Button Man

by Paul Lyons

  Copyright © 2004 by Paul Lyons

  First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Rain Saukas

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63450-542-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-876-6

  for tony

  mahalo pau’ole

  for making it happen

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  It’s a pleasure to thank the following for reading this novel and offering suggestions:

  Morgan Blair, Jane Duke, Epi Enari, Richard Hamasaki, Hilary Herbold, Lilly Golden (editor), Nick Lyons (several times!), Tony Lyons, Charles Lyons, and Jennifer Lyons, Rodney Morales, Gary Pak, Michael Puleloa, Bill Ryan, Vanessa Smith, Elyce Tajima, Cindy Ward, Bob Weitzner, Amy Yoshida, and John Zuern.

  “Is the nation at war?” I asked.

  “Not for some time. Don’t you watch Walter Cronkite?”

  “I don’t go to the movies.”

  “Well, there’s no war. There’s an election.”

  “How’re they doing?”

  “Fine.”

  —Thomas McGuane, Panama

  While this is a work of fiction, it references real figures. Some names have been changed to complicate lawsuits. Litigious types are hereby reminded that truth is a good defense against libel.

  CONTENTS

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Three

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  PART ONE

  1

  PAINT YOUR WAGON

  She looked a few inches taller than him in street boots into which she’d tucked her tight jeans. Her tanned shoulders were broader than his, a blue and silver tattoo on the back of one, and she had a chipped front tooth. Her hair was dyed strawberry blonde, inky black at the roots and clipped short except for one long braided strand.

  Hawk just stood there like he was stuck in human traffic, streets honking around him in the crisp March afternoon sun. She was straddling a big-handled Schwinn and looking at him from a few feet away, in the arc of customers around him, with an amused frown. Finally Hawk winked at her and went back to spieling and dealing, carrying on three conversations and his vendor patter at the same time, creating a frenzy around him. He stripped buttons off a foam core board propped against his sausage cart and placed them in hands, saying “what else?” while exchanging them for cash. The smaller bills went in his change apron, the tens, twenties, and traveler’s checks in his jeans.

  “Folks,” he yelled. “I got the lowest prices and the best selection on your political buttons—get your LICK BUSH buttons and bumper stickers here, BUSH IS A WIMP. BUSH DOES THE JOB OF THREE MEN: CURLY, LARRY, AND MOE. Buttons and T-shirts here. SAM NUNN’S THE ONE; KITTY FOR FIRST LADY.”

  “How much are the Kitty buttons?” a woman asked, and Hawk made a peace sign, relieved her of two dollars, and shouted, “Official buttons express from Michael Dukakis’s headquarters just flown in from Cape Cod with the lobster and the shrimp.”

  Hawk dropped to one knee to repin bald spots on his board, buttons pricking his red fingers when he reached into his daypack for stock. Finally, there was a lull, and space between customers. He looked up and the woman was still there, crow’s-feet around her steel blue eyes. Then she was taking off a jean jacket and weaving the bicycle toward him.

  Hawk ran his hand through his bushy black hair, which kinked out in all directions like a fright wig, pressed down on his bent cabbage ear, and exchanged a bumper sticker for cash. When he turned in her direction again she was in front of him.

  “Bum a cig?” she asked, nodding at the Marlboros on his paperback Columbia Encyclopedia on the napkin shelf over the condiments.

  Hawk shook her one and snap-lit it with his lucky Zippo while she eyed his button board and the cart, which was covered with decals—Charles Bronson, Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe with her skirt blowing up, Kwai Chang Kane positioned under her and looking up, along with an assortment of bumper stickers: GLENN HAS THE RIGHT STUFF; RUN JESSE RUN; BOB DOLE PINEAPPLE; and PUT AMERICA BACK TO WORK WITH DUKAKIS.

  “Hey,” Hawk said, “Something for the lady?”

  “No,” she said, and snorted. “I just walked over to say hello.”

  “Button or bumper sticker or sausage?” Hawk said.

  “Sausage.”

  “Works?” Hawk asked, and when she nodded he slathered on mustard and ketchup and sauerkraut, handed her the sausage, and said “’Scuse me,” then turned to sell a bumper sticker and two square Kitty Dukakis buttons and said “love your outfit, ladies” to the tourists.

  Hawk had on his favorite T-shirt, light blue with a picture on it of Lee Marvin staring bulldog over a bottle of Cuervo from under a creased leather hat, looking like he’s been waiting for a showdown for two days. Hawk had the shirt made from a poster over his toilet.

  “What’s that from?” she asked, pointing her sausage toward his chest.

  “I don’t know, but a customer said he thinks it’s from Paint Your Wagon.”

  “Bullshit it is. Paint Your Wagon is a Western musical. They’re in this mining camp and Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood live with the same woman in a log cabin. Marvin sings a few numbers. Clint too. Only time either of them sings in a film.”

  “Sounds like maybe you’ve been to film school?” Hawk said, handing her a couple of napkins. “Good film?”

  “If your idea of a good film is Lee Marvin singing,” she said.

  “Another sausage?” Hawk asked. “On the house with a complimentary Coca-Cola?”

  “I gotta work,” she said, wiped ketchup from her lips, and wheeled her bike around.

  “Hey,” Hawk said. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “What?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carla.”

  “What line of work you in, Carla?”

  “The neon-sign-making line.”

  “Bright lights for the big city.”

  “Right.”

  “You got a boyfriend?”

  “Several. You done asking questions?”

  “Almost.”

  Hawk looked down Forty-ninth. On the corner of Fifth Avenue a mass o
f people waited for the light to turn green.

  “You got a business card or something, Carla?”

  “Do you?”

  Hawk wiped his hands on his change apron, then turned to Carla and smiled.

  “If you feel like catching a film sometime,” he said, “just drop by my office.”

  2

  RAIN OR SHINE

  “You feel a drop?” Hawk asks Mikey, who’s slumped against a mailbox, picked-out ’fro jutting from both sides of his cap.

  “Probably some stink air conditioner.”

  “Come July they turn off the air-conditioning in this part of the Bronx.”

  “Man, let me shut my eyes a second, okay?” Mikey says.

  Five A.M. and already the air’s so thick it seems to drip.

  “Tell me you didn’t feel that, now.”

  “Hawk, the morning line is it’ll rain or it won’t.”

  “Remember last time I bet don’t come on the rain?” Hawk asks, but Mikey just shakes his head, still not having opened his eyes.

  Of course Mikey would remember the Earth Day Massacre that third week in April with its all-day slanting drizzle. They splashed from Columbus Circle through Central Park with enormous bouquets of heart-shaped Earth Day balloons rippling up from their wrists to where the MC on a makeshift bandstand was trying to sell wet marchers that “Rain is always a blessing.” That day feels key to Hawk and long ago, though it’s only been a few months since he took the envelope with 10g’s from Armand.

  “I have to advise against investing your savings in a one-day show,” old man Sammy had warned. Hawk had no savings, but should have listened.

  He had been losing his ass in a freaky run at Club IHOB, short for International House of Backgammon. It was like he’d been singled out for punishment and the cosmic rigging was showing, with just enough minor victories thrown in to keep him playing. His roll got smaller and smaller until it wasn’t. Then he owed Phil the Pot 4g’s and the vig started chewing him up. When you’re broke you’re already ruined. What did he have to lose? The Earth Day balloons seemed worth it: if he had sold a third of them he’d have been out of debt in a day.

  A lot of his itch to settle accounts was Carla, so much on his mind since they started seeing each other. Hawk’s long-shot love. He catches himself in dull street moments forming futures with her, her other boyfriends aside. He could stop hanging out with jerks like himself, gambling away nights at the IHOB, find different work, and go all out for her, whatever the odds. He thinks that half the time she asks him to sit her kid she’s sleeping with Kenny, this accountant. She’s straight up that she’ll sleep with anyone she wants.

  About the fifth time Carla cycled up to his sausage cart she had her six-year-old, Zoey, behind her in a gray plastic safety seat with a pink handlebar, with butt-length red hair in colored ribbons and a star-studded bike helmet. When Carla introduced them between sales, Hawk wiped his hands on his cart towel and knelt next to Zoey. She put out her hand and he shook it. Later that week they went to The Land before Time, Hawk having brought the cart in early to Witold, the midtown janitor who owned it, and changed into a high-colored shirt he’d traded for a Charles Bronson T-shirt with an Indian vendor. In a Chinese restaurant after the film the waitress glared at them icily when she dealt out their menus.

  “That woman needs to chill,” Carla said, and mimed a shiver.

  “I bet I can make her laugh,” Hawk whispered to the ladies.

  “I bet you can’t,” Zoey whispered right in his ear, and held out her pinky.

  “I’ll have the Garlic Shrimp with extra MSG,” Hawk said to the waitress in an Indian accent when she took his order, but she only stared back at him blankly.

  Zoey laughed and said, “I’m laughing at you because you’re not funny.”

  When the check came, Hawk grabbed it and said, “I’m rich.”

  Armand will be around Monday night to collect.

  This time with the balloons it’s a smaller investment. Sammy had only frowned, advised Hawk to buy cheaper and fewer balloons, wished him luck. But if it doesn’t rain and Hawk and Seymour’s CLEAN SWEEP boys can deal through streets of lemonade and fried dough, some band playing “Funny Days in the Park, Every Day’s the Fourth of July,” Hawk can make his payments through the conventions, luckily just around the corner now, when he most needs a score.

  A honk and Hawk jumps to his feet, gives Mikey a hand up.

  “Morning boys,” Sammy calls from the van.

  Mikey and Hawk load helium canisters and four boxes of balloons alongside Sammy’s convention buttons, July Fourth T-shirts, and materials for his canvas-shaded booth.

  “Forecast said it might miss us,” Harold says after a few silent minutes.

  “Yeah, it might,” Mikey says.

  At five thirty the festival’s half constructed, food stands and rides having gone up around Battery Park the night before. The air’s busy with hammers. By the time a few of Seymour’s CLEAN SWEEP boys and the button gang arrives, Hawk, Harold, and Mikey have set up Sammy’s tent and inflated several hundred of Hawk’s helium balloons.

  “Come on, make noise now,” Hawk yells when Seymour’s boys fan out in the street with his balloons. “JULY FOURTH BALLOONS HERE, GUARANTEED LOWEST PRICES.”

  Blue E-Z UP tarps flap. A light traffic has begun, customers browsing on bikes for early deals, and Hawk sells a few red-white-and-blue balloons. The morning streets dress him with their smoke, voices, smells—sausage, curry, fried and sugared dough.

  “HAVE A BALLOON FOR AMERICA ON THE FOURTH,” Mikey yells.

  Nine thirty and the gray-swirling skies begin to blacken. Hawk looks up and starts his anti-rain dance with a hip and a hop—“Hey, Balloon God. Hey, baby. Just let it not rain a few hours so I can get my money out.” To which there’s a crack of thunder like a bomb and a flash and tormented groans from the skies and sheets of rain. Customers sprint for the cover of a Ferris wheel. There’s a lull and then wind rushes in and trashes the streets. A kiosk of sunglasses hurtles by, followed by part of a wood sign for Homemade Lemonade. Balloons rip off Hawk’s wrists, trailing strings. Rain bounces off the pavement between mashed cardboard and busted plaster Buddhas. Vans scream up and vendors load jewelry and tie-dyed dresses into Rubbermaid containers. Against the slate sky the buildings are washed out, grainy, coming at Hawk like newsprint. A subway vibrates the pavement. Junk swirls in garbage wind-eddies. Hawk slumps on the curb, ankles in the gutter, which streams with balls of dough and corn on the cob. He unties the balloons from his wrist and twines them around his neck, like he’s hung himself from red-white-and-blue balloons that bounce and bob in the wind. Mikey turns his Royal Shine cap backward.

  Then Sammy and Harold stand over them in rain slickers, faces hollow under hoods.

  “I’m sorry to see you get kicked in the kishkas, kid,” Sammy says, and offers his hand. “But I wish I had a camera.”

  “What for?” Hawk says, taking the old man’s arm, bony but still strong.

  “I take a picture of you two and any museum would buy it.”

  3

  BEHIND EVERY WATERGATE

  Hawk met old man Sammy a few months after the first night he walked into the IHOB, which got its name because the regulars are mostly dice-rollers from somewhere else, and nobody besides a bunch of crazed Russians bothers with chess. The club’s open 24-7 and costs nothing to join. You can lose a few hundred dollars there anytime you feel like it. In the small-action room in front there’s a TV for watching ball games, fights, and races, a sign saying No Refunds, framed reproductions of paintings of topless brunettes with shawls on their laps, and a table covered with newspapers and racing forms where old Italians with loosened ties complain about the justice system, how kids come right in your house and rip stuff off and they let ’em back on the streets unless they’re Italian.

  Hawk was fifteen years old with a hundred and twenty-seven dollars to his name and his ear jutting out all over the place. A group of resident chisel
ers were playing two-four Texas Hold ’Em, and Hawk asked if there was a seat open and this old guy said, “The game ain’t hard, nobody’s barred. You got money, kid?”

  Hawk didn’t tap out until maybe ten the next morning when a guy rolled him with trips and right away Hawk asked if anyone knew where he could find a job. A Hungarian everyone called Laszlo said his counter man had taken off his apron the other day, set it on the counter, put a slice of pizza on a paper plate, sprinkled chili flakes over it, and walked straight out the door without collecting shift pay. Hawk could start right away.

  An hour later he was dealing out slices, Italian ices, and cold sodas.

  Laszlo had classy manners, spread his palms graciously after a beat, sprinkled white dollar chips around the table as “sweets” when he scooped a big pot. On the job, he was an odd, silent duck, with a distant smile. Hawk heard from one of the regulars that his brother had died a few years before after a car ran him down while he was delivering a pizza. In a coma for a month, Laszlo sitting up with the man’s wife every night, the brother never opened an eye.

  Hawk worked with Laszlo into the hot Watergate summer, the guy averaging about eight words an hour during their 11:00 A.M. to 11:00 P.M. shifts, Hawk’s pockets filling with the nickels and dimes left beside crusts and oily napkins. He’d roll the change and bring it to the bank in the morning. Sixteen years ago. It wasn’t an accident either when Sammy walked into that shop to propose more lucrative work.

  Mister Softee trucks circled the neighborhood with their melody. Hawk swabbed Laszlo’s counter and eyed passing cars whose drivers rolled their windows up too late to slip the gush of a monkeyed-open fire hydrant. Wet kids with T-shirts knotted at the waist screamed with joy when they soaked a driver. They skipped rope in the spray to salsa from a boom box. The one customer at the counter had been huddled over a crust for half an hour.

  And in walked Sammy in a pin-striped summer suit, pink shirt, cream-colored bow tie, checkered cap, carnation in his lapel. This was the third time Hawk had seen the old guy walk in to sniff the air and crinkle his nose at the worn dollar bills taped to the walls and faded photos of waves crashing against rocks somewhere in Sicily.