“You mean because they’ll threaten us with our lifetime guarantees if we don’t cross?” Morris said. “They already did. I got a letter from Brady a couple of days ago.”
“No, I don’t think it’s that,” Ryan said. “Firing people in a union that has a contract because they honored a picket line would be a reach and Brady probably knows it. There could be a long court fight and organized labor would get behind you. He doesn’t want to go there. But my guess is that he’s on to something else. I’d be willing to bet that he provoked the strike not primarily to get givebacks from the drivers but to put the paper through a financial crisis. You know, even with it on the stands, circulation drops during a strike in a union town like New York. Advertisers start screaming for reduced rates. Now, it’s not like the Trib was wildly profitable in the first place. It’s not the Times or the Journal. It’s probably already in the red and the only reason Brady bought it was to make himself a big man over here. He’s that type, just wants people to pay attention to him. If he loses readers but cuts production costs drastically, he’s still better off. So I’d say he’s hoping you guys stay out a few weeks and the next thing you know, he’s claiming that he’s losing his shirt and, then, well, he’s got his nuclear strike.”
Morris waited for the bad news.
“He declares bankruptcy for the Trib company.”
“Okay,” Morris said. “But how does that affect us? I mean, other than the paper being in bad financial shape.”
Ryan hesitated, suddenly uncomfortable. He looked almost pained.
“Well, that’s the part we didn’t really anticipate when we negotiated the lifetime guarantees,” he said. “Because even though we had papers closing, we figured that the survivors would be mainly profitable for years and years, especially with the staffing savings from automation. See, if Brady declared the Trib bankrupt, he wouldn’t necessarily have to honor any of the existing union contracts when he comes out on the other side. And that means…”
Morris knew Ryan’s pause meant for him to finish the thought.
“No more lifetime guarantees,” Morris said.
“I’m sorry, Mo. That’s how it is. The truth of it is that those guarantees have kept our people working through the last couple a decades. Without them, we know it would’ve been a bloodbath from the beginning. Not only would the jobs have been lost, but there would’ve been huge shortfalls into the pension and benefits fund to keep those checks going out to our retired men. At least the lifetime guarantees kept a lot of good men on, retrained them to use the computers. And I’d bet most of you jokers are pretty damned good.”
He gave Sean a paternal squeeze of the knee.
“Am I right?”
Sean nodded.
“But you and I know, Mo, that they only need—what?—a dozen of you guys? Maybe two or three a shift?”
Morris wanted to dispute the number but remembered who he was talking to.
“Are you saying that it doesn’t really matter what we do?” he said. “That if he does declare bankruptcy…”
“There will be no job protection because there will be no contract or any carryover provision,” Ryan said. “They will be able to pick and choose which people they want. With the drivers desperate to work, there will be no one union they absolutely have to deal with, and, in the process, no union able to stand up and say, ‘We don’t work unless you give such-and-such a fair deal.’ Not that we could ever really count on the drivers to be that union. I would say at this point that the best thing you can do for your people is get them back in the building. Back to doing the job better than anyone else Brady can pull in off the street.”
Morris could see in Ryan’s eyes how difficult it was for him to speak what once would have been heresy. But he also trusted in Ryan’s judgment and believed that, grave as Sean’s personal situation was, he would never act to accommodate the plight of one man over the welfare of the many.
“Sounds to me like you’re saying we might as well go back in and hope this guy doesn’t go nuclear,” Morris said.
“Mo, I know the last thing you would want to do is cross another union’s line and to put yourself at the mercy of management,” Ryan said. “But what choice do you have when Colangelo, who is supposed to be your ally, won’t even tell you what he’s planning to do? Won’t even have a drink with you at the bar? Does that sound like someone you want in your bunker?”
The question was rhetorical, not intended to draw a reply. Morris didn’t have one. Instinctively, he turned away from Ryan’s earnest gaze to Sean, who was nodding in the hopeful manner of a child begging a parent to ease up on the reins, let him take his chances in the cold, cruel world.
Chapter Twenty-three
How did she do it? Jamie wondered.
How had Carla, establishing herself as a human roadblock between him and his front door, convinced him to abandon his retreat? Greeted him with a cheeriness that in the context of the day seemed flamboyantly insane?
How can she be getting me to take a walk with her when I barely have the energy to stand on my own two legs?
Of course, he had already borne witness to her astonishing levels of certitude, Carla being Carla, the monarch of Trib office management.
“Come on,” she said, rising from the stoop. She stuffed the folded Trib into her shoulder bag as if it contained nothing that distinguished it from any other edition. She slipped her arm in Jamie’s and began to guide him as she would a blind man.
“It’s such a nice day.”
He obliged her with one request. He had to run upstairs to exchange his running shorts for a pair of jeans and to vigorously wash his face and brush his teeth to rid himself of the residual stench of his purging into a rancid trash basket. To augment the cleanup, he suggested a tactical stop at a deli on Montague Street to purchase a roll of mints and carry away a container of coffee.
Given the opportunity, Carla ordered a sesame bagel, sternly coaching the pimply young man behind the counter on the size of a cream cheese smear.
“Not too much, I’m working on my figure,” she said. She shot Jamie a yeah-right roll of the eyes. Svelte was never going to be part of Carla’s portrait. In the black Chuck Taylor Converse high-tops she apparently believed matched every outfit she owned, she couldn’t have been more than three inches over five feet. She obviously felt no compulsion to camouflage fifteen extra pounds with a pair of heels.
Buxom she could certainly get away with. Especially in the light, olive-colored scoop-neck sweater she wore that drooped halfway down her tight black skirt.
They left Brooklyn Heights and walked down the commercial strip of Court Street.
“So what got into you yesterday in the first place?” Carla said after a half-block of silence. “What was that whole thing about?”
Munching her bagel did not blur the directness of the question. Jamie gulped more coffee, contrived a glance across the street up at the marquee of the Cobble Hill cinema. Yup, Forrest Gump was still playing on both screens. He’d been meaning to see it but going to a movie alone reminded him of being, well, alone.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“We’ll take a long walk,” Carla said.
He smiled, as if to concede that the extent of their time together was her call. The caffeine buzz was invigorating. He still felt like changing the subject.
“You have a destination in mind?”
“I do,” Carla said. “You’re walking me home.”
Wherever that might be. Jamie had known that Carla lived in Brooklyn but was embarrassed to not know where. She had never been one to volunteer much about her personal life. But he never asked either.
There were numerous and distinct possibilities within walking distance. But as they were already approaching the end of Court Street, where the residential quiet of the Carroll Gardens neighborhood gave way to the shadows and clamor of the elevated Gowanus Expressway, Jamie gathered they couldn’t be going too far.
“I live in Red
Hook,” Carla said, almost blurting it out. “The Red Hook Houses.”
She took her last bite of bagel and pretended to be distracted by a woman going in the other direction, pushing a baby in a stroller.
Red Hook was just beyond the expressway, figuratively a world away from the quaintness and quiet of Brownstone Brooklyn. It was the rare urban waterfront community ignored by developers and the mighty forces of gentrification. The area was centrally dominated by the Red Hook Houses, one of the largest and most forbidding subsidized housing developments.
“Fine,” Jamie said, nonchalantly.
They crossed warily under the expressway, breaking into a light jog as a car approached from a distance. What the hell, Jamie thought. It was broad daylight. He wasn’t by himself. It wouldn’t be his first venture into the projects.
Carla was uncharacteristically quiet as they walked up Van Brunt Street, a drab row of low-slung buildings, bodegas and assorted storefronts. Some were shuttered. Adult men with too many empty workday hours to fill lounged on steps, in doorways. They turned down a side street of row houses, several separated by burned-out shells or vacant lots. The redbrick buildings of the Red Hook Houses came into view.
“Did you grow up here?” Jamie asked.
“Not really,” she said. “But in every other Brooklyn ghetto. Crown Heights, East New York, Bushwick—you know, all the same place.”
“My father lived in East New York as a kid,” Jamie said.
He begged himself not to identify any further and especially not to impress her with tales of his adolescent basketball adventures. That had been the late 70s, New York before the horrific crack wars.
Nearby as Brooklyn Heights was, Jamie had never stepped foot in Red Hook before. He was aware of its isolation, wedged as it was between the expressway, the waterfront and the Battery Tunnel to Manhattan. The downtown Brooklyn weeklies occasionally ran stories lamenting the spillover of crime into the more fashionable neighborhoods. The Trib had joined the rest of the city’s media in sensationalizing the December 1992 murder of a school principal, shot to death in the Red Hook Houses in broad daylight.
Jamie happened to be just beginning his reporter’s tryout at the time, too inexperienced to merit consideration for a role on a story that dominated the front page for the better part of a week.
“I was there the day Patrick Daly—the school principal—was killed,” Carla said. It was as if she’d been reading his mind.
“You mean, like, right there?”
“No, not, like, right there. It was just before noon, I was upstairs, getting ready to leave for the office. I called in that morning and said I’d be a couple of hours late. I had to take care of something at home, Christmas stuff, because it was like the week before. I remember it was cold and rainy. We heard the shots, the screams. I looked out the window and saw a cop who had reached him first. When he saw that the guy had been shot in the chest, he ripped off his own shirt, stuck it into the wound to try to stop the bleeding.”
Carla shook her head. Jamie turned to face her and wasn’t sure if she was teary-eyed or squinting into the overhead sun.
“You know why he—the principal—was even there, right?”
No, actually, Jamie couldn’t recall.
“He was looking for a kid who had been in a fight that day and had left the school in tears. That kid lived in the building across from mine. He saw the principal looking for him, ducked down behind a trashcan or something, saw the whole thing. The poor guy walked right into the crossfire between two gangs shooting at each other, stupid kids fighting over drugs. That’s when they started calling Red Hook the crack capital of America. You remember how the media and the activists, Sharpton and those guys, started in that the murder wouldn’t have been such a big deal if the victim hadn’t been white?”
That much he remembered.
“They were right about that but guess what?” Carla said. “Most of the residents didn’t care, at least not as much as they did about the white man who’d been killed. When they realized that it was the principal from the public school, they were just torn up. Everyone loved him. And it finally woke people up around here. They started to organize because they began to realize how cut off from the rest of Brooklyn they’d been and how the politicians didn’t give a damn what was happening in Red Hook. No subway stop. No full-service bank. Now we’ve formed a tenant’s association and we’re trying to get people involved, at least get us a supermarket. Can you believe we don’t have that either?”
“You can have the one around the corner from me,” Jamie said. “You go there, you’d better bring a credit card or a loan application.”
Carla smiled, thankfully not put-off by his attempt at levity. Based on the condition she found him in, maybe she considered her mission, if that’s what this was, partially accomplished.
“Go into one of these bodegas we have around here, see what we pay for food because there are no big markets,” she said. “See what they charge for a box of diapers.”
“When was the last time that you had to buy diapers?” Jamie asked.
“Yesterday, in fact,” she said, leaving him riddled in speculation as they crossed Richards Street. They turned down a ramp into the projects and toward a small courtyard between eight-story buildings that deprived the common area of mid-afternoon sun. A handful of women were spread out on the benches while young children on tricycles circled one another on broken pavement.
In the vestibule of the building opposite the one Carla was leading him to, Jamie noticed a handful of teenagers, two or three puffing away on cigarettes—or whatever—and flaunting their truancy.
“We live on the second floor so let’s take the stairs,” Carla said. She pushed through the door, into the empty and dimly lit lobby, past a wall of mailboxes. With Jamie following, she turned left in front of the building’s one elevator.
The stairwell had a musty odor, spiked by the faint smell of urine. Illumination came from one bare bulb that someone had scrawled the number 69 on with blue marker. Candy wrappers and squashed aluminum cans, beer and cola, littered the floor. A couple of empty vials lay at the foot of the stairs. Jamie had never seen one before but instantly surmised they had to be containers used for crack cocaine.
He quietly followed Carla up the stairs and onto the second-floor landing. He trailed her to the apartment at the far end of the hall and waited behind her as she turned the key. The moment they stepped inside, the diaper mystery was solved.
“How’s my sweet boy?” Carla said, doing a deep-knee bend. A toddler, playing on the carpeted floor of the living room, made a drunken-looking charge into her embrace.
The boy’s skin was darker than Carla’s. He wore an I Luv N.Y. T-shirt that sagged to his knees. His face had cracker crumbs fastened to various parts. He looked to be about the same age as Aaron, although Jamie had no recollection of Carla being pregnant. Turbulent as those months were for him, no question, was he really that unobservant?
“And who do we have here?” he said, lowering himself to one knee, beside her.
“Robbie is my sister’s son,” Carla said, inducing relief on Jamie’s part. “He’s staying with us.”
“With you and your sister?”
“No, with me and my mom.”
“Hello Robbie, nice to meet you,” he said, reaching out to rub the boy’s tummy.
Robbie looked at Jamie through eyes perfectly rounded and sparkling before running off with a piercing shriek.
“Nana,” he cried. “Nana.”
“Don’t be offended,” Carla said. “He’s a little shy.”
“None taken. I have one myself who barely acknowledged me until he was almost a year and a half. But there were circumstances…”
Jamie followed Carla into a small kitchen, where he was momentarily startled by the brightness of orange wallpaper. Robbie had disappeared down a narrow hall, in apparent search of his grandmother. Carla pulled a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator.
“Thi
s okay?”
“Great,” Jamie said, seating himself. “So, you and your mother are taking care of Robbie for a while?”
Carla set a glass in front of him and filled it to the top.
“Depends on your definition of a while,” she said, sitting. “I would say that until he finishes high school or something to that effect is a while—a long while. But less than forever.”
“And your sister?”
“Gone.”
“Living elsewhere?”
“Gone, as in dead.”
“Geez, Carla,” Jamie said. “I’m…sorry.”
As in the street, Carla’s eyes were suddenly vulnerable, belying her straightforward brevity.
“She died in childbirth—or at least that was the official medical explanation. But the truth is that she had AIDS and her immune system was weakened and basically shut down. Robbie was fine. Is fine. No traces of the virus, at least not now.”
“What about his dad?” Jamie said. He hoped he didn’t sound more like a reporter than a friend.
“The father?” Carla said, sneering. “If you want to call him that. He was the one who got Dolores sick in the first place. Never said a word about the fact that he was infected. Didn’t stay around too long after she got pregnant either. Probably doesn’t even know she passed, if the crackhead is even alive. Which I don’t mind saying that he doesn’t deserve to be.”
“I don’t blame you for feeling that way,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry you had to go through all that. I had no idea.”
“No one at the Trib did—well, no one except Cal,” she said. “I have enough to deal with there, being a woman, Puerto Rican, not a reporter or a college graduate, and trying to get people’s respect. And you know what? I can live without the sympathy—just not the respect. Can’t do my job without that, so the only one who ever knew anything about what happened, who even knows about Robbie, is Cal. I needed him to know because Calvin Willis is the Trib. Without him, I don’t know if that paper would ever come out. He knows, because he could always cover for me with Maxine when Dolores got sick. And then with Brady, after Robbie was born. He’s there all the time, and he is the most trustworthy soul in that entire building.”
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