decided to come in.
I pegged him as a guy who got his money in ways you don’t talk about, and he didn’t waste time in laying out a very suspicious job. “Got a package in a twenty-four hour locker at Grand Central. I need someone to go there every day and deposit a buck’s worth of quarters.”
“Huh?”
”I’m going out of town. I need you to send a messenger every day to my Grand Central locker with a buck’s worth of quarters to keep the locker locked. “How much?”
The smell of desperation came through his cologne. I surmised that he didn’t have the time to find another messenger service, so I quickly doubled my regular rate. “Fifty bucks each day.”
He didn’t blink as he put four one hundred-dollar bills on my counter.
Damn! Should have tripled my regular rate.
“This is for eight days. If I’m not back, contact my wife.” He wrote a Bronx address on a piece of notepaper. His name was Jonas Saberhager and his wife was L. Saberhager.
When I asked for the locker number he thought for a moment. “Forty-seven oh five.” Then he did the strangest thing. He took off his overcoat, sat down on Ambrose’s bed and removed his left shoe and sock. Taped to his instep was a locker key. Peeling off the tape, he checked the key. “Forty-seven oh five... right.” Then he retaped the key, put on his sock, shoe and overcoat. I was sure glad he hadn’t taped it to his ass.
Shoving the receipt into his pocket, he beckoned me from around the counter to my dirty front window. Putting an arm around my shoulder, and in the intimidating manner of a loan shark talking to a delinquent customer, he whispered, “My wife’s divorcing me and has detectives on my trail. The locker holds some business and insurance papers that she’d like to get her hands on, ya know?
“If you screw up I’ll be back and personally wash all the shit off this window with your tongue and polish it with your ass, ya know?”
I was scared but hid it behind a gruff, “No trouble.”
“My wife’s detectives may be out there sniffing after my ass, ya know?”
“Yeah.”
He laid a ten in my hand. “I’m going to cross the street to the other side, walk to the corner, turn and come back, ya know?”
“Yeah.”
“You stay right here and watch. If someone crosses the street after me, or if anyone looks like they’re following me, you step out and scratch your nose, ya know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“If no one is following me, you step outside and scratch your head, ya know?”
I nodded.
He didn’t get across. A guy on the other side of the street was watching him cross. The man scratched his crotch, and a double-parked blue van roared to life and hit Ya Know square between his headlights. He went over the hood, bounced once off the roof and landed headfirst in a pothole, dead.
Some crazy human instinct made me run to the body. Even New Yorkers can lose their smarts and act tourist stupid. I got there in time to notice the ‘disabled’ license plate on the van as it sped away. The guy with the itchy crotch was busy with a switchblade slitting the pockets of Ya Know, letting the contents fall to the black tar. From the gathering crowd several hands reached out and grabbed the green and silver as he took my receipt.
Yelling at everyone to give him air, I told some tourist to loosen his tie and collar while I proceeded to loosen his shoes and socks. Police whistles sounded over the murmur of the crowd, causing the guy with crotch itch to scramble into the crowd. I palmed the locker key as some creep reached under my bent ass and grabbed the guy’s shoes. I melted back through the crowd until I was safe behind my dirty glass wall. Staring out at the scene, I saw a Hispanic kid running away while shoving a pair of socks into his pocket. Hell, if the police delayed another minute the guy would be out there naked.
Leaving Randolph sleeping under the counter, I closed the office and slipped off to see what the Grand Central locker held. For someone to shell out four hundred dollars to keep a locker locked, it had to contain one of America’s great A, B, C, or D: arms, bonds, cash or drugs. I opened the locker and pulled out a large, expensive leather suitcase that held a worn suit; a dirty, monogrammed shirt; smelly socks; muddy worn shoes; and a wrinkled tie.
What the hell is going on? The guy pays four hundred dollars to keep a suitcase under lock and key and is killed by people who know how to kill, all for some dirty clothes? I checked out the size. I was a forty-two long and these clothes were thirty-eight shorts, for crap’s sake. I couldn’t even wear them. The guy who had been expressed to hell by the van had to be at least a forty-four husky, so they weren’t his.
The S. Harris Edwards, NYC printed on the inside of the coat and the waistband of the pants, and the monogrammed S.H.E. on the shirt all said custom made. If the damn dirty worn suit was worth four hundred dollars to Jonas Saberhager, I assumed it must be valuable to others, so I put a buck’s worth of quarters into the lockers above, below and either side of 4705, put the suitcase in locker 5705 (right below 4705), and taped the key to the roof of the 3705. I left 4705 and the adjacent lockers 4704 and 4706 empty but locked. I put the key to the now-empty 4705 in my pocket and the other keys to the empty lockers in a slit in my belt where I carry my money when delivering messages in some of the city’s uglier neighborhoods. The key to the locker 3705 which had the taped key to the suitcase locker I taped to my instep when I got back to my office.
Going on the premise that the suitcase, or the suit or both, were valuable, I started trying to sell it. The name Jonas Saberhager might be phony but the emergency address had to be legit, so I rode an ugly, dirty, graffiti-festooned subway filled with ugly, dirty, tattooed people to the Bronx. At a little past four in the afternoon, I walked passed row upon row of two-story, one-family, brick, attached houses for five blocks till I reached L. Saberhager’s address, also a one-family, two-story, brick, attached house. Ringing the bell didn’t open the door; it just caused the front room curtains to jingle a couple of inches. My second press on the bell button brought silence after the ringing stopped. Finally, my third bell exercise caused the front door to open, whereupon a woman viewed me with suspicion and curiosity. I noted a late-twenties babe, and judging by the long, red, sequined nails, spiked shoes, lacquered hairdo and tight dress showing plenty of cleavage, she wasn’t into home cooking and good housekeeping. During the ten minutes I stood on the four foot square front stoop convincing L I wasn’t selling anything, I found out the L stood for Loretta. Finally satisfied I wasn’t selling vacuums or religious salvation and had no designs on her body, which was real good — hell it was great ... trim, firm — she let me in and seated me on a plastic covered red velvet couch. I looked over a pink shag rug at a short twenty-year-old kid perched atop the arm of a purple Lazy Boy.
“I’m her brother, Oscar,” he said as he tossed a head at Loretta, who was leaning against the wall of barber-pole striped wall paper and sipping red wine from a cut crystal goblet. No beverage offers for the guest.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you that your husband was killed in Manhattan... he was hit by a van.”
Both of them looked blank. Since neither broke down in uncontrollable tears, though the wife was upset enough to put her drink down, I felt it safe to continue. “He gave me a Grand Central locker key.” I showed them the 4507 key. The wife went to take it but I doubled my fist. “This key is valuable. You know it and I know it. I don’t know what’s in the locker, and I don’t want to. I want to give it to the man’s widow... for a consideration, of course.”
“How much?” both asked at once.
“Make an offer.”
“One hundred bucks,” the brother answered.
“Bull shit.”
“A thousand, and that’s all,” he countered.
I was glad to see four digit numbers enter so quickly into our bargaining. Loretta was back to sipping her wine. “The Cripple probably killed my poor husband, and now he’ll be after you. If you want to stay healthy, you’d better get rid of the key.”
I didn’t know anything about the Cripple then, but the way she said it told me he wasn’t your usual TV perky, heart of gold disabled person. She was showing the “stick” of an unknown quantity to me, and the little brother, taking ten one hundred-dollar bills from his tight jeans and fanning them across a rosewood coffee table, was dangling the “carrot” under my nose. I was tempted to grab the easy thousand for the now-worthless key but decided to see how high they would go. “Not enough.”
The brother told the grieving widow to make some coffee. After she left he looked at me. “How far apart are we?”
The next ten minutes were spent feeling each other out like teenagers in a back seat, only uncovering a hell of a lot less. I was getting the sense they would go higher but didn’t have the money, and he guessed I had no idea of the key’s real value. By the time the coffee cups were empty we had agreed to ten thousand, though they’d need time to raise it.
In late October in New York, the sun sets about 6:30 and it was just at that time while walking the five blocks back to the subway that I got robbed. A guy with a strong resemblance to the brother and sister I’d just left put a gun to my nose, and inside of one minute the widow’s older brother walked away with a worthless key and forty-seven of my dollars. It wasn’t hard to figure she’d called big brother while busy with the coffee; the ten thousand dollar offer was just so much smoke.
Digging into my belt for emergency money I put another empty locker key in my pocket and took the subway back to the office and looked up S. Harris Edwards, NYC, whose clothes now resided in locker 5705. It took an hour going through the telephone books of the five boroughs before I found the Edwards I wanted in the town of Great Kills on Staten Island, New York City’s Siberia.
The next morning, in a short note to Mr. Edwards, I tersely stated that I was in possession of a suit and suitcase and would like to return them, if the reward was sufficiently large to compensate me for my time and trouble. Kicking Ambrose off the bench, I gave him some traveling money and the note, telling him to deliver it and wait for an answer. That done, I settled down to coffee, danish, The New York Post and the sonorous snoring of Randolph under the counter. On page seven I spotted a picture of a couple of bored cops looking down at a white shroud with an insert showing the face of the guy who’d robbed me. Poor Loretta had lost a brother and a husband within twenty-four hours. The accompanying text said he dove nude into an asphalt stream from a nearby midtown hotel window and didn’t even break the asphalt’s surface. What made it a special event for NYC was that he was burning from head to toe all the way down. He was identified as Wilbur Wright, a petty thief.
Oh shit! The guy who tossed and torched him must have gotten the worthless 4705 key and now knows about me!
Leaving Randolph propped up at the counter and in charge of the office, I rushed to stop Ambrose from delivering the message. On his best days Ambrose moved slowly, pausing to beg, panhandling, or greasing up car windshields with a dirty rag. I caught sight of him in Great Kills just a couple of blocks ahead going into a modest rancher at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Sitting on a curb about ten houses down I waited for him to leave. He never did. I watched from noon till about three when grammar school kids pouring out of yellow school buses started pointing at me and shouting to each other, “Look at the bum.” I ignored them. They didn’t know better. But when the little bastards (and I was sure at least half were) started to yell, “Child molester!” and “Sex pervert!” well, that got me moving damn fast. Besides, either Ambrose was sharing drinks with Edwards and was blissfully drunk or he’d been beaten to a pulp and lay dead. In either case he didn’t need me, so I returned to Manhattan.
Randolph was sitting in a doorway a couple of tenements from my office, a beatific look of contentment in his eyes, the neck of a quart sticking out his coat, and his dirty, upturned hat at his feet with a couple of seed quarters in it.
I screamed, “Randolph, you stupid bastard! Why aren’t you in the office? You know I’ve got my 13 inch color TV stashed in the bottom desk drawer!”
He tried to say something but only a few grunts and burps came out so he gave up, smiled, and airily waved a hand around his head with spirits-induced bonhomie.
“Crap!” I yelled and ran into my office, only to knock into Loretta, standing on my stool and poking holes in my ceiling tiles with a 3 inch stiletto shoe heel. Younger brother Oscar was in the toilet looking intently down the water tank.
“You’ve got to give us the right key!” they both shouted at me as I helped her down from the stool and since Loretta’s tiny waist was in my arms I talked to her. “I saw what they did to Wilbur — a naked torch, tossed into the street,”
“That’s why you’ve got to give us the key!” they both yelled, but since Loretta’s butt was now filling my hands I spoke to her.
“The key isn’t here.”
“Where is it?” they both yelled, but since Loretta’s soft bust was hard against my chest I told her that for ten thousand dollars they could have it.
“We don’t have that kind of money!” they both cried, but Loretta’s moist green eyes were pleading a mere three-inches from mine so I asked her the question.
“How much can you ante up?”
“Maybe a couple of thousand if we had the time,” they both said, but since the knee of Loretta’s long leg was gently kissing mine, I asked her another question.
“How much time?”
Oscar began jumping up and down frantically. “Time, shit... it’s the Cripple. He’s after us! There isn’t any time!”
Loretta didn’t jump but sliding the last two inches against me down to the floor softly cried, “All we want to do is give the Cripple the key and forget about the whole thing.”
I told Loretta I wasn’t afraid of any cripple and was determined to see some money out of this.
“The Cripple will kill us all!” Oscar shouted. “And he’ll do it ugly! Look at my poor brother! Not a clean bullet to the head, but naked, alive and on fire, twenty stories! I don’t want to go like that!”
Loretta didn’t shout but breathed in my ear. “I don’t mind being naked, but not when I die. The Cripple will do all kinds of obscene things to my body.”
Thinking of all the obscene things that one could do to and with Loretta’s naked body, I told her to bring the thousand they’d originally offered to my furnished room that night.
Loretta dug her nails into the back of my neck just hard enough to evoke some beautiful pain and whispered, “I’ll be there. Ten good for you?”
With every body hair standing at attention I told a pair of soft, full, red lips that ten was good for me.
They left and, after I calmed down, I realized my name, address, and business were now known to Loretta, her brother, Oscar, Edwards of Great Kills, and to the Cripple, who I’m sure got everything out of a naked Wilbur before lighting him up and pushing him out. Given the hard ball everyone was playing, that didn’t seem wise. I needed distance. I dragged Randolph back into the office and propped him up at the counter, then spent a good part of an hour teaching him to say, “My name is Ed Love ... I own this business ... here is the key,” to anyone who came in asking for me, especially if the guy had bad legs. Then I gave him a Grand Central locker key to one of the empty lockers from my money belt.
Satisfied I was distancing myself from this Edwards, who in all probability was the Cripple, I holed up in my midtown-furnished room eagerly waiting for Loretta. At ten sharp Loretta showed up and pulled a gun. I gave her key 4706 to an empty adjacent locker. That left me with one key. Leaving, she unnecessarily commented about me and my room. “A dope in a dump.” Later, as I laid on my bed watching Jay Leno and wondering whether that ridiculous chin and hair were real, Bobby — a full time hotel clerk, part time crack dealer, and week-end transdresser and male prostitute for those looking for something unique — banged at my door. “Ed, your business is on fire. The whole building is going up.”
By reflex I bounced off my bed and ran to the door before realizing that except for my color TV there wasn’t anything worthwhile in the dump. I thanked Bobby, then closed and locked the door. I settled back on my bed and rummaged through my papers till I found the fire insurance contract. Unfolding the policy, I avidly read up on exactly what my fire insurance policy covered. The next day, after putting in a $100,000 claim for lost office equipment, I found out that poor Ambrose had been burned to death in my office.
The arson squad said that Ambrose literally started the fire. According to them, in a drunken stupor, Ambrose spilled booze all over himself. Then, while lighting a cigarette, he caught fire and, in a panic, ran about the office spreading the flames. I knew Ambrose. He’d never spilled a drop in his life.
The great thing about being a marginal citizen is that you have nothing and can more or less disappear at will. Telling Bobby to hold my mail, I checked out of the Alexander and walked one block down and one block over to the Alexus Hotel, which provided rooms by the hour, day, week or month, and rented a furnished room for a week under another name.
Out of curiosity I went over to the burned out office and ran into Randolph. He asked me for a handout, seeing he’d been burned out of a job.
I fed him a buck and, being suitably appreciative, he told me that just before the fire he was suffering terribly from his needs. “I needed a shot, either coke or whiskey, real, real bad so I went to get relief and forgot to lock up. When I came back I saw Ambrose, some guy in a wheelchair, and another guy pushing it going into the store. They were carrying a bottle, and Ambrose was feeling no pain. He was happy, hopping around, talking away. I might have joined Ambrose and his bottle but the other two were sober and silent — mean sober and nasty silent. Since Ambrose was in the office there was no need for me to go in, so I laid on a good drunk.”
I shook my head. “Poor Ambrose died a bad death. One of those two dosed him with liquor and torched him.”
Randolph thought for a moment and found a silver lining. “Well, at least he died drunk.”
Suddenly something struck me and I started to kick and beat Randolph’s huge black body. “You son of a bitch! You sold my television! That’s where you got the money to shoot up!”
He denied it, but the way he submissively let me kick his black ass told me the bastard really did hock my thirteen-inch color television.
People began to gather and watch an average size white guy kick the shit out of three hundred pounds of black ass. As I left, Randolph was industriously passing his hat around the crowd, picking up a lot of sympathetic silver and some guilt green.
I called up the Edwards character in Staten Island.
A woman’s answered in a guarded, monosyllabic voice. “Yes?”
“I’ve got the suitcase and the suit.”
A pause, then, “Yes?”
“If Mr. Edwards wishes to purchase the items it’ll cost him five thousand in twenties.”
A pause, then, “Yes.”
“The merchandise can be purchased at the curb in front of the Manhattan Police Headquarters at 1 Police Plaza.”
“Yes.”
“At 1 Police Plaza.”
“Yes.”
“Noon tomorrow.”
She decided to get gabby. “The suitcase and the contents will be there?”
I was planning to sell only the key but decided what the hell. “Yes.”
Silence.
I said, “You’ll bring the money in a shopping bag.”
“Yes.” And the phone went dead.
Searching the streets for Randolph, I found him being horribly beaten by some scrawny little white drunk called Smitty. Smitty ran away and Randolph picked himself out of the gutter and passed his cap around the crowd.
After he’d milked the white cows dry, I beckoned him and Smitty over.
“Ed, this is the greatest! Smitty beats the shit out of me, people stop and watch, feel sorry for a poor, beaten black man and toss not just silver but gorgeous green. Man, Smitty and I have seen fives!”
“Hell, Randolph, wouldn’t it look more real if you beat up on that filthy white bag of bones?”
Smitty piped in. “We tried that. Randolph hit, kicked and punched me till I was bleeding all over, and you know what the crowd did? They jumped Randolph and beat the shit out of him. And even looking a bloody mess, when I passed the hat all I got was curses and called a no good bum, and some little old gray-haired lady even kicked me hard in the shin.”
Randolph smiled down at Smitty. “You got to be black to get handouts from Whitey.”
“How would you two like to stop this street theater and earn an easy fifty bucks?”
“Each?” they asked.
Crap, now that they’d gotten a few bucks they were bargaining like union agents. “Twenty five each ... just to go up to the Bronx with me for a couple of hours.”
Suspiciously Smitty asked if there was any physical work involved.
“Just the physical effort it takes to stand on your own two feet.”
After a few moments of deep thought Smitty decided he would stand on his feet for twenty-five dollars.
In the Bronx I stopped at a discount toy store and bought Randolph a bat and Smitty a realistic-looking forty-five water pistol.
Suitably armed and looking tough and desperate, we banged on Loretta’s door. Opening the door, she took one look at my boys and yelled past me to the whole neighborhood that she wasn’t letting stumble bum drunks into her house.
I offered to keep my boys outside and she shouted that no piss-stained drunks were going to smell up her stoop. With some justification, she complained, “Shit, they haven’t used a urinal for a year. They stink.”
I told my boys to wait on the sidewalk but to be ready and come running if I gave the signal.
She screamed up and down the street that no way were those winos going to stand in front of her house. The neighborhood would think she is running some stupid homeless shelter for every shuffling boozer and dope head in New York.
Feeling maybe I was losing some of the tough-guy image I was trying to project, I told my boys to wait at the corner.
Finally inside, I saw that Loretta was dressed in a black dress — a very shiny, tight, and clinging dress which showed more of her body than her sorrow — and Oscar, her brother, perched on the arm of the Lazy Boy dressed in charcoal gray. He was sipping black coffee and munching on a prune danish.
“You got the thousand? I got the key to the locker holding the suitcase.”
Oscar showed a gun. “I got this.” It could have been a water pistol, but I didn’t feel lucky. “We want the key, the right one this time, you lousy bum.” He turned to Loretta. “Frisk him.”
And she did. Her fingers massaged and probed every pocket outside and inside. God, I loved it! She spread my goods out on the rosewood coffee table: forty five dollars; a couple of dirty tissues; a wallet; a condom some stupid college girl pushing safe sex had handed me in Times Square; a lot of keys; and a piece of toast wrapped in a napkin that I was saving for later. While Oscar rummaged through the keys, Loretta, cursing a blue streak, washed her hands with disinfectant soap, unnecessarily yelling something about dirty Times Square perverts.
I was feeling very dissed, thinking it was all uncalled for and certainly undeserved.
Oscar yelled at her. “Forget about your hands. The bastard has more keys than the towel boy at a gay bath house.”
Vigorously scrubbed her hands she yelled, “What kind of keys?”
“Keys for the Alexus Hotel, the Alexander Hotel, a Grand Central locker key.” It was key 4704 that I had taken back from Randolph.
“And — what are these for?” He dangled my business keys in front of one of my eyes and a gun barrel in front of the other.
“My business keys,” I answered, going cross-eyed trying to look at one while keeping track of the other.
Gathering all the keys, Oscar announced almost as an after thought, “Let’s kill him, Loretta. He’s just a punk wise guy and he cost poor Wilbur his life.”
At moments like this it’s nice to have a woman’s homemaker instinct come to one’s assistance. Rushing in from the bathroom, vigorously drying her pleasure-giving hands, she screamed, “The rug! The rug, you idiot! It cost a hundred bucks a square yard, excluding padding and installation. If he bleeds all over the rug, it’s ruined.”
“Ain’t it got that stain guard stuff ... you know, just wipe it up?”
“Crap, Oscar! You believe everything you see on TV? If he bleeds all over the rug, it’s ruined.”
To protect her rug and my life, Loretta, with one strong push sent me flying out the door, down the steps, and across the sidewalk where I bounced off a parked car.
It was kind of nice being pushed about by her, but I didn’t want to give her the impression I liked domination, so I growled that I’d be back with my boys. As she slammed the door, she was yelling, “Oscar, I’m not doing anything till I take a good, hot shower. God, I touched his used tissues and rubbers! I feel so dirty!”
When I got to the corner I saw the door of a squad car slamming shut on my boys. Poor Smitty was trying to convince a big, black cop that the water pistol was a gift for his nephew while a whimpering Randolph was unsuccessfully trying to convince an even bigger white cop that he coached little League.
Driving off, the black cop was laughing and shooting water out the window. So much for my boys. Reaching the subway entrance, I saw Loretta, a towel wrapped around her hair, drive by in a red Dodge Shadow followed by her brother in a white Eclipse. I surmised one was off to check out the Grand Central Lockers, and the other to toss my room.
The only money I was going to get was the five grand from Edwards. Even though the exchange was to take place at high noon in front of Police Headquarters, I felt that things could go wrong and I may need my boys to back me up.
Arriving after Loretta’s visit to my hotel room, I removed my stuff from my ransacked room at the Alexus Hotel and moved into the Andrew. Late the next morning I found a released Smitty beating Randolph with a bat in front of a Canadian tourist bus. The green and silver was pouring out the windows like Niagara Falls accompanied by shouts of “Racist!” showering down on Smitty’s small, bony, round shoulders. The bus drove off with every window filled with irate whites shaking their fists.
Reunited with my boys, I got the suitcase and sprung for a cab. We arrived at 1 Police Plaza by eleven-thirty. I put the suitcase curbside and squatted Randolph on top of it. “You sit right there till a guy comes up with a packet of money.” I stationed Smitty and myself at the side of the police headquarters building where we’d be unobserved and could see Randolph squatting on the suitcase.
No sooner had we gotten to our observation post when Loretta and Oscar hopped out of their Shadow and tried to get Randolph’s butt off the suitcase. Damn it! After having received two false keys to the lockers they must have figured out the suitcase had to be in one of the other lockers and staked out the place. They must have followed us from the lockers. There was wild talk and wilder gestures as Randolph kept shaking his head and his three hundred pounds of liquor-soaked muscle while remaining squatted and unshaken.
Turning her back to Randolph, Loretta started shoving singles into an envelope. Facing Randolph, she handed it to him, after peering into the envelope, hopped off the suitcase and started to help Oscar load it into the trunk of the Shadow.
I sent Smitty on the run. “Tell Randolph not to give them the case! They aren’t the ones! Smitty arrived just in time and Randolph jerked the suitcase out of the trunk. The four of them were arguing when suddenly they all turned towards me, waving hands, pointing fingers and yelling for me to join them. At least the men were. Loretta was gesturing with just one finger.
Just at the height of the confusion, a blue van with a disabled license plate pulled up behind the Shadow. Its side doors slid open and from the dark interior a shotgun barrel peeked out from above a partial view of chrome-wired spokes of a wheelchair.
The Cripple had arrived, and from the way Loretta and Oscar dove into their Shadow and peeled rubber, they had no doubt that the Cripple would use the shotgun, police headquarters or not.
Smitty, at the shotgun’s appearance, scooted behind Randolph, grabbing big chunks of his ample rump with both hands. Randolph turned around to give me a forlorn puppy dog look, like What do I do now? I gave him the only answer I had. I shrugged and beat it down the street as fast as my legs could take me. In my Andrew Hotel room, taking just enough time to have a long drink straight out of the bottle, I packed and moved to the Armbruster, a block down and one over.
It was obvious that this S. Harris Edwards was the Cripple who’d killed poor Ambrose as well as Loretta’s husband and brother. What was he going to do with little Smitty and big Randolph? He must have gotten them. They were too slow in mind and feet to escape. Probably after helping put the case in the van, they docilely climbed in, then closed and locked the door.
That evening, with no business, no friends, no family, and no acquaintances, the only place for me was a cheap bar featuring a shot with a beer chaser special for a dollar forty-five. I was on my third special when on the TV news some black broad, under an inch of white pancake make-up, started to lament about the brutality that abounds in the city. Someone had set fire to two homeless men on a Staten Island landfill. Police suspected skinheads and were looking for a blue van that was seen leaving the landfill.
What could I do? The Cripple had killed my boys, torched them. Damn! I hope he at least gave them a last bottle so they could die happy drunks. Three bums lost their lives because I tried to hustle a few bucks from a second-hand suit. I’d downed the fourth special and ordered the fifth when I realized the significance of the clothes. They were worn, especially the shoes. There was no Cripple. It was his scam ... his alibi for his robberies and murders. He couldn’t have done the murders because there wasn’t a ramp or the doorway wasn’t wide enough for his wheelchair. Loretta and her brothers and husband had planned to blackmail him.
No one could touch the Cripple and his Jock Itch friend who had tried to search Loretta’s husband. “The story of my life,” I growled at my beer. I’m always screwed, left and right, legally and illegally, and never able to do anything about it. Can’t use the law...not rich enough; can’t use influence...not important enough; can’t use force...not strong enough; can’t use bullshit...not glib enough.
“Hell,” I told the shot glass. “In a real man’s world, if a guy does you or your friends wrong, you grab his crotch and tell him to make good. No telephone, no letters, no forms, no lawyers, no courts, no legal bullshit, just real justice.”
“What’d you say?” the bartender asked, pushing a dirty, damp gray rag through beer puddles and cigarette ashes.
I spoke to him and my reflection in the bar mirror behind him. “Just taking inventory, seeing if I got what it takes below the belt.”
At my sixth or seventh special I was at my alcoholic peak, a lion fearing no one, a mind fired with courage, a will of steel — unbeatable, unstoppable, reckless, and ruthless — a don’t give a shit, mean, determined son of a bitch.
Come hell or high water, even if it cost me my life, this night I was going to face and beat the Cripple, a cripple with worn, muddy shoes. I got off the stool, bought two liters of domestic Scotch and left for Staten Island. At a variety store in Great Kills I bought a large sand pail, and at the street corner next to the Cripple’s house, while taking a couple more pulls of Scotty’s for courage, I saw Jock Itch leave the Cripple’s house and drive away in the blue van.
Standing on the Cripple’s stoop I poured the two liters of booze into the pail, less one more snootful for additional courage, and rang the bell. The only thing I can remember is that I had to take a leak real bad. After an interminable wait the door opened, and without looking I threw the pail of booze all over a wheel chair cripple. We were both surprised, the Cripple soaking from a whiskey shower and looking up at a guy holding a lit match, and me looking down at the face of a thin, attractive woman sitting in a wheel chair.
Crap! I got the wrong house! But just then the match burned my fingers and in a reflex action I tossed it. Her lap, breasts and throat from her chin down were lit in a blue flame. She screeched and started to come out of the chair. Pushing her back into the wheel chair with a hard shove, I sent her rolling back into the house and slammed the door. Scared at what I’d just done, I ran all the way to the train station — and I’m man enough to admit I wet myself during the run.
The fire truck and the train arrived at about the same time.
Did I feel bad about what I’d done? No way. It was good to see a murderer die the same way she killed others. That’s the way it should be, none of this painless injection shit. If a guy hacks someone to death, then he should be hacked to death. If you beat someone to death with a baseball bat, then be prepared to take a turn at playing the ball for someone else’s at-bat.
The murderer was neither cripple nor male and that’s what the suit would have shown. What makes matters even more beautiful is that the guy with the crotch itch was tried and convicted for burning his wife to death. Seems they found empty liquor bottles and spilled whiskey in his van.
I settled for five thousand dollars in fire insurance and opened a lunch delivery service. You call my number out of my big, flashy Yellow Pages’ ad and I deliver a ham and cheese to your office in 15 minutes or it’s free. Out of a small storefront I’ve got six winos making and delivering the sandwiches to the office crowd, and I’m hoping the food inspectors never find my address.
Now when things go bad, like having to listen to some crap over the phone about mouse droppings in the Swiss cheese or bullshit complaints about greenish ham, I remember that night, the night I kicked someone’s butt instead of being kicked. That night I felt alive, I felt great, I felt powerful. I felt like a man.
****