Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

  Then Vinnie nods and the new shooters leave the room.

  So Vinnie has decided. All-out war. I don’t think much of IRA’s dopey plan. It might, might work with people trained using night vision goggles. But I can’t imagine it’s easy.

  Along with his books, I inherited my father’s fear of tools, whether a hammer or night goggles. I’d just put them on backward and shoot myself in the head.

  Vinnie then signals for me to approach his desk. I limp over. “Get some rest,” Vinnie orders. “It looks like an elephant crapped on your face.” In this way, he warns me to be ready for tomorrow night or he’d cap my ass.

  The others stay. I don’t like this at all. Normally, you can expect people to talk about you as soon as you leave a room. But if those people are trigger-happy assassins, your ears don’t just burn. You need to make a will.

  On the street I’m dizzy with pain and sick with worry. I don’t care about killing Vlad. I certainly don’t want to be killed doing it. Nor do I want to get clipped by IRA. I can hear him wheedling and begging Vinnie for the chance. Gleefully would he hog-tie me and drive to the Gowanus Canal, where he would dump my body into its corrosive waters.

  I stumble by Judith’s house. John’s car is in the driveway. John, no W. Buffett, often taunts, “You can’t even rip off people with any consistency.”

  He blames my books. I think too much. Such men are not dangerous.

  He’s right. Not that it’s easy to fleece people. Most stay on their guard, remain cautious, hand out cash only under extreme duress. That’s why I like selling pot. You can make money without strong-arming or cheating anyone. For the best weed, people line up. By dealing I provide a necessary service and I take pride in my quality control.

  That I’m not more successful has as much to do with my lack of ambition as with genuine incompetence. But John thinks that an unsuccessful gangster is doubly cursed. He risks prison and death for nothing.

  John himself had dreamed of being a wise guy. Lacking the guts, he overcharges for roofing and thinks he’s badass. In fact, all he got was a badass reputation, which is why he has a lousy business.

  I don’t feel like seeing John, so I text Ariel. In the area. What I should do is get the hell out of here, come back in fifty years when other woes will lay waste a new generation.

  29

  The Bomb

  Halfway to Ariel’s, blaring sirens suddenly startle me out of my reverie of 1920s Paris. (I had been telling Sartre about my nausea.) Fire trucks and police cars zoom down Nineteenth Street. Has the war started? I had thought it would wait until tomorrow night.

  My instinct is always to go in the opposite direction of the authorities. No situation is so dire that it couldn’t be made worse by the arrival of the cops. But all the screaming vehicles are heading in the direction of Judith’s.

  I have to keep myself from running. The fire trucks have stopped in front of the house. I mingle in a crowd of people who are in bathrobes. Some hold umbrellas for it has started to drizzle. I push through to where the cops are holding people back. Judith’s two street-facing windows have shattered and the metal frames have twisted. Bricks have tumbled onto the porch. Judith is holding both the girls, each one sobbing into her housecoat.

  John is behind her and he sees me. His eyes radiate bolts of loathing. But he knows enough to keep his mouth shut. Neither Judith nor the girls appear hurt. There is nothing I can do to help, so I fade back into the crowd. Then I fade farther, cross the street, go up a driveway and into a backyard, where I climb over a low fence and walk down that driveway, emerging onto a quiet block that never heard the phrase “Molotov cocktail.”

  This calamity happened because of my friendship with Ivan. But why? Has my defense of reading widely in the great books somehow pissed off not only Ivan but Vlad?

  Whatever the reason, Vlad has decided to scare Vinnie by terrorizing me. Families are not off-limits he wants to say. The men of the Cosa Nostra betray every rule they hold dear—don’t deal drugs, give your boss a taste of everything, don’t whack your captain. But they keep the wives and children out of it.

  The Russians, however, have no such deal. They live in armed compounds and their kids travel with bodyguards.

  As I calculate my next move, figuring all the angles of staying or going, of hiding or fighting, I somehow find myself crouching behind rusting garbage cans in an alley between an apartment building and a doctor’s office complex on Avenue U. The stink of shit seeps from the cracks of the poorly soldered cans and two rats scurry across the apartment building’s glass-strewn courtyard.

  I forget about calculating anything. I’m overwhelmed with grief and terror as I imagine what might have happened to Judith and her girls. Lisa, the younger, is six and just lost her front teeth. Her lisp makes me crazy with love for her. I’d take Jessica, the ten-year old, to Coney Island where we’d hold hands and comb the beach looking for mermaids who sing each to each. That they do not sing to us doesn’t matter.

  That I brought this misery into their midst rakes at my intestines. When I got into the business all I had to worry about was avoiding arrest. How did the pillars that supported the universe collapse, the rubble about to bury everybody I love?

  I finger my phone. It dings with a text. Expecting more disaster, I open it with shaking fingers. It’s from Ariel. Call immediately.

  I press her number and she says, “A friend who lives on your sister’s block tweeted about an explosion. Was it that? Your sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  She whispers. “Are you still in the neighborhood?”

  “Where else? Why are you whispering?”

  “Can you come here?”

  I don’t answer.

  Ariel adds, “No more games.”

  “The games are not the problem.” What I don’t say is that I need to evaporate, eddy into the firmament. I want my unhappy soul to dissolve into the forest glades that reverberate with the nightingales’ eternal song. Barring that, I think I should whack Vinnie and end this.

  Someone’s coming. I remove the gun from my waistband.

  “Howie, are you still there?”

  I shut the phone. The super has pushed open the metal door and stands in the courtyard smoking. He’s tall, wiry, in a sleeveless undershirt. He tilts his head back and gazes at the starless sky. He takes two steps toward the garbage cans but he can only see the dark night.

  My gun rests on my knees. All the Russian supers are connected to Vlad.

  The guy stubs out his cigarette. After a final glare in the direction of his trash cans, he goes back inside.

  I take out my phone and call Ariel back. “Listen, I can cause you big trouble. Look what happened to Judith.”

  “Everyone knows you live with Judith. No one knows about me.”

  “You’re willing to risk your mother?”

  “It’s not a risk. We’re invisible. Please, I won’t ask anything of you. You’ll owe me nothing.” She sounds frantic.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because we have something. You know it and I know it. And courage is not only sitting in an office day after day doing work you hate.”

  “This is not a test, Ariel. It’s fucking life and death.” Maybe she gets off on being a savior. It sounds far-fetched, coming from a dedicated masochist, but who knows? Fetishes can overlap. “I’ll be over in ten minutes.”

  I rise from my crouch and press my back against the wall of the building. I peer into the street, though what I really need to do is peer into the future. Will Vinnie Five-Five keep to his plan when he finds out about the bombing? Night vision goggles my ass.

  There’s no pretending now that I’m paranoid, that no one is after me, that I’m too insignificant.

  Though I see no people, cars cruise down the street at regular intervals. In each one, I notice death is driving.

  So when a lull in traffic occurs, I jog out of the alley, head down. When I can, I cut down driveways and backyards and, in eight minut
es, I get to Ariel’s house. She hears me coming up to her door and she pulls it open. I dive in and she instantly slams it shut.

  “Your face,” she gasps.

  Her deaf mother has heard. “Ariel?”

  Ariel calls back. “I just needed a breath of air.”

  “Don’t forget to lock the door.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “What do you mean ‘don’t worry’? Who knows what kind of maniacs are running around out there?”

  “For God’s sake, Mom. I locked it.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  “I’m going to work downstairs. Just go to sleep.”

  “Good night, sweetheart.”

  Ariel comes down looking grim. “I need a job. I need to get out of here. Did I tell you that Joan, my subletter, moved out? I’d love to move back in myself, but . . . So you don’t want to talk about your face? The black eyes? Top secret?”

  I say nothing. I begin to believe that once I start talking, I’ll never shut up.

  I press Judith’s number. She picks up immediately. “Howie.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “John told me he saw you. We’re at his mother’s. The house is a crime scene.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  The dam breaks. Judith sobs, “When is this going to end? We’ll all be dead.”

  “No. It’ll be all right. Can’t you get away, take a vacation?”

  Judith wails, “John hasn’t had a job in weeks. We barely made the mortgage payment. Now we have to fix the brickwork and replace the windows.” She hesitates but then adds, “John says he wants you to pay for it since the bomb was really meant for you.”

  That cocksucker. “Of course, Judith. Don’t cry. As soon as I . . .”

  “I can’t have you and John arguing.” She gets control of herself. “I can’t take it.”

  I think we have more serious headaches than family bickering. But Judith maintains some normalcy by focusing on these tensions rather than the tsunami of history that swamps us all.

  “Stay at your mother-in-law’s until all this blows over. It shouldn’t be long.”

  “The girls are watching TV,” Judith sobs. “I need to put them to bed. And please, please, please, don’t do anything else stupid. Just stay alive.”

  Though we’re as close as a brother and sister can be, we don’t go around expressing deep emotions, other than advising each other not to get murdered.

  So Judith will stay at her in-laws’. I don’t tell her where I am and she doesn’t ask.

  Ariel stands, looking distressed. Maybe seeing my shattered face has finally brought home the reality to her.

  You can’t unilaterally withdraw from the mob without being executed. The exception, of course, is if your crew is wiped out and there’s no one left to kill you. IRA’s plan strikes me as particularly dumb, suicidal. But Vinnie knows that he’ll lose a battle of attrition. Both the Russians and the Chinese will pick off his crew one by one. Risking everything on an all-or-nothing strike is his only chance. One gang of brutes exterminates another gang of brutes.

  Then once Vinnie’s bigger headaches pass, he will kill me. How do I know? I know. The deepest truths are arrived at not through reason but through feelings.

  I regret not bringing some philosophy. Reading it relaxes me.

  “Can you get me some other shit that I need? I have something on, but I’m not sure it will come off as planned. I might have to hole up here for a while.”

  Ariel comes toward me. “Whatever you want.”

  Should I bet my life that Vinnie doesn’t survive another twenty-four hours? Do I dare chance that whoever else runs this neighborhood will forget about me if I stay hidden? Your allies one day are your enemies the next. At all times, someone will prefer you dead.

  “I don’t even have a pen.”

  Ariel goes to her desk and gets one.

  If I’m going to transform into a mole, I’ll need to anesthetize myself with liquor and some special works, books that I have been pushing off reading until the right moment. I’ll also need some snacks. I keep the list short.

  1.Johnny Walker—Red Label

  2.Peanut Butter—the chunky kind

  3.Crackers—Ritz

  4.The Nicomachein Ethics—Aristotle

  5.Candy—Almond Snickers

  6.In Search of Lost Time: The Fugitive and Time Regained (vol. 6)—Proust

  I examine the list. Reading Aristotle always makes me hungry for a Snickers Bar. The Nico of Nicomachean is Aristotle’s son, to whom Aristotle dedicated the work. It’s about how to live a good (moral) life. My father, who never otherwise talked philosophy, did mention this. Now I have time to give the work a close reading.

  The Proust I’ve been working my way through for years. If I remain holed-up, I’d finally finish.

  Ariel laughs. “Do you need help? What are you writing so much?”

  I give her the list.

  Still smiling, she peruses it. After a second and then another second, her face whitens. “What is this?”

  “What?” I snatch the list out of her hand and look at it closely. “Fuck.” Right away I see the problem. I have spelled Nicomachaen incorrectly. I change the i to an a and hand the paper back to Ariel.

  The list drops from her hand and floats to the floor. “Who the hell are you?” Her voice rises in panic and fury. “And what the hell is wrong with you?”

  Part III

  30

  The Poetics

  We stand glaring at each other as if hoping for a director to call “cut.” But even after a minute of very uncomfortable silence, we stay put.

  As time passes I begin to relax. My shoulders, which have tightened, return to their normal tension and my facial muscles slacken as if I thought better of making a joke.

  Ariel senses that I will not take up her challenge to explain. The one thing I truly learned, the one thing that has allowed me to survive on the peripheries of organizations peopled by violent lunatics, is to say nothing about nothing. Almost always, it’s not what people do that gets them killed; it’s what they say.

  But that never stops the toughest sons of bitches from plotting, confessing, boasting, and shooting off their idiotic mouths. The Feds have the tapes to prove it. If you can overcome the unbearable urge to blather, you can live forever.

  My father was the only other person I know who barely said a word.

  True, he was not a great success, but he died leaving us with the impression that there was nothing wrong. Cancer and nothing else killed him. Once, on a beautiful summer day a few months before he died, emaciated and in pain, he shocked me by mentioning that he just missed hitting the trifecta at Belmont. The way he bet I would imagine that that race cost him one hundred g’s. His illness must have weakened him because just two weeks later he opened up again, saying that his second round of chemo made him as sick as a pooch but left his tumor in tip-top condition. He died without bringing it up again.

  Even among the closed-mouthed Italian peasantry, this kind of reticence is unusual. Among Jews, it is blasphemous, anti-Semitic, outlawed in Germany and Canada and barely tolerated here in the United States. Though he would never say so, my father didn’t give a fuck.

  As expected, Ariel gathers her forces to attack. But I have to grant that she does not go overboard. “I think you’re an asshole. I thought you were an asshole before, but for other reasons. Now I just think you’re an asshole.”

  Ariel leaves it this cryptic in order to draw me into the conversation.

  Instead, I pick up the paper with the list. “If you can’t do it, don’t worry about it.”

  She grabs it out of my hand. “I didn’t say that. But you lied to me.”

  “I did?”

  “You told me you . . . you can’t express yourself. You told me you were virtually illiterate, through no fault of your own. And now . . .” Ariel works herself up, her face purple with anger, “And now you’re reading Marcel Fucking Proust and you don’t have two w
ords for me! How dare you even know who Proust is when you spend your day punching people in the face?”

  I would like to answer Ariel, but I don’t know where to begin. First of all, and I can check my notes on this, I do not recall telling her I was illiterate. I may have left the impression that I am capable of violence, but I make time for other things.

  Faced with what she views as my intransigence, Ariel turns and stalks up the stairs. Even though we just had our first fight, I still appreciate her ass so delicately sausaged into her jeans.

  I sit by her computer and check the price of GE. Down another twenty-seven cents. Shit. I check Pfizer. Down a dime. I shouldn’t be playing with things I know nothing about. I just thought that one day I would have a portfolio like my dad had, tiny and useless. We Fensters will never live off dividends. I should learn a trade, or better, how to trade. My father sometimes talked about this. Done right it’s a way to mint money. Just get connected to an organization. Small-timers have no chance.

  I hear Ariel running down the stairs. I think something is wrong and I dive for my piece.

  She nearly falls down the last steps. She catches herself and straightens up. When she sees the gun in my hand, she shrieks.

  Her mother, this supposedly deaf woman who hears everything, calls down. “Ariel, what’s the matter? What happened?”

  Swallowing, Ariel calls back up, “Nothing, Ma. A spider. I killed it. Go to sleep.”

  I stick the gun in my waistband.

  Ariel orders, “Don’t you dare leave. Just because . . . You’re going to talk to me. Not now because I’m too angry.” She turns and marches back up the stairs. I barely have time to sit back down when she returns. “Are you planning on leaving? Tell me the truth for once.”

  “Ariel, I will explain everything to you. But I have to do some things which would be suicide to talk openly about.”

  Ariel gapes. I have lost the gruff working-class accent and switched to more polished cadence. Still in shock, Ariel manages, “All right. But after tonight, we talk just like this.”